Ghosts on the Coast of Maine Page 9

  Helen Ward Batastini died September 26, 1987, at her little cottage in Maine, called The Lone Maple. She was sick and wanted to die, but she did not want to be forgotten, as we all found out.

  Her first manifestation was to my brother Lou. He had arrived with my dad in May 1988 for a week’s stay at Fernwood cottage, my parents’ house, just in front of my grandmother’s. Dad was still in the car when Lou walked in the back entry. To his surprise, a potato flipped out of a basket on the shelf and rolled across the floor. Too tired to dwell upon it, he brought in all the luggage from the car and took out his radio to listen to the Red Sox. He had just finished putting new batteries in it, when something caught his eye in the TV room. It turned out that Dad was getting the Red Sox game on TV. The two men watched the game without interruption until a deafening blast of music brought them back to the kitchen. Lou’s radio dial had been turned to maximum volume. My brother put the potato incident with the radio incident and came up with one adjective: spooky. He went so far as to call my mother on the telephone and relate what had happened. She said, “Well, you know Grandma always hated potatoes (because they were fattening) and music (because she considered it the downfall of her son).

  Dad just pooh-poohed the whole thing. He didn’t believe in ghosts. Besides, it was “against the Catholic religion,” according to him. (This argument I could never figure out, because in the old days the third Person of the Trinity included the Holy Ghost.) Even in 1976 when NBC came to the Fernwood house to do a documentary on psychic phenomena, Dad refused to witness the proceedings. “Oh, come on,” was his standard response for ghostly tales. He never lost a night’s sleep at Fernwood as opposed to my mother, who always kept three baseball bats under the bed. Don’t ask me how the bats would have fended off a ghost.

  Anyway, it was my dad who got Grandma’s next dose of mischief. One night he went to bed early, over at The Lone Maple. He must have been asleep about an hour when a sudden chill awakened him. He shivered and drew the covers up to his chin, but what happened next gave him a greater chill. Something tugged at his blanket and made it land at the bottom of the bed. Tail wagging between his legs, Dad told Mom the whole story, but I never got wind of it until Mom inadvertently said something. “You knew I was writing this book on ghosts, and you weren’t going to tell me?” I exclaimed to my father. He said, “Well, I didn’t want to hear any ‘I told you so’s.’”

  You might wonder how Helen came to be called “Bat.” Primarily, “bat” is a symbol of watchfulness. Helen’s first manifestation to me was the appearance of herself about twenty years younger than at her death. She was sitting at a window inside The Lone Maple, happily rocking and watching her great-grandchildren play on the porch.

  Secondly, bats are clean, tidy animals equipped with excellent radar, and lacking in any desire to harm humans. That was Helen, fastidious, generous—and talk about radar. When we were kids, she knew what we were doing and where all the time without even being around. Of course, with a twinkle in her eye, she’d always tell us she was a witch.

  The first time I walked into her house after her death, I was on a cleaning mission because my eldest son was going to stay there. I mentally heard her say, “It’s about time somebody came over here to clean this place up. I knew it would be you, Carol.”

  The whole time I was there, I could feel her following me around, as if she were supervising the job.

  Thirdly, Grandma’s last name includes “Bat.”

  Lastly, at the Northport meeting where I met the two women who collaborated with me on the Sally Weir search, I had announced prior to the meeting that I felt my grandmother had led me there. And what do you think was flying around the rafters towards the end of the evening? A small brown bat.

  Helen had a ready sense of humor, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when she played a trick on me. I had brought downstairs from my room in Fernwood a bottle of Amaretto di Soronno to use in a birthday cake for Dad. I put it on the dining room table and plunk, it made a noise. I hoped no one had heard, because it was supposed to be a surprise. Then I went over to the kitchen to join everyone for supper. After supper I went to the dining room to get the liqueur, and there on the table was the paper bag in which I’d brought it down. Only thing, it was empty! I asked if anyone had seen the bottle. The answer was “No.” Had anyone removed anything from the dining room table? “No.”

  I said, “This is crazy,” and went about the house looking in the most stupid places. When I reached the top of the stairs, it dawned on me what had happened. “Okay, Grandma, please tell me where the Amaretto is. You know I can’t make this cake without it. Please show me where you put it.” I found myself walking down the hall and into the front bedroom. There it was, atop one of the bedspreads. I sensed her chuckling at me.

  The final oddity to date was what sounded like a bowling ball rolling down the upstairs Fernwood hallway and crashing into some glass at the end of its journey. My daughter, my brother, and I all heard it in the middle of the night. The next morning there was no evidence of either ball or broken glass.

  …Is there an end to this chapter?

  EPILOGUE: OUTTAKES

  They both occurred on my journey to the west’ard. In the Ogunquit chapter I didn’t mention that my search for a crystal led me to stop at this place that had gypsy pictures and astrological signs painted all over. Upon setting foot inside the door, I was accosted by a female voice croaking out of a very short body. The voice immediately started in on what sounded like a Garment District sales pitch. “Readings for five dollars, cards for ten, stones for twenty.” She asked, “Where are you from?” I wanted to say, “You’re supposed to tell me.” She said, “How old are you, forty-five?” I was forty-one. She said, “When were you born—are you a Pisces?” I am a Capricorn. That did it. I beat it out of there before she started guessing my weight.

  In passing through Saco, my mother and I saw yellow letters painted on a brown background: “Visit the Haunted House of Captain Isaac Cutler.” Gee, we thought, what a break. Haunted houses aren’t usually advertised like that. We were right. After we drove in the driveway and met a whitefaced actor with a stiff-legged gait, bearing a fake sword, we realized that it was all part of the amusement park next door.