Being a connoisseur of all things odd and unexplainable…haunted houses have always been very high on my list of places to see. Every town or city seems to have them, and many people in this area have eerie and creepy stories to tell.
In Biddeford, just south of Portland, there are rumors that if you visit the Biddeford City Theatre, you will be treated to eyes peering down at you from the ceiling…or hearing odd noises and voices. There have even been reports of the lights turning on and off on their own. While faulty electrical wiring might explain the lights – it probably won’t explain the fact that the face above the stage has been reported to have eyes that appear to open and shut or move on their own.
In the small town of Eliot, just on the border between Maine and New Hampshire, sits the William Fogg Library…a beautiful small stone building that houses the town’s collection of books. Inside you’ll find a stately décor and a sitting room with a quaint brick fireplace. However, also captured inside this small library was a transparent skull that appeared floating above a staircase – the photo was published in a local newspaper. This is a library that you probably wouldn’t want to get locked up in overnight.
In Freeport, only twenty minutes north of Portland, you may want to visit the Casco Bay YMCA. However, make sure your workout doesn’t extend after the doors close and lock for the night…janitors on the night shift have reported a small female figure walking around the pool. It is like a scene from a Stephen King horror flick…only real!
Finally at Gorham, at the University of Southern Maine, there is a haunted dormitory called the Robie-Andrews Dorm. According to local records, there was a suicide on the fourth floor of this building in the early 20th century when it was an women’s learning center. Students have reported seeing ghosts, feeling “cold spots”, and experiencing some poltergeist activity such as footsteps in the attic. One unfortunate student living in the room near the attic stairwell reported that her room was always cold, and once even felt someone grabbing her arm.
Every town is filled with intriguing stories, similar to the ones told here. And when asked, people from all walks of life can tell stories of personal experiences they have had that are surreal, and difficult to explain. It seems that every location that appears to be haunted share common features, including most often a horrid paste – a suicide or a murder of some kind. It might be possible that these events lead to a location being imprinted in some way with energies that generate phenomenon, or maybe the evil that has taken place becomes the stomping ground for demonic activity.
However, while there are many things in this life that we can see, touch, and feel – there are also many things that we can’t. The things we can touch and feel, we call that our reality. It’s the feeling of the ground under our feet after a bumpy and frightening airplane ride. It’s the wall that we cling to as we grasp our way through the dark. But one thing about our reality remains absolutely certain, and that is that we do not know everything about it. Often we can explain away the bumps in the night, or the scratching at the window. However, sometimes there are things that interrupt our lives and intrude into the comfortable and sane world we have built around us. When we are faced with those things that “shouldn’t” happen as we understand it – people are often forced to reevaluate what makes something real, and what makes it unreal. When people are faced with hauntings, it forces us to face those things that most of us are afraid to face.
Here in Southern Maine – these hauntings are so plentiful that a family could make an entire vacation out of visiting each location. Doing so would not only make for an exciting and amazing adventure – but it would also open the family’s perceptions and awareness to aspects of our reality that they may have never realized existed otherwise.
I feel lucky to live in southern Maine, because there are haunted locations around every corner to experience and explore – open to the public. For anyone fascinated with ghosts and poltergeists – this is an area of the country rich in ghostly history and dark and horrible stories from times of old.
