Dark Woods Chill Waters Read online

  Table of Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CONCLUSION

  Acknowledgements & References

  Copyright © 2007 by Marcus LiBrizzi

  All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph © Doug Landreth/Corbis

  ISBN 978-0-89272-752-0

  Printed at Versa Press, Inc., East Peoria, Illinois

  6 5 4 3 2 1

  Down East Books

  Camden, Maine

  A division of Down East Enterprise, Inc.

  Book orders: 800.685.7962

  www.downeast.com

  Distributed to the trade by National Book Network

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  LiBrizzi, Marcus A., 1964-

  Dark woods, chill waters : ghost tales from Down East Maine / Marcus

  LiBrizzi.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-0-89272-752-0 (trade pbk. : alk. paper)

  1. Ghost stories, American--Maine. I. Title.

  PS648.G48.L53 2007

  813’.6--dc22

  2007019394

  INTRODUCTION

  Down East Maine—A World Apart

  Brooding over the ghost tales collected here is a sense of unspeakable horror and malice. A faceless figure in black materializes to collect the soul of a dying man. A skeleton rises to greet the corpse of her sister. Footsteps echo in secret rooms and hidden passageways. Bloodstains reappear mysteriously at the scene of a crime. Searching for his next victim, a wrathful specter stalks Jasper Beach. In an old portrait, the face of a woman undergoes a sudden change, grimacing in rage. Then there is the gory spirit of a murdered peddler who can be summoned at will, and the phantom light that pursues a man in a Native American tale. Standing at the side of the road, the apparition of a headless woman places a curse on a lone motorist speeding away in terror through Black’s Woods.

  It is likely that you will never encounter ghost stories more horrifying than those contained in this book. They all originate from the most remote, hence mysterious, section of the eastern seaboard, sometimes called the “lost coastline” or the “lost Down East.” Primarily comprised of Washington County in the state of Maine, this is the region’s last untouched piece of shoreline, positioned—and often forgotten—between Bar Harbor and Campobello Island, New Brunswick. Down East Maine is a region rich in both scenic beauty and supernatural lore.

  Certainly, the landscape lends itself to the ghost story. Although people refer to Washington County as the “Sunrise County,” there is a certain irony to this name. Jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean, this rocky, easternmost edge of the United States is always the first piece of the nation that is shrouded in the darkness of night. Thus, it is the land of the sunset. Then, of course, there is the sheer gothic beauty of the Bold Coast; its granite cliffs thundering with crashing surf captivate the imagination. And within the sudden fogs that roll in from the sea and in the ever-present miles of dark forest, there lurks the sense of the unknown, that deepest source of human fear. In stark isolation stand the small coastal villages separated by a maze of inlets and peninsulas and vast tidal marshes.

  History hangs heavy over the land, in part because it was settled so long ago. Native Americans have occupied the region for thousands of years. Europeans explored and created outposts here long before the Pilgrims established the Plymouth Colony. The result is a set of deep traditions involving the invisible world. With the economic decline that took place in the region after the Civil War, these ghostly traditions flourished. The air of a ghost town hangs over many communities, as seen in their abandoned farms, decaying mansions, empty wharves, and family burial plots swallowed by the forest. Going Down East is, truly, like going back in time.

  Among the dread phantoms haunting the pages of this book, I’ll leave it for you to decide which is the most frightening. Undoubtedly, it will be one of the legendary ghosts with the capacity to cause harm or even death. The cast of characters includes a cannibal ghost with a heart of ice that cannot be melted, the apparition of a murdered man who comes in with the fog to seek vengeance, and the phantom of a dead shipmaster who returned from the grave and claimed the life of his widow. Dreadful, indeed, is the baby-killing specter from Dennysville, and deeply disturbing is a pack of spirits or demons who took the shapes of a young man’s family in order to lure him into the woods.

  As a university professor, I’ve researched ghost stories from all over the world, and I can honestly say that nowhere have I found accounts as frightening as those uncovered from the lost coastline of Maine. In some of the college courses I’ve taught, I have assigned students to gather tales of the supernatural from local residents. I am indebted to those students and residents; without them this book could not have been written. Ghost stories are essentially collective in nature, involving unique histories, interlocking lives, personal experiences, and generations of storytelling.

  As a whole, the tales brought together here weave the darkest of tapestries, its vision or design exceeding the worst of nightmares. Therefore, brace yourself for an experience not soon forgotten.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Headless Specter Of Black’s Woods

  No other place in Maine is as shrouded in legend as the Black’s Woods Road. This short stretch of Route 182—between the towns of Franklin and Cherryfield—presents travelers with some of the most beautiful country Down East. The area is mountainous, with views of foliage and crags of rock above and shimmering bodies of water in distant valleys below. The road winds around part of Fox Pond, then climbs to the top of a small mountain, aptly named Catherine’s Hill.

  The subject of the Black’s Woods legends is the specter of a young woman who was decapitated and who stalks the road, sometimes headless, sometimes not. As the story goes, anyone seeing the spirit of Catherine must stop and offer her a ride. Woe to those who don’t, for the phantom will curse them, and soon afterward they will die.

  One version of the legend involves a salesman who was traveling at night through Black’s Woods when he saw the headless ghost hitchhiking. In terror, the man sped past the figure, but his relief at getting away was short-lived; when he looked in his rearview mirror, he saw the phantom sitting in his back seat. Through panic and, perhaps, a weak heart, the man crashed his car and became another victim of the specter.

  The stories of Catherine’s demise take many forms, but the outcome is the same—a ghostly hitchhiker in a flowing dress who most often appears on foggy nights, usually around Catherine’s Hill, but sometimes near Fox Pond. The most common account is that Catherine and her boyfriend were traveling back from a prom in the 1970s when their car hit a tree, killing both of them. Catherine was beheaded as she went through the windshield, and the young man disappeared, in all accounts his body never found. As a result of her accident, the ghost of Catherine stalks the road, searching for her head, for her boyfriend, or maybe just trying to get home.

  Variants of Catherine’s death are essentially the same, except the time period may be the 1960s or the 1950s. One account of the story is set in the 1920s, during Prohibition, when wealthy flatlanders traveled
to the Down East region for drinking parties and hunting expeditions at a nearby lodge. Catherine, a young servant at the lodge, was taking a break and riding in a Model T Ford with a male companion. Coming around the road near Fox Pond, the man lost control of the car, which swerved over the embankment and crashed into the water, beheading Catherine. Of interest is the fact that there is still a perfectly preserved Model T Ford at the bottom of Fox Pond, as numerous divers have testified. In the story’s earliest version, set in the nineteenth century, Catherine died in Black’s Woods on her wedding night. As she and her groom traveled by stagecoach toward Cherryfield, a strange ground fog crept around them. When they reached the top of the mountain that now bears her name, something spooked the horses, and the coach rushed out of control, crashing into a tree at the bottom of the hill. Catherine was beheaded, and the rest is history.

  What do we make of such bewildering variations? They are, in a real sense, the creepiest part of the legends. It is eerie how the stories get cast back farther and farther in time, as if the tales of Catherine are historically changing attempts to make sense of a presence that is far older and far more mysterious than any specific account could indicate.

  One wonders what the Native Americans thought of the region. In Passamaquoddy lore there are many stories of lake monsters and malignant spirits: Perhaps the legends of Catherine are different ways of understanding the same phenomenon experienced for centuries in the woods around Fox Pond.

  Local resident Matt Leighton may have put to rest the story of Catherine. He owns land that contains the grave of a certain Catherine Downing, who died December 29, 1862. According to Matt, the legends of Catherine blow out of proportion an event in which Miss Downing, then a young woman, left a social gathering early one evening. While she was traveling home, it began to grow dark, and fearing she would lose her way, she sat by the road to rest until dawn. Meanwhile, her alarmed family searched for her. She was found the next morning, alive and completely intact, if not a little tired and stiff. While Matt’s theory is interesting, it does not explain the specific sightings by so many people from different walks of life, including individuals who are new to the area and who have never heard of the headless woman of Black’s Woods. Witnesses to the phantom are literally so numerous they could fill a book. But let the following accounts convince you that there is something out there in Black’s Woods.

  Debora Newell encountered the specter when she first moved to Maine. She had heard the rumors, but she didn’t give them any credence. Then late one night, while driving back from Bangor with some friends, she saw something she’ll never forget. She writes, “There were patches of mist around the roads on the sides, in the trees. It seemed like all of a sudden there was a patch in front of me, and I didn’t give it any second thoughts. But as I got closer to the mist, it seemed like it was starting to take the form of a woman, with her hair flowing behind her and in a long white gown and a shawl on her shoulders.” Debora put on the brakes, thinking she was going to hit an actual woman on the road, but the car went through the figure, which dissolved into mist.

  An even more baffling incident was recounted to me by Dennis Boyd. He heard the story from a woman, since deceased, whom we’ll call Abby. It occurred when she was a child. One cold and rainy day she came down with a bad throat infection and had to travel to Franklin to see the doctor. Her father, a lobster fisherman from Steuben, drove her there. As she and her father were coming up Catherine’s Hill, they noticed a young woman standing at the top. Abby’s father stopped and offered the woman a ride. Although Abby was huddled in her blanket, she heard the door on her side open and close, and she had to sit up so her father could push her seat forward to allow the hitchhiker into the back. Abby’s father, however, drove only a few feet when he realized the young woman wasn’t in the car, but was still standing in the road. He turned around, drove back to the woman and apologized, and for a second time let her into the car. Abby recounts the following: “I know she got in that time because I saw her feet when I looked between the seats. I remember because she was wearing what they used to call high tops, boots that laced up. As we drove off down the road, Daddy was talking away to the woman in the back, but I was not paying any attention. Suddenly, he stopped the car, got out, and flipped the seat back forward. As I looked at the back seat, Daddy was wiping water off the vinyl seat. No one was there.”

  A particularly chilling close encounter with Catherine happened to Dale Whitney, a musician who had finished playing in Bar Harbor one evening and was traveling alone to Machias. As Dale describes it, he was just cresting Catherine’s Hill when he saw a young woman standing on the peak of the road ahead of him, the very spot on the road before it takes the deep plunge down the mountain. The girl he saw was dressed in a diaphanous gown. And no, she wasn’t headless. In fact, at first Dale had no idea he was looking at a phantom. When he stopped the car and rolled down a window to see what she wanted, the young woman leaned in, smiled softly, and said, “I need a man to take me to Bar Harbor.” Dale had just come from Bar Harbor—an hour’s drive—and he was tired, having played all night. As he describes it, he was weighing in his mind what to do next when he noticed that he could see through the woman. Ever so faintly, he could see the white line painted on the road directly behind her. In horror, he looked at the pretty face only a few feet away from him, still leaning in his window and waiting for a reply to her breathless request. Completely shaken, he managed to blurt out, “I just came from there,” before accelerating his car and speeding away.

  By the time Dale reached the bottom of the mountain, only moments later, he reconsidered his actions and doubted his senses. “I figured I must have been tired and that my eyes were playing tricks on me. And I began to worry about the girl I had just left in the road.” So Dale turned around, but when he arrived at the top of Catherine’s Hill again, the young woman had vanished. Stopping his car, Dale called out, but received no reply. It dawned on him that he had just brushed up against the famous ghost of Black’s Woods. Amazed and wide awake, Dale drove straight to Machias. But the story doesn’t end there. On the same day, Dale had business that required him to drive back through Black’s Woods towards Ellsworth. It was a beautiful day now, and the ghostly events from hours before seemed impossibly remote. But when Dale reached the top of Catherine’s Hill, he found he was dead wrong. Exactly in the spot where he had seen Catherine standing, Dale was shocked to see a terrible accident—a van overturned and totaled. “No one in that vehicle could have survived,” he later stated. “At least I can’t imagine how.” Could this accident be attributed to the ghost of Catherine? We will never know, but one thing is certain: be prepared to see her yourself if you take The Black’s Woods Road, especially on a misty, moonlit night. And if indeed you do see Catherine, remember not to follow your instinct to flee in terror. Your safety lies in offering a ride to the horrifying apparition.

  CHAPTER 2

  Bloodstains

  Some ghost stories are more frightening than others, and the following tale from Jonesboro, Maine, is among the worst. A ghastly murder, bloodstains that cannot be removed, and a vengeful spirit that comes in with the fog make this story unforgettable. The setting is a beautiful coastal house, by all appearances a dream home, but in reality something out of a nightmare. Here a horrifying past comes alive, and a future even more terrifying unfolds before our eyes.

  What is it about fog that makes it reoccur as a motif in so many ghost stories? Perhaps fog merely exaggerates the sense of the unknown, truly the deepest source of human fear. In the same way that shadows are frightening, fog keeps us literally “in the dark,” blinding us to a danger that may be no more than a few feet away. While this is true, there might be something more to fog than the mystery it instills. Some theories of the paranormal posit the necessity of fog, or some kind of vapor, in most supernatural manifestations. Through the medium of fog, disembodied spirits are given a kind of temporary substance. We may never know the truth of such claims,
but as Crystal Czaja put it, “when heavy fog rolls in, things begin to get strange.”

  Crystal never lived in the house in Jonesboro, but she knew the young couple who did, a couple we’ll call John and Elaine. Crystal writes that, “when they moved in, a murder had just been committed. It had occurred so recently that they had to take the police tape down when they moved in. Apparently, what they were told was that a woman went crazy and murdered her husband in the downstairs bedroom. The couple wasn’t told any of the details, just that it happened. Last we all knew, the woman was still on trial for it.”

  In that small downstairs bedroom, located just off the kitchen, the floor was still stained with blood from the recent murder. The owner of the house informed John and Elaine that because of its history, he was willing to rent the gorgeous home for next to nothing. He asked, however, that they replace the floor in the downstairs bedroom, an easy task since the room was small. John and Elaine were initially apprehensive about renting a home that had been the scene of a grisly murder, but the killer was now in custody; besides, the young couple had no need to use the little bedroom, which they could shut off and keep for storage. So after a short reflection, John and Elaine accepted the offer to rent the house. The owner, delighted to have the place occupied, which might lessen its awful stigma, quickly went his own way.

  Until the fog rolled in, nothing unusual occurred. Then one evening when Elaine was alone for a few hours, the fog came in off the sea, blanketing the house and everything around it. While she was in the kitchen, Elaine thought she heard something from the small bedroom nearby. It sounded like a dull scuffle, like someone was in there. Quietly, she went to the door of the bedroom, and, by listening carefully, she heard faint, stealth-like scuffling sounds within. Her heart beating, she opened the door to the room where the murder had taken place. The bedroom was empty, but Elaine distinctly felt something brush past her when she opened the door.