Sometimes, Dead is Bettah
This past weekend I had the pleasure of visiting Portland, Maine. Aside from some amazing lobstah rolls, what else might you expect out of a historic, coastal New England town? You guessed it…..ghosts. Maine has always fascinated me, ever since I read “Pet Sematary” when I was about 12 years old. In fact, the 1989 version of the movie was just on television. Perhaps no one tackled the Maine accent as well as Fred Gwynn. Ayuh, he nailed his role as the old, weathered, local Maine neighbor, Jud Crandall. (John Lithgow provided a completely different interpretation of Jud in the 2019 version.) It’s only appropriate that King, who grew up in Portland, based so many of his novels in the state of Maine. This place is saturated with ghosts, savory characters, and somewhat of a dark history. But before we get into that, just for your viewing pleasure, here is this beautiful, delectable, luscious, buttery thing that I love the most about Maine, the lobstah roll:
So before indulging in this buttery goodness, I took a Wicked Walking Tour with Gordon, who was absolutely fantastic. Knowledgeable and funny, his theatrical, yet historic tour was well worth my time.
We started by learning about some history of the city. Portland buried their dead 18 feet under. Gordon informed us this was to keep the vampires in and the grave robbers out. Who robs graves? Medical students, that’s who. It was a BYOC (bring your own cadaver) type of set-up here, and they needed to provide their own supplies. The Portland Waterfront and the many islands of Casco Bay have stories of pirates, witches, ghosts, fires, and abandoned ships that we learned of throughout the tour. In this particular part of the waterfront (pictured below) a mysterious woman clad in black wanders the dock area, stumbling over lobster traps in search of her sailor. Nary a person knows what she is talking about. Aside from an occasional wharf rat, there is not much trace of life down here at night.
A building that I noticed while walking around the town was the Time and Temperature Building, a building with….you guessed it: the time and temperature displayed on the outside. Gordon talked about this building on our tour. The place is allegedly haunted by a female ghost with fire-engine red hair, who enjoys riding the elevators and who will often play on them, randomly sending them to different floors. Some workers in the building have claimed to have seen an unknown female walking through their offices, and when they follow her or try speaking to her, she vanishes around a corner. Electricians insist that there is nothing wrong with the wiring of the elevators. No one is certain of the back-story here, nor why she does this.
Before running through a dark and sinister alley, Gordon pointed out the building below, where there have been some strange occurrences. I don’t recall all the details, but I remember something about a woman seeing a mermaid, attached to the front of a ship outside her third story window. Apparently the water level used to reach this part of the town and there have been phantom ships, still weathering the storms, to this day. Other things go on here in this building too. At one point the fire department was contacted to check things out, and even the tall, brute firefighter who came to survey the scene was freaked out. Ironically enough, the store on the ground floor of this building is called “Something’s Fishy”.
Check out Gordan’s tour……I really enjoyed it. Usually I take notes when I go on a ghost tour, but I had gloves on, and my hands were cold, so I can’t remember all of the content by heart. But his stories are interesting and engaging. Maine is awesome. And the people here are wicked smaht…..
