Ghosts on the Coast of Maine (9 page)

After lugging shovels, picks, and fire hoses to the scene, firefighters pumped water from a nearby lake. The heat kept moving them back. The soles of their feet burned and their hair and eyebrows were singed. Their toils didn't amount to much. It was just like spitting into a furnace.

These blackened men staggered back to the Bar Harbor firehouse for relief, but there were too few men for so much fire. Soon the blaze was moving south into Acadia Park, north toward Hull's Cove, and east directly towards town.

Millionaires' Row was next. The mansion of J.P. Morgan burned right down to its massive stone arched foundation. The summer cottages of people in the same class as the Rockefellers, Kents, Vanderbilts, and Pulitzers were totally destroyed. One “cottage” lost all eighty rooms, including doors with gold doorknobs, and twenty-six living rooms with marble fireplaces.

Fortunately, most of these estates were vacant after summer, so loss of life was not a consideration. Lost, however, was the extensive grandeur and high life of a whirlwind social clique that thrived on gourmet dinner parties, sixty-foot yachts, and dancing balls with famous orchestras. Out of sixty-seven wealthy property owners, only a handful returned to Bar Harbor to restore their homes.

It is not the woes of the super rich community, however, upon which this story focuses. As the fire moved nearer town, it threatened to become a death trap for twenty-five hundred year-round villagers. The thick yellow smoke formed a tidal wave of heat that blistered the paint off cars trying to escape. Men, women, and children fled screaming down the streets.

In the area of the ball field, the most valiant town members, along with the National Guard, were going around in trucks, picking up the elderly, the disabled, and anyone who could not evacuate themselves. The plan was to round up everyone in the field and walk them to the municipal wharf, six blocks away. There rescue boats, Coast Guard, and fishing boats would transport them to safety. The exodus was compared to Dunkirk.

To the right of the ball field was a modest one-story house with a comfy front porch and a wooden swing. Old Willie Cunningham was just stumbling out the front door with his black cat “Seawater,” when he heard something that sounded like a freight train roaring in the wind. The smoke caught his breath and doubled him over in a coughing fit, but he held on to his cat all the while.

Willie was good with animals. He knew what made them tick—what they liked to eat, how they reacted to things, what they shied away from. This natural knowledge helped him a great deal out on the fishing waters by Gott's Island. He was the best Bar Harbor fisherman of his day. Lately he hadn't done much, being laid up with rheumatism, but he could tell colorful stories about the adventures he and Seawater had experienced out to sea. There was the time she had a gruesome fight with a giant crab that had escaped from a lobster trap Willie had just hauled. There was the time Seawater led them home through the fog with her head pointing the way.

His hearing hadn't been so good, so the whole scene taking place in front of his doorstep took him aback some. An olive green truck swerved around the corner and screeched to a halt. Two husky men hustled Willie and his cat to the back of the truck and lifted them on. They hadn't gone but a block when the cat jumped out of Willie's arms and panicked towards the house. Before anyone could stop him, Willie jumped out, too. That was the last anyone saw of the man and his animal.

The fire continued on and torched the famous cancer research center, the Jackson Laboratory, wiping out one year of Pulitzer prizewinning work. That day it covered over five miles in three hours, devouring thirteen thousand acres—nine thousand more than it had traveled in the past two days. As it started to pour down on the town, the wind made a freak shift and turned it in another direction.

A week passed before the blaze was dominated. It still glowed between cracks in the rocks until November 14, when the fire was officially declared “out,” and people were allowed to return. Many Bar Harbor residents came back to burnt rubble where their homes had once stood.

Willie's neighbors were checking what was left of his foundation when they discovered a pile of human bones sitting in the corner. One of the men looked up and spotted a black cat circling the ruins. He called it and it stopped; he went to chase it and it vanished into nothingness.

For a while after that, people talked about seeing “Willie's cat” looking around for her beloved master. Sometimes it kept children awake with its mournful meowing on moonlit nights. Other times it just prowled the spot where Willie had reached out for the last time to try to help his little pet.

A
cadia National Park's Flying Mountain serves as a headstone for eight Jesuit missionaries murdered in October 1613. It stands tall above the spot where the victims, along with a small colony of settlers and lay brothers, were assaulted by a man on a fishing expedition. This man, in a brutal surprise attack, totally destroyed the Jesuit Mission, the first white settlement on Mt. Desert Island. The unmarked graves lie along the western shore of Somes Sound, a place not only haunted by the shades of the holy men, but also disturbed by the unceasing patter of a freshwater spring.

Jesuit Spring is what the natives call it. Guarded by forest pines and sturdy boulders, it spills into the blue-green water that laps on the sand of a small beach. You won't find many islanders walking this beach. They don't like to tread on sacred ground. Some even claim that spring changes to a different color every once in a while—an unmistakable blood red.

The scene of the slaughter takes us back to the court of a French noblewoman, the Marquise de Boucherville, in March of 1613. This daughter of Catholicism counseled two Jesuits, Fathers Du-Pain and Rousseaux, to get on the next ship to Port Royal, Nova Scotia, and tend to the spiritual needs of the French colony there. Why? Religious fervor is one answer. Also, because the French church and state were closely aligned, the marquise's action strengthened France's foothold in the New World. Religious principles aside, the possibility remains that a dashing sailor with a heartbreaking smile who had been frequenting the French court took off for Nova Scotia, and she wanted to keep tabs on him.

Whatever the case, the two priests were not a big hit upon arrival at Port Royal. The rough and ready Nova Scotians told them to go back to Paris, where there was enough unholiness to attend to. The Jesuits wrote back to their sponsor to tell her the story. Not wishing her well-financed plan to go completely awry, she recommended that they gather their lay brothers, laborers, and animals and set their sights for Penobscot Bay. According to her, hoards of Indians were sitting there just waiting to receive the Catholic faith, and consequently, French politics. With this in mind, the missionary band of hopeful settlers said goodbye to Nova Scotia and sailed merrily upwind.

Nature, that devious force so often overlooked by those not in tune with the earth, took a hand.

The Maine fog, totally foreign to the Jesuit ship, enveloped the vessel and caused it to mistakenly land on Mt. Desert Island. The travelers chalked it up as part of God's plan, and promptly set about establishing a mission. Little did they realize that in three short months the whole place would be ashes.

The perpetrator of the disaster was just a guy doing his job, a policeman on duty. Arlan Seawall didn't ask for the job, but the London merchants were so dazzled by his deeds of exploration in the New World, that they appointed him Admiral of Virginia. The letter from the Virginia Company stated that Captain Seawall was to patrol the coast and try to prevent any settlements by the French.

England and France were not at war in 1613, so bloodshed was not expected. Mediation and peace talks were the tools of the day. Either Seawall's instructions were misunderstood, or the captain overreacted to a non-threatening situation.

One day, fishing down the coast, he spotted the little unprotected mission built on a flat, grassy peninsula. He yelled to his crew, who left their nets and wasted no time bombarding the building to pieces. The English artillery and expertise far outweighed that of the religious scholars, who tried unsuccessfully to shoot back with a lone cannon. The Jesuit “cannoneer” was so inept that the weapon backfired and helped destroy part of the mission.

By the time the smoke had cleared, eight men lay dead, and the remaining hardy souls were taken aboard as slaves to be sold. Those not fit to sell would be set free in small boats in the middle of the ocean, where they would soon perish.

Seawall's men prowled the shore and scoured the ruins. When they came upon the spring, they refreshed their thirsty throats and decided that it was a place good enough for a cemetery. They wanted to get going, but they were God-fearing enough to supply Christian burial to the priests. Besides, these Puritan Englishmen regarded Papists with such absolute horror that they considered them nigh instruments of the Devil.

Devil's advocates or not, a place spirited by men of the cloth is a formidable place to be. The children of the area will tell you that they have been warned as such. Many tales have they heard about night fishermen seeing white shapes flitting about Jesuit Spring. One kid said that last year his father was out rowing when he saw a man in brown holding a cross to his chest. He took in his oars and grabbed his glasses to get a better look, but the “man” was nowhere to be seen.

Boats do not dock on the shore by Jesuit Spring, especially since the summer of 1975. It was then the Colby family loaded their sixteen-foot skiff with swimsuits, towels, and a picnic lunch. The water was without a ripple as they cruised along the shore. They spotted the pretty little beach with a freshwater stream pouring onto it and decided to land. Mr. Colby tightly wedged the anchor between two rocks. The tide was not quite in so they put the picnic stuff under a tree and looked up to Flying Mountain. A nice day for a hike, not too warm and no breeze.

The family climbed the mountain in about twenty minutes. When they came back down, there was no boat, no anchor, no snipped line, and no picnic basket—just the still clear water. Not a sound, not a movement. None of the nearby households had witnessed anyone else in the area although they had noticed the Colbys and all their doings.

The incident might have gone unnoticed or been passed off as robbery if two more boats hadn't met the same fate within a year. Besides, stealing is rare in coastal Maine, and when it does occur, everyone knows who did it and why.

The people of Mt. Desert know “who” took the boats, and they're not interested in talking about the why.

T
he subterranean caves of Jewell's Island have not served savory purposes. Not only have they been conductors of smuggled goods, but they have also housed the secrets surrounding a lurid tale of buried treasure and coldblooded murder.

Now a wild, uninhabited island, the place was once a quiet shelter for those who wished to live without constant fear of Indian attack. One has to think past the overhanging trees and jagged rocks to a time when people farmed the inland slopes and drew clear water from island springs. The eighteenth century had just begun.

Captain Elijah Jones was one of the first settlers to set the tone for this peaceful hideaway. When he wasn't shipping goods, he was tending his vegetable garden and two cows. He did not have a family, but like most islanders, he did not mind fending for himself.

If he had done more farming and less shipping, he might not have fallen prey to the greediness of the world outside Jewell's Island. While traveling to places like the West Indies, Spain, or Jamaica, Jones saw millions of dollars worth of luxury goods exchange hands, but he, the humble farmer, was on the outside looking in. Oh, how he'd love to be comfortably rich and be able to go anywhere he wanted anytime he pleased. There was even the chance that a wealthier lifestyle might attract a good woman who could breed him some descendants.