The Emilie Loring Collection

Nearly a decade after Emilie Loring bought and renovated Blue Hill’s Stone House, she recalled,

“In the cellar was a well of the clearest, coolest water, and a space walled in with granite. There was also a ghost, which interesting if not wholly alluring fact was kept discreetly in the background till the purchase money had been paid. Perhaps had we heard it before it might have made us hesitate. Not that as a family we believe in the supernatural–but then—–“

“Certain, certain, my dear. Doesn’t every self-respecting property as old as this have a ghost?”

Uncharted Seas

The Lewiston newspaper could have given her a heads-up.

On the road from Bluehill to that part of the town known as East Bluehill, where is located the great granite quarries of the Chase Granite Company, one passes a peculiar looking stone house. This stone house is pleasantly located on the right hand side of the road and commands a beautiful view of Bluehill bay and the ocean.

It is built of the grannite in which the country abounds, and which has proven Bluehill’s greates asset as a source of money-making. The front of the peculiar house is built solidly of granite, but the ends halfway from the ground to the ridge-pole are of wood, giving the place a peculiar appearance.

Years ago, so old-time residents will tell you, the house had the reputation of being haunted, but people who live there today pooh-hoo at the idea, and say that the ghost was but the imagination of some nervous person; nevertheless, there are those who tell for a fact, of the strange noises which transpired in the building in the days when they were young, for the building is one of the oldest in Bluehill. The story of the ghost of this house was told to me by an elderly woman, who saw the ghost and heard the strange noises, when a young girl of eighteen. It is as follows:–

The old stone house, when I was a child, was a tavern and in those days had the reputation of being haunted, although few knew why, and few there were, could say that they ever saw the ghost. I remember one night that I went to Bluehill to attend a fancy ball and passed the night in the old stone house, as it was called. I had gone to bed after the ball, and to sleep. How long I had slept, I know not, but I was suddenly awakened by an unearthly scream in the room where I was sleeping.

I awoke to see a young woman standing in the center of the room, all in white, with a wealth of black hair hanging down her back. She appeared to be in her night clothing. Sobbing and crying out, and wringing her hands, she cried: “My child, my child, they are killing her! They are killing her!” and then she started and went from the room and down the stairs.

In those days I was braver than I am now, perhaps more foolhardy would better describe it, for instead of fainting from fright, I jumped out of bed and followed along, scarcely realizing what I was doing. The woman, or ghost, which ever you call her, went down the stairs to the lower floor, thence along to the cellar door and down the cellar stairs to the cellar floor into a corner and cried: “They have buried my baby there;” and then vanished and I fainted.

As I fainted I must have screamed, for when I came to, I was in my own room and in bed, and the people of the house were standing about me. They said that they were awakened by my screams and rushed to the cellar, where they found me in a dead faint on the cellar bottom.

I told the story and they laughed at me, and some men went to the bottom of the cellar and dug, but as was expected, they found nothing, and they all believed that what I had seen was a dream, and that I had walked in my sleep to the cellar.

As nothing was found to indicate that a child was ever buried there, I was forced to accept the logic of their argument, but in my own mind I did not believe it, for I was convinced then and I am now, that I was as wide awake when I got out of bed as I am now. So great an impression did the occurrence make on me, that I kept it in mind, and constantly made inquiries to see if there was any ground for such a belief.

It was some two or three years later, that a man stopped at my father’s house and during the conversation of the evening asked if we know that the old stone tavern was haunted. Before telling him what I had heard, we simply said that we had heard so and asked about it.

He accordingly told this story: “Years ago there lived in the house a man and his wife, and his daughter, a beautiful girl who married and with her husband, a sea-faring man, lived with her parents. The husband was lost at sea, and about the same time the baby which had come to thehouse died. The double bereavement unbalanced the young wife’s mind. She became almost a raving maniac and from that time until the day of her death, she wandered about the house, night and day, raving that her baby had been murdered and buried in the cellar.

After her death, at irregular intervals, her spirit would come back to the room which had been hers, and she would cry out as in life, that the baby who was dead had been murdered, and she would go from there to the cellar where she believed the little one was buried.

When the man had finished, I told him of my experience in the room which I occupied and from him learned that the room in which I had slept that night was the one which had been the girl’s in life. It has been years since anyone has claimed to have seen the ghost in the old house, so now the majority of the people in Bluehill have forgotten that it was ever known as the haunted house, but for my part, I have never forgotten the horrible experience of that night, and shall never pass the old stone house without thinking of the beautiful young bride and mother whose life was blighted there.

Stories of the Stone House ghost persist. After the Lorings, the Slavens owned Stone House and concluded that the wailing sound was that of mating porcupines, not a ghost. Porcupines are nocturnal and mate in late fall.

But then, the Slaven’s son and his dog heard the sound one summer, in the daytime, while sitting on the back veranda steps. The eerie sound came from below, in the cellar.

Was it the Stone House ghost? Silly! Hadn’t she pricked that spooky bubble?

Uncharted Seas

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Happy Landings, everyone!