Am I Protected From Darkness?

I’ve often said that I’m a historian who accidentally wrote a book about a ghost. That’s so true when it comes to my book The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler. From the beginning The Gathering Room was a historical book for me. It was only after the book became such a hit within the paranormal community that I began to really think about ghosts, spirits and specters.

For the majority of my life I have never given ghosts much thought. Oh sure, at summer camp as a kid I listened to the stories around the campfire. Every summer, even into my adulthood, I would wander around Fort Knox in Prospect, Maine and try to see a ghost, as the place is reportedly haunted. I never had much luck. I’ve stayed at the Lucerne Inn near Dedham, Maine another place reputed to be haunted, I never saw a ghost there either. I’ve taken countless ghost tours while traveling or visiting other areas. Nope no ghostly experiences for me! I was with my daughter on one of these tours in the city of Alexandria, Virginia a few years back. Towards the end of the tour, as we stood in a graveyard, darkness fully engulfing us, my daughter cried out as she was certain someone had touched her on the back. We were standing away from the rest of the group and there was no one near us. Sadly if she did have an encounter with an otherworldly being, I missed out on that too.

I’ve spent a lifetime wandering around cemeteries. My earliest memory of going to a cemetery for enjoyment, and not because of a death or a remembrance occasion, was for my 16th birthday. I had just gotten my driver’s license and a brand new camera for my birthday. I drove my friend Nancy to Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Bangor, Maine and proceeded to take photos of really amazing gravestones, sometimes with Nancy posing in front of them. She was a good friend. Since that day I have returned to cemeteries over and over as a place of comfort, solace and peace. While others claim to have seen spirits or ghosts floating around in cemeteries I have not ever seen a thing. My first husband used to tell me that the reason I liked being in cemeteries so much was because all of my friends were there! Interesting thought, and he may not have been too far off. I will admit to a love of researching people who have lived before my time.

The closest I feel I have ever gotten to experiencing anything in a cemetery was when I moved to Waterville, Maine after marrying my second husband. Trying to get settled in my new community I sought out the local cemetery. I needed to re establish my routine of daily walks in a quiet cemetery. I asked my husband and a few people at my new job where was the best cemetery for a walk and I was told Pine Grove Cemetery. In fact the majority of my new husband’s family were buried there, so this seemed like the perfect spot! Unfortunately this proved not to be the case. On my very first visit there I was confronted with the most uncomfortable feeling. An uneasiness that settled over me the minute I got out of my car and walked a few feet into the cemetery. At first I attributed it to the fact that I was in a new city, a new cemetery and unsure of my surroundings. Naturally I had chosen the oldest part of the cemetery to walk in and at this end the area was covered in ancient white pine trees that blocked out the sunlight. I didn’t do much of a walk that first day, hurrying back to my car as the feeling of foreboding was so strong I wasn’t getting the relaxed walk I wanted. I tried two more times that summer and each time I got out of my car the sense of dread and just something bad would flood over me. It was the strangest thing I had ever experienced because cemeteries were beloved places! It was very odd that I could not get comfortable in Pine Grove.

Fast forward about 10 years and I was now a member of the Waterville Lions Club. As a spring volunteer project we were gathering at Pine Grove Cemetery to pick up the hundreds of sticks and branches that had fallen from the trees over the winter. Our job was to create piles of sticks for the city crews to come clean up later. Surrounded by my friends, and certainly not alone in the cemetery, I honestly never gave it a thought that my earlier feelings of discomfort would return. But return they did! The whole day I felt something that I can only describe as fearful. Clearly there was no reason to be afraid, but I couldn’t shake the fear at all while I hurriedly picked up sticks so I could get the task done. It was then that I decided there was “something” in that cemetery that I was not supposed to interact with. An energy, a being, a force, I don’t know the words to describe what might be there, but it was very clear to me that I was never to go back to that cemetery again. That cemetery, Pine Grove, was not my place of refuge. Instead I found my happy place at the Hallowell Cemetery in Hallowell, Maine. This cemetery too had an older section with giant white pines blocking out all of the sunlight. It even has a weird fountain with 13 goat heads that spit water out of their mouths and have those almost satanic looking eyes engraved in detail! I have seen homeless people in that cemetery. Drug addicts and even a woman passed out on the grass that I had to call 911 for. But I never once felt uneasy there. Never once was I afraid to get out of my car like I felt in the Pine Grove Cemetery in Waterville. There is something evil in that Waterville cemetery, I truly believe that.

All of this came back to me this week while speaking with my grandson. Not sure how we came upon the subject but he asked me if I thought Grandpa’s house was haunted. Grandpa being my first husband who still lives in the home we raised our children in, a home that he himself was raised in. I thought back to when we first started dating forty years ago and I would go to his house. I have vague memories of his sister and brother talking about sounds or things that they had seen in the house, but I never gave it much thought, not being very interested in ghosts after all. Even after we married and bought the house from his parents and moved in, I never saw or heard anything myself, but as my children got older, my daughter in particular would tell tales of a man that walked around at the top of the stairs of the second floor. She called him Desmond. She’s very artistic, a creative, prone to a magnificent imagination, so maybe I chalked it all up to that. I was a family history researcher, a lover of history, a lover of cemeteries, I was a stay at home mom during those years, so I was in that house more than anyone else, Certainly if there was a ghost in that house I would have seen it right? I never saw or heard anything.

But now, in speaking with my grandson, I realized this was a third generation that was questioning if there was a ghost in that historic house on French St. in Bangor, Maine. I asked my grandson if he thought Grandpa’s house was haunted. He readily admitted that he too had seen a man on the second floor. He told me that he knew his Aunt had seen this man and my youngest son, his Uncle, had told him that he too had seen and heard things in that house growing up. Why did I not know this? Why did I never see anything?

So this week I’ve thought long and hard about this. My life is not without it’s fair share of unexplainable experiences. I can start with my book The Gathering Room, a book that has truly changed my life! That whole experience is truly unbelievable! But I’ve also experienced feelings of things, like within the Pine Grove Cemetery, or my most recent experiences in England while being in castles. But none of my own experiences have ever involved physical senses, like seeing a ghostly apparition or hearing the things that go bump in the night. And I can honestly say, other than Pine Grove Cemetery, which felt more like a warning than anything else, I have never felt uncomfortable in the experiences I have had. I have always looked at my experiences as an affirmation that there is more to this life then we understand and that we are watched over. Whether your belief is in God, Angels, Spirit Guides or what have you, my experiences have always given me that feeling that I am loved, protected and watched over.

If you have even a limited knowledge of the paranormal you’ll know that the theory is there are good spirits and evil spirits. I’ve also read the theories that you can pick up evil spirits and bring them home with you. Either from visiting haunted places or from something as simple as purchasing an object at an antique store! It’s also said that the more you dwell on these things the more you invite them into your life. In examining my own life, and especially the past year and a half, as the ghost of Nelly Butler and subsequently the Blaisdell family, have consumed my life, it would appear I’m prime for a paranormal take over! And yet I have seen nothing.

This thought has made me wonder, am I protected in some way from the darkness that lurks in the paranormal realm? And if I am, why? And are there others like me? People who live like I do, with a foot in both worlds per se, but never quite cross it into truly seeing a ghost? I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject! Drop me a comment on social media or use the contact form on my website to let me know what you think!