REMASTERED – Episode 29: The Big Chill

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Some places are more frightening than others.

It's hard to nail down a specific reason why, but even so, I can't think of a single person who might disagree.

Some places just have a way of getting under your skin.

For some, it's the basement.

For others, it's the local graveyard.

I even know people who are afraid of certain colors.

Fear, it seems, is a landmine that can be triggered by almost anything.

And while history might be full of hauntingly tragic stories that span a variety of settings and climates, the most chilling ones, literally, are those that take place in the harsh environment of winter.

The incident at Dyatlov Pass, the tragedy of the Donner Party, Even the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 happened in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic.

Winter, it seems, is well equipped to end lives and create fear.

And when I think of dangerous winters, I think of Maine, that area of New England on the northern frontier.

If you love horror, you might equate Maine with Stephen King, but even though he's tried hard over the last few decades to make us believe in Dairy and Castle Rock and Salem's lot, the state has enough danger all on its own.

Maine is also home to nearly 3,500 miles of coastline, even more than the state of California.

And that's where the real action happens.

The main coastline is littered with thousands of small islands and jagged rocks, ancient lighthouses and even older legends, and all in the cold north where the sea is cruel and the weather can be deadly.

It's often there, in the places that are isolated and exposed, that odd things happen.

Things that seem born of the circumstances and the climate.

things that leave their mark on the people there.

Things that would never happen on the mainland.

And if the stories are to be believed, that's a good thing.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore.

The coastline of Maine isn't as neat and tidy as other states.

Don't picture sandy beaches and warm waves that you can walk through.

This is the cold north.

The water is almost always chilly and the land tends to emerge from the waves as large jagged rocks.

Go ahead and pull up a map of Maine on your phone.

I'll wait.

You'll see what I mean right away.

This place is dangerous.

Because of that, ships have had a long history of difficulty when it comes to navigating the coast of Maine.

Part of that is because of all the islands.

They're everywhere.

According to the most recent count, there are over 4,600 of them scattered along the coastal waters like fragments of a broken bottle.

One such fragment is Seguin Island.

It's only three miles from the mainland, but it's easy to understand how harsh winter weather could isolate anyone living there very quickly.

And when you're the keeper of the lighthouse there, that isolation comes with the job.

The legend that's been passed down for decades there is the story of a keeper from the mid-1800s.

According to the tale, this keeper was newly married, and after moving to the island with his bride, they both began to struggle with that gulf between their lives there and the people on the coast.

So to give his wife something to do with her time, and maybe to get a bit of entertainment out of it for himself, the keeper ordered a piano for her.

They say it was delivered during the autumn, just as the winter chill was creeping in.

In the story, it had to be hoisted up the rock face, but that's probably not true.

Seguin is more like a green hill protruding from the water than anything else.

But hey, it adds drama, right?

And that's what these stories provide.

Plenty of drama.

When the piano arrived, the keeper's wife was elated, but buyer's remorse quickly set in.

You see, the piano only came with the sheet music for one song.

With winter quickly rolling in from the north, shipping in more music became impossible, so she settled in and made the best of it.

The legend says that she played that song non-stop, over and over, all throughout the winter.

Somehow, she was immune to the monotony of it all, but her husband, the man who had only been hoping for distraction and entertainment, took it hard.

They say it drove him insane.

In the end, the keeper took an axe and destroyed the piano, hacking it into nothing more than a pile of wood and wire.

And then, still deranged from the repetitive tune, he turned the axe on his wife, nearly chopping off her head in the process.

The tragic story always ends with the keeper's suicide, but most know it all to be fiction.

At least that's the general opinion, but even today there are some who claim that if you happen to find yourself on a boat in the waters between the island and the mainland, you can still hear the sound of piano music drifting across the waves.

Boone Island is near the southern tip of Maine's long coastline.

It's not a big island by any stretch of the imagination, perhaps 400 square yards in total.

But there has been a lighthouse there since 1811 due to the many shipwrecks that have plagued the island for as long as Europeans have sailed in those waters.

The most well-known shipwreck on Boone Island occurred there in the winter of 1710 when the Nottingham Galley, a ship captained by John Dean, wrecked there on the rocks.

All 14 crew members survived, but the ship was lost, stranding them without help or supplies.

As the unfortunate sailors died one by one, the survivors were forced to eat the dead or face starvation.

And they did this for days until fishermen finally discovered and rescued them.

But that's not the most memorable story from Boone Island.

That honor falls to the tale of Catherine Bright, the wife of a former lighthouse keeper there from the 19th century.

According to those who believe the story, the couple had only been on the small island for a few months when Catherine's husband slipped while tying off their boat.

He fell and hit his head on the rocks, and then slid unconsciously into the water, where he quickly drowned.

At first, Catherine tried to take on the duties of keeping the light running, but after nearly a week, fishermen in York on the mainland watched the light flicker out and stay dark.

When they traveled to the island to investigate, they found Catherine sitting on the tower's stairs.

She was cradling her dead husband's corpse in her arms.

Legend has it that Catherine was brought back to York, along with her husband's body, but it was too late.

Just like the lighthouse they had left behind, she was cold and dark.

Some flames, it seems, can't be relit.

There's been a lighthouse on the shore of Rockland, Maine, for nearly 200 years.

It's on an oddly shaped hill with two large depressions in the face of the rock that were said to remind locals of an owl.

So when the light was built there in 1825, it was, of course, named Owl's Head.

Give any building long enough, mix in some tragedy and unexplainable phenomenon, and you can almost guarantee a few legends will be born.

Owl's Head is no exception.

One of the oldest stories is a well-documented one from 1850.

It tells of a horrible winter storm that ripped through the Penobscot Bay Area on December 22nd of that year.

At least five ships were driven aground by the harsh waves and chill wind.

It was destructive and fierce, and it would be an understatement to say that it wasn't a wise idea to be out that night, on land or at sea.

A small ship had been anchored at Jameson Point that night.

The captain had done the smart thing and gone ashore to weather the storm inside, but he left some people behind on the ship.

Three, actually.

His first mate, Richard Ingram, a sailor named Roger Elliott, and Lydia Dyer, a passenger.

While those three poor souls tried to sleep that night on the schooner, the storm pushed the ship so hard that the cables snapped, setting the ship adrift across the bay.

Now, it's not exactly a straight shot southeast to get to Owl's Head, it's a path shaped more like a backward sea to get around the rocky coast, but the ship somehow managed to do it anyway.

It passed the breakwater, drifted east, then south, and finally rounded the rocky peninsula where the Owl's Head light is perched, all before smashing against the rocks south of the light.

The three passengers inside survived the impact, and as the ship began to take on water, they scrambled up to the top deck.

Better the biting wind than the freezing water, they assumed, and then they waited, huddled there under a pile of blankets against the storm, waiting for help.

When the ship began to actually break apart in the waves though, Elliot, the sailor, was the only one to make an escape from the wreckage.

I can't imagine how cold he must have been, with the freezing wind and ocean spray lashing at him from the darkness.

But standing on the rocks with his feet still ankle-deep in the waves, he happened to look up and see the lighthouse on the hill.

If he was going to find help, that was his best option.

So he began the climb.

He was practically dead by the time he reached the lighthouse, but when he knocked, no one answered.

A moment later, the keeper of the light rode up the path on a sleigh, having been out for supplies, and realized at once that Elliot needed help.

He took him in, gave him hot rum, and put him into a warm bed.

But not before Elliot managed to whisper something about the others.

The keeper immediately called for help and gathered a group of about a dozen dozen men.

Together they all traveled back down to the shore where they began to look for the wreck of the ship and the people who may still be alive on board.

When they found the remains of the schooner, the men began to carefully climb across the wreckage looking for signs of the other passengers.

It was treacherous work, the wood was encrusted in ice and each step swayed dangerously with the waves.

When they finally found them, They were still on the portion of the deck where Elliot had left them.

But they seemed to shimmer whenever the light of a lantern washed over them.

Climbing closer, the men discovered why.

Ingram and Dyer were both encased in a thick layer of ice, completely covering their bodies.

They were frozen, in Sino-Man style, in a thick crust of ice.

Not taking any chances, the men somehow managed to pry the couple free from the deck of the ship, and the entire block was transported back up the hill to the lighthouse.

All that night, they worked fast and carefully.

They placed the block of ice in a tub of water and then slowly chipped away at it.

As it melted, they moved the limbs of each person in an attempt to get their blood flowing again.

And somehow, against all logic and medical odds, it worked.

It took them a very long time to recover, but Ingram and Dyer soon opened their eyes.

Ingram was the first to speak, and it was said that he croaked the words, What is all this?

Where are we?

Roger Elliott didn't survive in the aftermath of the shipwreck.

Maybe it was the trauma of climbing up the hill to the lighthouse, soaked to the bone and exposed to the freezing winds of the storm.

Perhaps it was an injury he sustained in the shipwreck itself or on the climb to the lighthouse.

But his sacrifice did not go unrewarded.

Dyer and Ingram fared better, though.

They eventually recovered and even married each other.

They settled down and raised a family together in the area.

All thanks to the man who died to bring them help when all seemed lost.

Later stories from inside Owl's Head Lighthouse have been equally chilling.

Although there are no other tragic events on record there, it's clear from the first-hand accounts of those who have made Owl's Head their home that something otherworldly has taken up residence there.

The Andrews family was one of the first to report any sort of unusual activity on the property.

I can't find a record of their first names, but the keeper and his wife live there along with her elderly father.

According to their story, one night the couple was outside and looked up to see a light swirling in her father's windows.

When they climbed the stairs, they found the older man shaking in his bed from fright.

Some think he might have seen the old sailor, a common figure witnessed by many over the years.

When John Norton was keeper in 1980, he claimed to have seen the same apparition.

He had been sleeping, but when a noise woke him up, he opened his eyes to see the figure of an old sea captain standing over the bed, just staring at him.

The old sailor has also been blamed for mysterious footprints that tend to appear in the snow, footprints that could be found on the walk toward the house.

The prints never seem to have an origin point and always end abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk.

Others have claimed to feel cold spots in the house, while some have gone on record to swear that brass fixtures inside the lighthouse, fixtures that were usually tarnished and dark, would be found mysteriously polished.

None of the keepers have been able to figure out who was doing the cleaning for them.

There have been other stories as well.

Tales of a white lady who has been frequently seen in the kitchen, of doors slamming without anyone in the room, and of silverware that has been heard to rattle in the drawers.

Despite this though, most have said that they felt at peace with her there.

More at peace, at least, than they are with the old bearded sailor.

In the mid-1980s, Andy German and his wife Denise lived there while tending the light.

They moved in and settled into life on the harsh coast of Maine.

Andy divided his time between tending the light and a series of renovations on the old lighthouse, which left the yard outside rather chaotic and full of construction materials.

One night, after climbing into bed, the couple heard the sound of some of the building supplies outside falling over in the wind.

Andy pulled on his pants and shoes and then left the room to go take care of the mess before the wind made it worse.

Denise watched him leave and then rolled back over to sleep with the lamp still on.

A short while later, she felt him climb back into bed.

The mattress moved, as did the covers, and so she asked out loud how it had gone, if there had been any trouble or anything unusual.

But Andy didn't reply, so Denise rolled over.

When she did, she found that Andy's spot in the bed was still empty.

Well, almost.

In the spot where he normally slept beside her, there was a deep depression in the sheets, as if an invisible body were laying right there beside her.

Of course, it was just the dent where Andy had been sleeping moments before.

At least that's what she told herself then.

But thinking back on it later, Denise admits she has doubts.

There were moments when she was lying there, staring at the impression in the sheets, that she could have sworn the shape was moving.

Maybe she was too level-headed to get upset, or perhaps she was too tired to care.

Whatever the reason, Denise simply told whoever it was to leave her alone and then rolled back over and fell asleep.

At breakfast the next morning, she wanted to tell Andy about the experience, thinking he would laugh it off and help her to explain it away.

But before she could, he told her his own story.

It turns out, Andy had an unusual experience of his own the previous night.

He explained how, as he exited the room and stepped out into the dimly lit hallway, he saw what could only be described as a faint cloud hovering close to the door.

And this cloud had been moving.

According to Andy, when he walked down the hall, it moved right up to his feet and then passed on through him.

That's when Denise asked Andy where the cloud had been going.

Into the bedroom, he told her.

Why?

You don't have to travel to a lighthouse to bump into tales of the unexplained or otherworldly.

You can hear them from just about anyone you meet, from the neighbor down the street to your real estate agent.

But lighthouses seem to have a reputation for the tragic.

And maybe that's understandable.

These are, after all, houses built to help save lives in a dangerous setting.

It might be safe to say that the well for these stories runs deeper than many other places.

But are they true?

Like a lot of stories, it seems it all depends on who you talk to.

Keepers across the decades have had a mixed bag of experiences.

Some see odd things and some don't.

Maybe some people just connect with the stories more than others and go looking for hints and signs where there are none.

One recent family described their time there as normal.

They never saw ghosts, never watched objects move, and felt right at home the whole time they were there.

Another family though acknowledged that something unusual seemed to be going on in the lighthouse.

They would find light bulbs partially unscrewed, and their thermostat would constantly readjust itself.

Perhaps whatever it was that's haunting the lighthouse is just very environmentally conscious.

It's easy to laugh off most of these stories, but we've never lived there.

We've never heard or felt something that can't be explained away.

And like most samples of data, there's always the outlier.

Another family who lived at the lighthouse in the late 1980s, though, claimed to have experienced their fair share of unusual activity.

One night, while Gerard and Debbie Graham were asleep, their three-year-old daughter Claire opened her eyes and sat up in bed.

She stared into the darkness for a moment, as if listening carefully to something, and then climbed out of her bed and left her room.

Her little bare feet patted on the cold floor of the hallway as she made her way down toward her parents' room.

Inside, she slowly approached the side of their bed and then tapped her father on the arm to wake him.

When he did, she asked Claire what was the matter.

The little girl replied that she was supposed to tell him something.

Tell me what?

Her father asked.

There's a fog rolling in, Claire replied, somehow sounding like someone infinitely older.

Sound the horn.

When he asked her who had told her this, the little girl looked at him seriously.

My friend, she told him.

The old man with the beard.

It's hard to beat the chilling stories found up north in the state of Maine.

From the dangerous weather to life on the edge of civilization, each tale seems to be dripping with tension and dread, which is why I figured you'd want a bit more.

And don't worry, even though it's a bit more inland, today's bonus story will deliver just as many chills.

Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

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Samuel McDonald was a frontiersman, living in the wilderness of Maine in the early 19th century.

Actually, home was a small community called Standish, a few miles outside of Portland.

But every summer, he headed north about 100 miles to a lake on the border of what is now New Hampshire to work with others there.

We don't know exactly what that work entailed.

He might very well have been a trapper, which was a lucrative but challenging occupation back then.

The forests of Maine were certainly rich in the sorts of animals that were trapped and hunted for their fur.

Or perhaps he worked in the lumber industry, felling trees that might be used as timber in the more populated southern parts of New England.

Whatever the work was, it took him north in 1815.

He left behind his wife and two grown sons and made the same journey he had year after year until he reached the lake where all the other seasonal workers had gathered.

At some point in his time there though, Samuel took sick and was not getting better.

The trouble with frontier life is that oftentimes there is no one to take care of you if you become sick or injured.

Everything had the potential to be deadly in those circumstances, even a broken foot or a simple infection.

Throw in the comparatively primitive medical medical knowledge of the early 1800s and you have a recipe for disaster.

One evening after work, Samuel laid himself down in front of his fire to rest and recover.

He was sick and tired, literally, and probably hoped a good night of sleep would do him well.

But he never woke up.

It wasn't until the next day that a couple of other woodsmen passing by noticed his body laid out there beside the remnants of a campfire.

that anyone even knew what had happened.

Word was sent south to tell Samuel's family the news.

It said that his two adult sons made the journey of 100 miles in just one day, but that would be an extraordinary pace if it were true.

They traveled quickly though, and soon arrived at the campsite where some friends had brought Samuel's body inside to keep it safe.

But there was a problem.

Winter was coming.

Knowing that the journey back south with their father's body would take them too long, the two sons purchased a cheap wooden box and buried Samuel there in the wilderness of Maine.

Then they settled in for the winter and waited.

When spring arrived, they took it upon themselves the grim task of disinterring their father so that they could transport him home for a proper burial.

The two brothers made quick work, uncovering the wooden box they had buried in a shallow grave.

When it was exposed, they lifted it out and onto their wagon.

But they couldn't resist just one more look at the man who had raised them.

Prying off the lid of the coffin, the brothers looked inside and then stopped as horror flooded over them.

Even though Samuel had been buried on his back, the body had somehow turned over.

More disturbing though was his face.

The dead man's lips were raw and covered in dry blood, and splinters of wood could be seen in his gums and tongue.

Their father's hands told the same terrible story.

The fingertips were torn and bloody, and many of the fingernails were missing, torn off in an attempt to escape.

There was no question about what had happened.

And that was what frightened them the most, because it put the blame squarely on them.

Samuel MacDonald had not died that winter day, as his friends had assumed.

He had simply fallen into a deep sleep, perhaps even a coma.

Unable to tell the difference, though, everyone assumed the worst.

When Samuel's sons arrived, they did what made sense: they buried their father.

And in doing so, they did the very thing they never thought possible:

they killed him.

This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Mankey.

With music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more than just a podcast.

There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video.

Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy.

My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical.

You can learn more about all of our shows and everything else going on over in one central place: grimandmild.com.

And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

And when you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always,

thanks for listening.

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