Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

Paranormal adventures in Readfield

In early 1950s, I attended Grades 3 and 4 in the building now occupied by Readfield Historical Society and annoyed ghosts who recently ordered meddlesome paranormalists to “get out!”

My teachers were strict but kind. Both were diligent, demanding, devoted. I have only sweet memories of those years, my classmates, that dear old schoolhouse.

We wouldn’t have spent a night alone there on a dare, but the ghosts we feared resided elsewhere. Communists lurked everywhere, but it was the swamp behind the school that really frightened us. Quicksand, bottomless pits, snakes, things to get tangled in that would pull you down. We were told of fools who had ventured into the morass and never returned.

We were told about the train. Some said it was a mere derailment. Others insisted an engine and cars had hurtled from the tracks and plunged into a bottomless quagmire long ago. They were convinced it was still there. They were convincing.

I don’t know how deep “bottomless” is, but I hope the paranormalists will look for that train. They should have plenty of bug repellent, wear life jackets, get out in that swamp. Probes, flashlights, imagination, they’ll surely find something. Perhaps they were hearing cries of the driver and stoker in the schoolhouse.

There’s one strange thing about that schoolhouse, though. Dick Clark and I both remember a two-story outhouse. Everyone else says “No. Always a long flight of stairs down to a first-floor privy.” Maybe some poor soul is stranded in that upper privy that once or never existed and is screaming, “I wanna get out!”

More research is needed.



Steve Cowperthwaite

Mount Vernon