In Episode 382 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger investigate a haunting that dates back 1872 in the village of Springvale, Maine. The paranormal activity was so profound it caught the attention of the Lewiston Journal who sent a reporter and learned the strange activity dates back at least 12 years and had been witnessed by multiple people – none of them made it very long as a tenant in this house. Who is haunting this old farmhouse?
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Produced and hosted by: Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger
Edited by: Ray Auger
Theme Music by: John Judd
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
*A note on the text: Please forgive punctuation, spelling, and grammar mistakes. Like us, the transcripts ain’t perfect.
[DRIVING]
JEFF: Bear to the right up here.
[BLINKAH]
RAY: Okay, got it.
JEFF: And we can pull over right up here on the right.
[CAR STOPS / DOORS CLOSE]
RAY: We’re in a rural section of Springvale, Maine. Springvale is technically a village of Sanford Maine, whose downtown is just south of us.
JEFF: We’re about 30 miles southwest of Portland. This used to be mostly farm country. And within that farm country was a farmhouse owned by the Garvin Family.
RAY: Is that what we’re looking for? The old Garvin House?
JEFF: We are. The house used to be a rental property. During the mid-1800s, for a period of about 12 years, they couldn’t seem to keep a tenant inside. Those tenants included families, people with rock-solid reputations, even a preacher. All of them were uncomfortable inside this house. It didn’t take long for word to get around as to the reason.
RAY: Why’s that?
JEFF: Because everyone in town knew the Garvin house… was haunted.
[INTRO]
JEFF: Hello, I’m Jeff Belanger and welcome to Episode 382 of the New England Legends podcast!
RAY: And I’m Ray Auger, thanks for joining us on our mission to chronicle every ghost, monster, alien, UFO, roadside oddity, and other wicked strangeness in New England one story at a time. Please hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts because it’s free! It would also help a lot if you posted a review for us because that’s how we grow.
JEFF: Quick reminder that tickets are on sale for our annual charity Zombie Prom on Saturday, February 22nd at the DoubleTree Hotel in Milford, Massachusetts. All proceeds benefit Community Harvest Project. You can find a link to buy tickets on our website or in the link in the episode description.
RAY: This week’s episode is sponsored by something brand new from Jeff. What ya got there Jeff?
JEFF: I’m holding the very first issue of my new print publication called Shadow Zine!
RAY: A zine? What is this, the 1990s?
JEFF: Yup. I’m going old school. Analog. Print. Each month Shadow Zine will bring you in-depth stories of strange and paranormal topics from some of the best researchers out there. Issue one is called Mysteries of the Bridgewater Triangle and it’s by yours truly. I explore 200 square miles of weirdness in southeastern Massachusetts. From haunted places to Bigfoot sightings, a Thunderbird, pukwudgies, UFOs, cult murder, and more!
RAY: Can people buy a digital copy of Shadow Zine too?
JEFF: Nope. Print only. You can buy it from the website or from me in person at my events. I have great concern how only a tiny handful of people are controlling most of the internet, and we already distrust mainstream media, so I’m going back to where I started in all of this… underground.
RAY: I love it! And I’m holding the first issue of Shadow Zine right now. It’s full color, glossy, it looks amazing.
JEFF: You can get a copy right now through the website ShadowZine.com or click the link in our episode description. If you buy a copy online, it will be autographed when it arrives.
RAY: Very cool. Okay, so we’re on the hunt for a haunted house in Maine.
JEFF: A house the newspapers said were full of hobgoblins. So many stories we cover from long ago will tell you a house is haunted, and it’s been experienced by reliable witnesses, but this week’s story may just find the reason why it’s haunted. This story ultimately launched the career of an old-time newspaper icon.
RAY: This region was originally part of land purchased from the Abenaki people back in 1661. Not much was done with the land in those early years. It was eventually willed to Peleg Sanford thus the town name of Sanford. The French and Indian War made the region dangerous for a bunch of years, but once the dust settled, people arrived and built farms and mills. A town grew up.
JEFF: And yet, there was one house in town that truly stuck out. A rental property owned by the Garvin Family. So let’s head back to 1872, and look for the Hobgoblins of Springvale.
[TRANSITION]
RAY: It’s February of 1872 here in Springvale, Maine. Springvale is best known for the manufacturing of boots and shoes, but lately locals have been talking about different kinds of souls… (BEAT) It’s been a cold winter. Not enough to keep these hearty Mainers inside all the time. They still gather in shops in town, the local tavern, or after Sunday church services. And the subject they’re buzzing about the most lately is a local haunted home owned by the Garvin Family.
JEFF: This house is the talk of the town. And now it’s caught the attention of the Lewiston Journal.
RAY: They’ve sent a young reporter named Edward Mitchell to investigate the haunting. Fresh out of college, Mitchell is determined to get to the bottom of this haunting.
JEFF: If you hear a place is haunted, there are a couple of obvious questions to ask as part of your investigation. First, who has had a strange experience inside? You’ll want to interview them. Do you believe them? Do they have something to gain from sharing this story? Have other people had experiences in the building too? Then you have to ask the follow up question: why is this place haunted? What happened here?
RAY: All good questions. Let’s join the young reporter and head over to the Garvin Farmhouse.
[WALKING]
[DOOR OPENS]
JEFF: Mitchell made the comment that if you live 100 miles away from a reported haunt, almost everyone believes the story. If you live 50 miles from the haunt, there are a few doubters. If you live 10 miles from the haunt there are few believers. And if you’re standing in front of the haunted house you’re likely to be told you’ve wasted your time. But every once in a while, a haunt delivers beyond your wildest expectations.
RAY: The house itself is pretty simple. Once this was a bustling farm, but now it’s mostly a rental property and has been for decades. When the Garvins passed away, they left the farm to their children. The current owner lives in Minnesota. He’s left his rental property in the hands of Mr. Asa Low, a local attorney.
JEFF: This isn’t an expensive place to rent. It’s not the nicest property, and being outside of town makes it less convenient. The other thing is this place has had a bad reputation for almost 30 years, but it’s gotten a lot worse in the past 12 years.
RAY: Joining us in the house is Mr. Bodwell. Though he doesn’t live in the house right now, he has lived here off and on for seven years. Folks in town know him as an honest family man. He’s not one to make up stories.
JEFF: Night is falling. Let’s take a seat.
RAY: (WHISPERING) What are we waiting for?
JEFF: (WHISPERING) Something to happen, I guess.
[SOUND OF DRY CORN KERNALS HITTING THE FLOOR]
JEFF: What is that?
RAY: I’m not sure. It sounds almost like someone shucking dried corn off the cob and it’s hitting the floor upstairs or maybe in the attic.
[LOUD DRY CORN SHAKING]
JEFF/RAY: What is that?! That was even louder than before!
JEFF: That sounded like someone throwing a pile of those corn kernels down the stairs.
RAY: Let’s head upstairs and look.
[WALKING UP STAIRS]
RAY: Okay, I don’t see anything out of place up here at all. There’s nothing on the floor, and the sounds have stopped.
JEFF: This is what Mr. Bodwell had to live with. Most nights nothing would happen. But then some nights would be like this, and there’s no rest or sleep when you’re wondering where sounds like that are coming from.
[METAL POTS CLANGING]
RAY/JEFF: What was that?
RAY: It sounded like it was coming from the kitchen downstairs. Let’s check it out.
[WALKING DOWN STAIRS]
JEFF: Look at the stove! It’s the covers on the cooking stove.
[METAL POT LID AGAIN]
RAY: Did you see that?!
JEFF: I did!
RAY: The cast iron cover on the burner just rattled on its own.
JEFF: Is the stove lit?
RAY: I don’t feel any heat coming off of it.
JEFF: Lift up the cover plate and look inside.
RAY: No way! You do it!
JEFF: Okay fine… Okay, I’m getting closer.
[LIFTING LID]
JEFF: The stove is NOT lit. And I don’t see anything inside.
[LID BACK DOWN]
RAY: Okay, this is a really strange way for a ghost to try and get our attention, isn’t it?
JEFF: I don’t make the rules, Ray. This stuff seems to happen in its own…
[DOOR SLAMS]
JEFF: You heard that too, right?
RAY: I did. A bedroom door just slammed upstairs.
JEFF: And we’re all down here in the kitchen.
RAY: Yup.
JEFF: Right.
RAY: Right.
JEFF: Okay, let’s blow out all of the candles and head outside.
RAY: Yeah, I’m more than ready to get out of here.
[BLOW] [BLOW]
RAY: Okay, now that it’s completely dark in here…. I feel spooked. As if this place wasn’t weird enough already.
JEFF: Let’s head outside.
[DOOR OPENS]
[DOOR CLOSES]
JEFF: Let’s head back into town… Uhhh…. Are you….
RAY: Yeah, I’m seeing it too. I see lights on in two of the windows upstairs.
JEFF: Me too. But it was dark when we came downstairs, right.
RAY: It was.
JEFF: And…
RAY: Did a light just come on in the sitting room downstairs?
JEFF: it did.
RAY: Okay, this is really strange. Should we go back in and blow out the candles again?
JEFF: You can if you want… I’m going back to town.
RAY: Nope. I’m not going back in there.
[WALKING]
JEFF: Mr. Bodwell was just telling me how one night he and his wife were asleep in bed in that house during a wind storm. He awoke to find a woman standing next to his bed. At first he thought it was his wife, but then found her softly snoring beside him. After a quick nudge from his elbow, both of them were staring at this ghostly apparition. He said it was the ghost of an old woman. They were petrified… but then the ghost dissolved into nothing in front of their eyes.
RAY: Let’s head into the tavern to see what others have to say.
[DOOR OPENS]
[BAR NOISE]
RAY: Two beers please!
JEFF/RAY: Cheers!
JEFF: I just heard from another local who said when the Baptist minister used to live in that house he complained of hearing groanings and moaning in the middle of the night. It used to keep him awake. He also used to hear the splashing of water.
(PAUSE)
RAY: So weird. I just heard about another guy who used to rent that house. He was so scared that he ran out of the house at midnight and ran all the way to town mumbling about a witch in the house. He never went back.
(PAUSE)
JEFF: Okay… now we’re getting somewhere. I was just talking to an old-timer by the bar. He told me about Old Mother York… they called her a witch. She lived in that house going on 40 years ago now. He said she was an old hag with no teeth and a beard on her chin. They say she never paid rent. She had some unholy power over the man who owned it at the time. Folks in town feared her. They tried to stay in her good graces.
(PAUSE)
RAY: Someone else was just telling me how two strangers from Canada used to come and stay with Old Mother York. They’d stay for a week or two, then leave for a while, then come back. The strange thing was there were always a rash of crimes when they were in town. Robberies, stealing chickens, and things like that. It got to the point where the local constable took notice.
JEFF: The story goes the constable and two selectmen came to visit Old Mother York one day and asked some questions about these French Canadian visitors. Mother York told them they were simply lodgers with her. But when the Constable and selectmen began to look around the house, they grew suspicious. Down in the basement they heard moaning and then a shriek… and that’s when they ran out of the house and never came back. Mother York shrugged, then closed the door behind them.
RAY: They say about a year after the strange ghostly event in the basement, a peddler came through town with a fancy cart full of expensive items. At the end of the day, he made his way north. One local kid said he saw the peddler pull his wagon and horses into the farmhouse where Old Mother York lived, and got out to spend the night and rest his horses. He was never seen again. The peddler was from Vermont, so a few weeks later family came looking for him. They could trace his steps to Sanford, then to Old Mother York’s house, then no further.
JEFF: Some suggest Old Mother York ran off with the peddler, because she too disappeared after he showed up. Others believe she was spirited away by the devil and maybe that peddler’s body was buried in the dirt floor basement.
RAY: Given the history and the modern problems of keeping tenants who don’t mind sharing their home with ghosts, it was decided to board up the house. And that brings us back to today.
[TRASITION]
JEFF: So this article was written by Edward Page Mitchell. It made the rounds when it was first published and caught the attention of some New York newspapers who offered him a job. Mitchell would go on to become president of the New York Sun Publishing Company. And it all started from chasing a ghost in Maine.
RAY: His article was our source for this week’s story. I like how objective the article is. He didn’t editorialize. It’s sensational enough on its own.
JEFF: The Springvale rumor mill caught the attention of the big local paper, and the paper decided to look into it. To be fair, we’re not sure if the former Garvin house still exists. The article only mentioned it was in Springvale on the north side of town. To me, this is the perfect haunt. You have multiple modern witnesses – at least modern as of 1872—you have a reporter willing to go inside and look, and one who did the digging to find the back story. Can we prove any of it? No. But so often when there’s this much ghostly smoke… there’s also fire.
[OUTTRO]
RAY: And that takes us to After the Legend where we take a deeper dive into this week’s story and sometimes veer off course.
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To see some pictures from Springvale, Maine, click on the link in our episode description or go to our website and click on Episode 382.
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Until next time remember… the bizarre is closer than you think.
