In Episode 406 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger investigate an old Central Street house in Millinocket, Maine, which was the seen of a literal ghost hunt back in 1907, complete with locals allegedly shooting up the room while searching for ghosts. What followed made the newspapers and started quite the paranormal buzz in town.
BECOME A LEGENDARY PATRON:
https://www.patreon.com/NewEnglandLegends
CREDITS:
Produced and hosted by: Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger
Edited by: Ray Auger
Guest Voice: Marv Anderson
Theme Music by: John Judd
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST FOR FREE:
Apple Podcasts/iTunes | Spotify | Pandora | Amazon Podcasts | TuneIn | iHeartRadio
JOIN OUR SUPER-SECRET:
New England Legends Facebook Group
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
*A note on the text: Please forgive punctuation, spelling, and grammar mistakes. Like us, the transcripts ain’t perfect.
[RACKING SHOTGUN]
RAY: Woah… Jeff, we don’t usually bring firearms on our adventures. Are we heading someplace more dangerous than usual?
JEFF: Damn right we are.
RAY: So we’re in Millinocket, Maine. Right in the central part of the state. The town doesn’t look that dangerous. It seems like a nice, small town. What are we looking for?
JEFF: Ray, we’re looking for a haunted house.
RAY: Okay.
JEFF: On Central Street.
RAY: Which is also Route 157. Right where we are now.
JEFF: The heart of downtown.
RAY: Got it. I feel like most of the haunted places we’ve explored aren’t really dangerous. What makes this one different?
JEFF: I’m not sure yet. That’s why we’re here to investigate. But I can tell you this, some ghost hunters in the past have been brought up on charges of trespassing and firing their guns at the ghosts.
[INTRO]
JEFF: I’m Jeff Belanger and welcome to Episode 406 of the New England Legends podcast.
RAY: And I’m Ray Auger. Thanks for joining us on our mission to chronicle every legend in New England one story at a time. From ghosts to monsters to UFOs, roadside oddities, and all the other wicked strange things that make New England like no other place. We explore it all. And most of our story leads come from you. So please reach out to us anytime through our website with your ideas.
JEFF: We’ll go hunting for the ghosts on Central Street of Millinocket, Maine, right after this quick word from our sponsor.
SPONSOR
RAY: Okay, as we said, Millinocket looks a lot like many small towns in New England. The population is just over 4,000 people, and there isn’t much else around this region. This region was home to the Penobscot people for more than 10,000 years. The name Millinocket is Algonquin for “land of many islands.” It was settled in 1829 by the Fowler Family. They cleared the land for their farm near Shad Pond. In 1899, the Great Northern Paper Company mill was built creating a lot of jobs for the community. Sadly, the mills closed in 2008, which was a heavy blow to the town. Today they’re more of a service economy, people come here all four seasons look to get away to the wilds of Maine. We’re only about 30 miles away from Mt. Katahdin.
JEFF: Got it. A mill town that lost its mill, but still working to redefine itself and find the next great opportunity.
RAY: That’s the story. And there are many other small towns in the same boat.
JEFF: And like many other small towns, Millinocket has its haunts too. Like this one.
RAY: We’re standing in front of a large, multi-family house. It’s three stories with a peaked roof. Though it’s a little larger than some of the neighboring houses, it doesn’t stick out here along Central Street. You wouldn’t look twice unless someone pointed it out.
JEFF: Nope. It’s hiding in plain sight. But this was the place where some ghost hunters… Key word here “HUNTERS” allegedly shot up the place looking for a ghost. So let’s head back to the year 1907 and check out this haunt.
[TRANSITION]
RAY: It’s early May of 1907 here in Millinocket, Maine. Teddy Roosevelt is in the White House, Mellen Chamberlain is the Governor of Maine, and “School Days” by Byron G. Harlan is the number one song. Here in Millinocket, the economy is booming.
JEFF: It is. They’re calling Millinocket Magic City because of the effect the Great Northern Paper Company is having on the region. In 1893 the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad connected the town to the rest of Maine. Five years later over 1,500 Italian immigrants were brought in to build the massive Millinocket Mill, and since then, there are plenty of jobs for everyone. Trees are being cleared, and the mill is churning out paper for New England and the world.
RAY: Things are going so well that the company is about to open the East Millinocket Mill about seven mills down the road from town.
JEFF: Though everything is hustling and bustling in town, there is some ghoulish gossip going around lately. Folks are talking about the C.H. Tapley house on Central Street being haunted.
RAY: Locals suspect they know the identity of the ghost too.
JEFF: Oh? Do tell.
RAY: About eight months ago in October, a local named Charles Pillsbury was hunting deer in the woods of East Millinocket….
JEFF: That’s near where they’ve been building the new paper mill.
RAY: That’s the place. So Pillsbury is hunting. He saw movement through the trees up ahead, so he raised his rifle.
[RIFLE SHOT]
RAY: And shot at wat he thought was a deer.
[MAN SCREAMS IN THE DISTANCE]
RAY: A man screamed in pain.
[RUNNING THROUGH WOODS]
RAY: Charles ran up to see what happened and saw he had blown a hole through the thigh of a lumberman named William Lahey. Lahey was bleeding profusely. By the time help arrived, Lahey had bled out and died. His body was brought back to his wife at his home in Millinocket, and then buried. Pillsbury turned himself in to the coroner, but no charges were filed. It was ruled an unfortunate accident.
JEFF: That’s terrible.
RAY: William Lahey was a tenant here at the Tapley House on Central Street.
JEFF: Got it. So this is where his body was brought.
RAY: Correct. And some suspect he may still be lingering here. Lahey’s wife couldn’t take living in their apartment without her husband, so she moved out a few months ago. And that’s when the stories of ghosts began.
JEFF: Living in the house are the York family who live on the attic level, and the Allen Family who live in the basement level. The Lahey’s had lived on the second floor. A few months ago, strange noises could be heard on the second floor. But it wasn’t shrieks or groans being heard late in the night.
[DRAGGING, THUMP, DRAGGING, THUMP]
JEFF: Just peculiar sounds coming from a floor that was supposed to be vacant.
RAY: It sounds almost like someone moving furniture and then dropping it.
JEFF: Yeah, it’s odd. Especially considering it should be empty.
RAY: One night, Mrs. Allen was visited by a highly respected woman in town who wanted to see… or rather hear what all of the fuss was about.
[DRAGGING, THUMP, DRAGGING, THUMP]
RAY: This woman also heard the unexplained noises. Pretty soon, everyone in town is buzzing about the haunt.
JEFF: Enter Mr. R. A. Brown. He’s the city editor of the Millinocket Journal.
[DOOR OPENS]
[FOOTSTEPS ON THE FLOOR]
JEFF: He pays a visit to the house on Central Street. He’d exploring the former Lahey apartment looking for any signs of shenanigans or some logical explanation for the noise.
RAY: It’s worth noting this house was built in 1900. It’s only seven years old. It’s not some rickety old building creaking and groaning. It’s relatively new.
JEFF: Mr. Brown wants to be thorough in his ghost investigation. So he waits for nightfall.
[CRICKETS / NIGHTSOUNDS FADE IN]
JEFF: Brown returns with three other Millinocket men: Daniel Hennessy, Thomas Griffin, and F.E. Banks. Banks is a member of the board of selectmen. They explore the Lahey apartment. They sit a vigil. They listen. They look around. And then head home. The following day Brown prints an article in the newspaper saying they went to the Central Street house looking for ghosts, but found nothing. They suspect the ghost was simply in the imagination of Mrs. Allen. The men figured that settles that. This should be the end of the talk of ghosts.
RAY: What the four men didn’t count on was the owner of the multi-family house, Mr. C.H. Tapley reading the article and getting quite upset. He figures if his building does have ghosts or haunts, it was his business alone. Tapley heads to the police department. After hearing the complaint, the police officer pays a visit to the four men in question.
[THUMP]
RAY: And issues each of them a $50 fine for trespassing.
JEFF: Yikes! I guess Tapley doesn’t have a sense of humor about these things.
RAY: No he does not. Tapley then speaks with Deputy Sheriff Gates and tells the officer he intends to press charges to the fullest extent of the law. The Sheriff arrests four men. Bond to appear in court is set at $200 each.
JEFF: Meanwhile, C.H. Tapley is all to happy to talk to reporters about the case.
TAPLEY: Yes sir, I had ‘em arrested. Not going to have folks rampaging over my house without my consent, lugging in mud and doing lots of damage.
JEFF: Are you taking this action because there was actual damage, or because you want to stop the talk about ghosts?
TAPLEY: What?! Because they damaged the place! Don’t you think that when they fire revolver bullets through the window and into the ceiling of the house, they’re damaging it? Ha! They’ve damaged the place and I’m going to get paid for it. I picked up in that house after that mob had been there. A whole lot of cigar and cigarette stubs and a pile of mud. It was a fright. You go over there and you ask to see the dining room in the Lahey apartment. You’ll see the bullet holes in the wall.
JEFF: Let’s head back to the house and check.
[DOOR OPENS]
[WALKING ON FLOOR]
RAY: We’re walking through the former Lahey apartment. On the way in some of the other tenants told us they sometimes hear noises in here like someone running around, or furniture moving. One tenant even said she’d hear a door slam in the hallway the middle of the night.
JEFF: I’m looking at the walls and ceiling in the dining room. I can see a couple of holes, but they’re pretty small. It almost looks like they were drilled. I seriously doubt a gun did that.
RAY: Still, that’s the owner’s story and he’s sticking to it. And that brings us back to today.
[TRANSITION]
JEFF: The four men who were arrested for trespassing wanted to go before a jury to defend themselves. Eventually, they were forced to pay a fine because they were indeed trespassing.
RAY: Do you think they really fired a gun at the ghosts?
JEFF: I tend to doubt that. Look at where this house sits so close to the center of town. Someone firing a gun at night would have brought in the police and made a lot of fuss. But no doubt the story of the haunting made the buzz around town, a local reporter took enough interest to check it out, and he was arrested for it. That all happened.
RAY: And the article tied the name of the shooting victim, William Lahey, to the haunting of his apartment.
JEFF: Right. And Lahey didn’t die in the apartment, but his body was brough here as they prepared him for burial.
RAY: Every ghost needs a reason.
JEFF: That they do. We should point out that everything we know about this story came from the May 4, 1907 Lewiston Sun Journal newspaper article. So clearly the story had grown beyond Millinocket.
RAY: I love the headlines of the article. It reads: Ghost Hunters in Deep Trouble. Story of Tragedy of Haunted House Revived at Millinocket, Maine. Four Spook-Layers Arrested for Shooting Up Ghostly Presence.
JEFF: How could we resist a headline like that?
RAY: Right?!
JEFF: Obviously a gun will do you no good against a ghost. And who knows if any of the men in question actually did fire a gun inside. But we do know some strange noises and a ghostly legend led to quite an odd story in the quiet town of Millinocket.
[OUTTRO]
RAY: Very odd. And that brings us to After the Legend where we take a deeper dive into this week’s story and sometimes veer off course.
JEFF: After the Legend is brought to you by our patreon patrons! We can’t do what we do without our patrons. They help us financially with our hosting, travel, production, and marketing costs. They help make sure you get two episodes each week. It’s just $3 bucks per month, and for that you get early ad-free access to new episodes plus bonus episodes and content that no one else gets to hear. TO sign up head over to patreon.com/newenglandlegends. We’d appreciate it.
To see some pictures related to this week’s story, click on the link in our episode description or go to our website and click on Episode 406.
We’re not revealing the exact address. The house is still there and still a multi family.
Thanks for riding along with us again this week. We appreciate you being with us. Please make sure you’re subscribed to our podcast wherever you get your podcasts because it’s free and you won’t miss a thing. Please also take a minute to post a review for us. Those reviews help others find us in a crowded sea of podcasts. Also, be sure to visit our website to see dates for Jeff’s fall story tour and dates to see my band the Pub Kings.
We’d like to thank Marv Anderson for lending his voice acting talents this week, thank you to our sponsors, our patreon patrons, and our theme music is by John Judd.
Until next time remember… the bizarre is closer than you think.