In Episode 464, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger explore eastern Long Island, Maine, searching for the ruins of the Red House. A former tavern-turned-boarding house, this building made the news in 1906 for once being the location of a young woman who went missing, followed by a profound haunting. Could the ghost have been a harbinger of doom?
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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.
[OCEAN SHORE SOUNDS]
RAY: We’re standing on the eastern shore of Long Island.
JEFF: Right. Long Island, Maine. Off the coast of Portland.
RAY: In fact, Long Island was part of Portland until 1993, when they broke off and became their own town. We had to take the Casco Bay Lines ferry to get out here today.
JEFF: It’s October. The weather is getting colder, and the leaves up here are already starting to peak in color.
RAY: The perfect time to go searching for ghosts!
JEFF: And that’s exactly why we’re here, Ray. We’ve come to Long Island, Maine, to explore the haunting of Long Island’s Red House.
[INTRO]
JEFF: I’m Jeff Belanger.
RAY: And I’m Ray Auger. Welcome to episode 464 of the New England Legends podcast! Thanks for joining us on our mission to chronicle every wicked strange legend in New England one story at a time. We’re always on the hunt for ghosts, monsters, UFOs, roadside oddities, and the just plain weird. So many of our story leads come from you, so please reach out to us anytime through our website. We love hearing from you.
JEFF: We’ll go searching for the ghosts of Long Island, Maine, right after this word from our sponsor.
SPONSOR
RAY: Today, Long Island, Maine, is a quiet island community. The population is just over 230 people according to the most recent census. And those folks are spread over a 33-and-a-half square mile island. So plenty of space for everyone. But you’re saying a house here on the eastern end of the island is haunted?
JEFF: It is. Or at least it was.
RAY: Long Island has been used by people for thousands of years. First, it was the Abenaki people who used this island as a home and fishing grounds during the warmer months. The first European settler came here in 1640, then the entire island was purchased by John Smith of Boston…
JEFF: John Smith… if that’s his real name…
RAY: That’s fair. In this case it IS his real name. John Smith bought the island around 1705 and named it Smith Island, but he never moved out here, so the name didn’t stick. Ezekiel Cushing bought the island in 1732. After his death in 1765, he willed it to his children. By that time, others moved out here to make a go at fishing and lobstering. In the 1800s, a few hotels setup out here to try and make this a tourist destination, and in 1903, the U.S. government purchased 10 acres of the island to setup a fueling station for Navy ships.
JEFF: So Long Island has seen quite a bit over the centuries, but it’s always been a sparsely populated island. Tough winters and storms have helped forge this place into what it is today. It’s the kind of island where everyone knows everyone else. It would be tough to slip something like a haunted house by the other locals.
RAY: That’s true.
JEFF: To figure out how the haunting of the Red House came to be, let’s head back to the year 1880.
[TRANSITION]
RAY: It’s June of 1880 here on Long Island, Maine. Rutherford B. Hayes is president of the United States, Daniel Davis is governor of Maine, and here on Long Island, some folks are busy with their fishing vessels, others are gearing up for summer tourism.
JEFF: Island life is special. Locals know locals. They mostly look out for each other. Folks that are from off the island tend to stick out. They’re welcome, sure, but they’re still noticed.
RAY: We’re standing near the eastern shore of Long Island. Behind us is a place they call the Red House…
JEFF: (INTERRUPTING) I can see why. It’s a red house. Not terribly big.
RAY: It used to be a tavern, but now it’s mostly a boarding house. Today a man and a younger woman are calling on the house.
[KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK]
[DOOR OPENS]
RAY: The man explains how he’d like to secure lodging for the young woman for three months. He explains how he needs to leave for a trip, but will be back before the three months are up. He’s even willing to pay the whole thing in advance. The landlord can’t refuse an offer like that.
[DOOR CLOSES]
RAY: So the man leaves for his trip, and the young woman moves into her room upstairs.
JEFF: The young woman mostly keeps to herself around the Red House. She’s quiet. She spends her days in her upstairs room sewing by the window light, or going for walks nearby the house. She doesn’t venture too far.
RAY: It’s a shame too, because the summer weather has been great this year.
JEFF: One evening, the young woman heads up to her bedroom.
[WALKING UP THE STAIRS]
JEFF: The landlord bids her goodnight.
[DOOR CLOSES]
JEFF: And with that… the young woman is never seen again.
[ROOSTER CALLS]
JEFF: It’s the following morning. The woman’s chamber door is open, all of her belongings are still there, but her room is empty otherwise. The landlord looks outside, but finds no trace of her.
RAY: It hasn’t even been two months since she first came to the Red House. She had over a month of lodging still paid for. This is strange.
JEFF: Very strange. The landlord asks some other locals to help mount a search. They ask around, the inquire of the various boat captains if any young women asked for a ride to the mainland. But no one has seen this woman anywhere. There’s no question she didn’t leave on a boat that anyone on Long Island knew about.
RAY: The only thing the landlord can do is wait for the three months to end to see if her gentleman companion returns. By the end of September when the man doesn’t show either, the mystery deepens. There’s another young woman staying at the Red House for the summer. A few people saw her speak with this missing woman a few times. It’s only rumor, but some think maybe the two colluded to help this missing woman escape someone or something. Or maybe it was something darker…
JEFF: With no one to claim her belongings, the landlord packs them up and stores them in the basement of the Red House.
RAY: The basement is dirt floor. It’s not lost on folks here that the dirt may hide a terrible secret underneath. Could the missing woman be buried here?
JEFF: A year passes. No sign of the young woman or the gentleman who dropped her off at the Red House has turned up. Folks on Long Island move on as they always do. New tourists come and go, as do the fishermen’s boats. But back at the Red House, something odd is happening.
[SLOW FOOTSTEPS CREAKING ON THE FLOOR]
JEFF: It started with footsteps late at night. Other boarders would hear it in the upstairs hallway. They’d check to see who is lurking so late at night, but no one is there.
RAY: Outside the Red House, folks see a strange glowing light from the upstairs bedroom. At first, they assume it’s just candlelight, but something is different about this glow.
JEFF: Yeah… look at that. The glowing light has a form…. And… wait.
RAY: It’s gone. In a flash.
JEFF: It’s very strange, for sure.
RAY: It doesn’t take too many more occurrences like these for folks on Long Island to start talking about the Red House being haunted.
[THUNDERSTORM SLOW BUILD]
RAY: It’s now the summer of 1896. Dark clouds have moved in across Long Island. The rain is coming down.
[LOUD THUNDER BLAST]
JEFF/RAY: Woah! Lightning just struck the house!
JEFF: Look at that! It blew apart the upstairs corner of the house. It looks like the house was hit by a canon!
RAY: It does! And the blast shattered every window in the house.
JEFF: Except that one… the upstairs room where people see the glowing light… the same room where that young woman once boarded before she disappeared.
RAY: Even more strange… there’s no fire at all. Just a blast out of the corner of the house.
[RAIN FADES OUT]
[HAMMERING AND SAWING]
RAY: The Red House repairs the damage to the structure, but the ghostly reputation and now the lightning strike, has cemented the haunted reputation.
JEFF: The landlord has trouble renting his rooms at the Red House. Different families come and go in the coming years, none stay very long. One family stays only a single night before rushing out the next morning.
[ECHO FOOTSTEPS]
JEFF: Those footsteps continue at all hours of the night, though no source can be found. And now, at night, people passing by in front of the house report the glowing light upstairs takes the shape of a woman. She gets close to the window, then sticks her ghostly tongue out at the passerby.
RAY: Eventually, the Red House sits mostly vacant most of the time. Of course, not everyone believes in ghosts, and they don’t care what the reputation may be. One of those people is Edward Williams. He’s a cook on a local ship named the Ella M. Doughty.
[ROWING BOAT ON THE OCEAN FADES UP THEN OUT]
JEFF: Williams sails his dory around the island to the eastern shore. The Red House would be a good spot for him considering it’s close to his docks. When Williams arrives just after sunrise, he sees smoke rising from the chimney of the Red House. As he walks closer, he sees a woman dressed in white standing in the upstairs window. Williams heads a little further down the road to find the landlord.
[WALKING DOWN ROAD]
RAY: When Williams finds the landlord, he mentions how he wanted to rent the Red House, but he’s disappointed to see that someone lives there now.
JEFF: The landlord looks confused. He claims the house is vacant.
RAY: But Williams insists he just saw smoke rising from the chimney and a woman in the upstairs window.
JEFF: The landlord is now concerned someone has snuck into his property and is staying there without permission.
[WALKLING DOWN ROAD]
JEFF: The two men walk back to the Red House.
[KEYS JINGLE]
[DOOR OPENS]
RAY: When they step inside, it’s clear there’s no fire in the hearth. And the house is as still as the grave.
JEFF: More time passes, and the ghost sightings continue.
[HORSE AND WAGON ON ROAD]
JEFF: A horse-drawn buggy approaches the Red House in the early evening.
[HORSE WHINNIES]
JEFF: The horse is spooked right in front of the house. (BEAT) Ray! Look up in the window!
RAY: There’s the ghostly woman. Her face in a scowl… sticking her tongue out at the driver.
[HORSE BUGGY RACE OFF]
RAY: The driver races off!
JEFF: The ghost is seen during the day and during the night. And now she seems to be a harbinger of bad things.
RAY: What do you mean?
JEFF: A few weeks ago, a neighbor woman was passing by and saw the ghostly woman in the upstairs window of the Red House. The ghost stuck her tongue out at the passing neighbor, and then a few days later the neighbor took ill with consumption. She was dead within a week.
RAY: More years pass, and the Red House continues to deteriorate. The brick chimney crumbled one night, exposing rotting wood inside. The Red House now looks as frightening as its reputation. And that brings us back to today.
[TRANSITION]
JEFF: The house continued to rot away until there was nothing left of it, and the stories of the ghost passed into myth.
RAY: This has to be the first ghost story we’ve covered where the ghost mocks its witnesses by sticking out her tongue.
JEFF: I think you’re right. It’s an odd detail. Most of what we know about this story came from the September 1st, 1906 Lewiston Sun-Journal. The ghost sticking her tongue out was mentioned several times in the article.
RAY: Is it just me, or does that make this ghost extra creepy?
JEFF: I get it. Sticking your tongue out is kind of a childish thing to do, but it’s not as offensive as say… giving the finger. It’s sort of playful, but when done by an angry spirit… yeah, it chills me too.
RAY: We don’t know what happened to the woman who disappeared?
JEFF: We don’t. She wasn’t heard from again, and the man she was with never returned for her. So many questions only add to the mystery of the Red House on Long Island… where for many years it was haunted by a forgotten woman’s ghost.
[OUTTRO]
RAY: And that takes us to After the Legend where we dig deeper into this week’s story and sometimes veer off course.
JEFF: After the Legend is brought to you by our patreon patrons! Thank you patrons for all that you do to financially support us and our podcast. We appreciate you and can’t do this without you! We have such a great community of patrons. It’s just $3 bucks per month to join us! And for that you get early ad free access to new episodes plus bonus episodes and content that no one else gets to hear. We’d love your support at patreon.com/newenglandlegends.
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 463.
Before you go, we hope you’ll stop by our website where you’ll find dates to see Jeff’s Fall story tour. He’s somewhere different in New England almost every night. You’ll find dates to see my band, the Pub Kings, a link to buy the 2027 Haunted New England calendar, ways to contact us and get more involved, and everything else connected to what we do. Plus, most of our story leads come from you. So please keep posting those reviews for us, and sharing our episodes with your friends.
We’d like to thank our sponsors, thank you again to our patreon patrons, and our theme music is by John Judd.
Util next time remember… the bizarre is closer than you think!