Ghosts on the Coast of Maine Read Free Page B

morning she said to Tim, “So who’s the ghost?”
    The unfortunate soul that had been trying to break through his dimensional barrier in one way or another was someone who needed sympathy and understanding. He was the product of an unfinished journey. It was Gilbert Armstrong in a different time, a different place.

 

CHAPTER FIVE
THE HOUSE OF HEALING
    I n the little town of Thomaston, I locked horns with a man who denounced my ghostly delvings. It was a friendly fight, nobody got hurt, but it was revealing. He stood talking to me with arms folded like a granite statue, while he berated me for pursuing what he considered the Devil’s playground. There are no ghosts because we have no consciousness when we are dead, he argued. We are “as if asleep,” he quoted from the Bible.
    The man had given me a great frame of reference. “As if asleep” closely defines my concept of ghosts. Upon entering the dream state, we experience a level of awareness that is quite different from our everyday consciousness. It might seem confusing or disconnected, but we deal with it in such a way that it helps us work out our problems or anxieties.
    Ghosts are spirits in a dream world. They are not at their final destination. Some need help in getting there; others have already been there and have returned to help us. Also, by their manifestations they are reminders of the spiritual world, so often forgotten in this strongly materialistic society of ours.
    The ghost in the “House of Healing” is a returnee. He is present in a house built in 1830, a time of much unsettlement in the northern New England world. New Englanders were still recovering from fighting the English one last time, and they were on unsure ground with the surrounding Indians. Eighteen thirty was only seven years prior to the Atticus the Slave incident involving Thomaston, a typical prelude to the Civil War Era.
    Walter James had to survive in this kind of environment when he was alive. He had to keep the optimism of his fellow townspeople at a high level, so that they would not be disturbed by the uncontrollable forces around them. Walter’s job, as he saw it, was to soothe nerves and try to preserve peace.
    He accomplished this by throwing himself into as many town projects as he could. His energy level was high, but it was expressed in a modest, reticent way. Walter wasn’t one to boast about his achievements. Maybe for that reason today’s Thomastonians do not speak much about what he accomplished, which, upon inspection, seems to be a great deal.
    James built not only his own house, but many others as well. He was a person of business interests who bought and sold real estate. He was one of the founders of the Thomaston Bank, established an insurance company, and saw to it that the stately grove of elms that now lines Main Street was planted and maintained. Walter was the driving force behind the library, the school, and a church of his choice.
    Adults were not the only ones to benefit from his magnanimous personality. Walter, who remained childless, kept a swing in his stable barn for the neighborhood children. Many a Saturday afternoon he’d spend pushing kids on the swing or teaching them the basic skills of woodworking, his favorite pastime. The barn was Walter’s place.
    Just ask the two male photography students who resided in the loft of that barn during the winter of 1986. They weren’t exactly frightened and were never harmed, but they always felt that someone was watching them. Their cat appreciated the presence a little more than the boys. When the boys moved to another room in the house, the cat continued to live in the barn that has basically remained untouched since its construction.
    Another student, Virginia, who took a room in the winter of 1987, had no doubt about the presence of a ghost in the house. She came downstairs one morning to find a pair of candles still on the mantelpiece, but the