Emeric Spooner in his office, surrounded by the journalistic accounts of 130 years ago.? Staff Photo By Ashley MeeksBUCKSPORT ? There?s something strange in the neighborhood.
Emeric Spooner, local Ghostbuster, has got more paranormal activity and unsolved murders than you could shake a Ghost Trap at.
Most people know something about the supposed witch?s foot on Jonathan Buck?s tombstone ? the vague shape of the fault in the granite is clearly visible.
Spooner?s Web site, Maine Supernatural, was envisioned last summer as a site to debunk the centuries-old legend that erroneously claimed Buck to be a judge cursed by a witch he had condemned to death.
?I put that page up to dispel those kinds of myths,? Spooner said. ?I mean, they?re not real.?
Spooner says he?s always been interested in local legends and mysteries. Growing up in a haunted house might have something to do with it.
?People in the family, neighbors, visitors, would see a little girl,? Spooner said, as would people who owned the house later and took to blocking off the area of the upstairs where she appeared, the apparent ghost of a girl who had fallen down the stairs and died.
?Maine?s a good source of the supernatural and paranormal so far ? I?ve been busy,? Spooner said, even without publicity.
He said locals invite him in to tour their houses. He?s spent winter weekends freezing his hands in search of EVPs ? Electric Voice Phenomena ? where he tries to get a spirit to say something on tape.
?I try to hit [a case] from every angle ? word of mouth, maps, paranormal,? Spooner said. ?I?m still pretty skeptical.?
He?s heard things on tape ? sometimes it?s just names and sometimes full sentences.
?You play them backwards and forwards and some of them are pretty strange,? he said.
Most recently, though, Spooner has been wrapped up in what at first appeared to be a triple homicide ? the Trim murders ? from 130 years ago at a house off Bucksmills Road.
The elderly Robert Trim, his widowed daughter Melissa Thayer and her 4-year-old daughter Josie were allegedly murdered and their home burned.
At the time, the homicides were blamed on a ship captain named Smith, who then stole Thayer?s savings of $750.
But Spooner said that, after reading the accounts of the incident, he?s not sure what happened.
?I just don?t think he had a fair trial,? Spooner said. ?He didn?t really need the money.?
But he believes, like the ?X Files? tagline goes, that the truth is out there.
Spooner has transcribed more than 20 pages of old Ellsworth American text from microfilm and examined scores of cemeteries in search of the truth in that case. He wants to make his research available at the Buck Memorial Library (named for the aforementioned man with the rumor-ridden grave), where he says plenty of people have come to research local legends and have gone away frustrated at the smudgy microfilm.
?They were really bad copies. You couldn?t make out the bottoms of paragraphs because as it transferred, it kind of blurred at the bottom,? Spooner said.
His time working on the research alone translates to a part-time job.
He says he?s still ?on the fence? about belief in ghosts, describing himself as an ?open-minded skeptic.?
As for his investigation of the Trim murders, it?s more a straight unsolved mystery, Spooner said.
?I haven?t gotten anything paranormal out of it, not for lack of trying,? Spooner said.
Right now, he thinks it might have been a case of accidental deaths ? Melissa might have tripped, hit her head on a rock, bloodying and embedding it, leaving the trail of blood to her house, which her father might have accidentally burned down in trying to ready their wagon.
Spooner is leaving no stone unturned ? literally.
?There?s still so many, so many different theories that are going on,? Spooner said. But as far as he knows, he?s the only one investigating it.
This past weekend, he poked around what?s left of the burned house, which occupies a portion of someone?s backyard.
?You can?t see it from the road but the foundation is still right there off Bucksmills Road,? Spooner said. The old horse corral, the carriage house, ?it?s all there in these people?s backyard.?
?I bet they?d be surprised,? Spooner said, adding that there?s still hope for the Trim case. ?Nobody knows for sure what took place.?
He plans to compile his research and make binders available in the library and possibly self-publish his work in the future.
Work on the Trim case will go on for another few weeks, but Spooner has plenty of other investigations he wants to undertake. Mostly, he says he just wants to get his reference material available to library-goers.
?People come in and they want stories. Hundreds of people come in for the [Jonathan] Buck stuff every year. This is just another town story.?
Emeric Spooner?s site can be visited at http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeqnk8x/index.html
Source: http://ellsworthmaine.com/site/index.ph ... &Itemid=31
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