Sure, you don’t need to go out of your way to get scared these days. But it’s Halloween, and it’s tradition. Besides, autumn is a mournful season. There’s something about it that makes the present go a little translucent, allowing the past to shine through. It’s a haunted time. And perfect for storytelling. 

Lucky for us, Maine—home of blueberries and the inventors of chewing gum and earmuffs but also monsters, Stephen King, and ghosts—thrums with layer upon layer of strange, spooky, enchanting history, ripe for the occasion.

Below is a collection of curiosities to get you in the mood, impress your pals around a mid-fall campfire, and point you in the direction of your next paranormal adventure. 

1. Haunted Hotels, the Charles Inn Edition 

Haunted hotels abound in Maine. Some are creepier than others, and the Charles Inn does not lack in that department. But what it’s got that others don’t is a certain eye-roll attitude toward its ghosts that makes it, well, cool. Shortly after taking over the historic hotel, the owners started to hear—and see—some undeniably weird stuff. “I heard this little tiny voice go ‘nee nee nee nee nee,’” owner Leanne Hewey told News Center Maine in 2018. And then there were the glasses she reportedly saw fly across a room.

Guests too have heard phantom door knockings and footstep-like creaks coming from empty floors. (I stayed at the inn earlier this year and had a pleasantly ghost-free evening, although the decor was decidedly “horror-movie chic.”) One local radio DJ claims to have contacted “notorious gangster Al Brady” via something called a Spirit Box.

“For us, it’s fun,” Hewey went on to say. “It’s adventurous. It just kind of helps us to know that we’re not alone.”

2. Cassie the Sea Serpent of Casco Bay (and Other Mythical Creatures)

Did you know that a giant sea serpent is rumored to have lived off the coast of Portland? Cassie, as she’s called, was reportedly first spotted in 1779, and has been reportedly clocked many, many times since. Some say she’s 100-feet long (others, 45) and has an elongated, brontosaurus-like neck, with a black-brown mottled coat like a seal or flounder. Portland’s own cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman, has catalogued Cassie lore over the ages. Although the last claimed sighting of Cassie seems to have been in 1958, there’s otherwise no evidence that we couldn’t still come across her today.

That’s not all! Maine is reportedly host to a lineup of mythical creatures that sound like they were lifted from the pages of The Faerie Queene: The Tote Road Shagamaw—half bear, half moose—walks upright on its back legs and then switches to its front legs; the Billdad, of Boundary Pond, looks kind of like a kangaroo-platypus and is thought to be mostly benign though potentially poisonous to eat; and the aptly named Agropelter, a monkey-like sprite, is known for hitting loggers on the head. 

3. The Devil’s Footprint

According to J.W. Ocker’s The New England Grimpendium: A Guide to Macabre and Ghastly Sites, a crew of yesteryear construction workers in Manchester were trying to move a decent-sized boulder, (which, judging by pictures, was roughly the size of a dog house), but it just wouldn’t budge. “One of the construction workers climbed up on the rock and swore he’d sell his soul to the devil if that rock could be moved. The next day, the rock had been moved and the construction worker had disappeared. All that was left as evidence of the deal were some strange indentations in the rock.”

Those indentations, kind of foot-like and reddish in color, were dubbed the “devil’s footprint.” And the rock is still there! Right next to the North Manchester Meeting House, constructed in 1793, and part of a wall that rings a cemetery (also reportedly haunted). 

4. Graveyard Lore Galore 

Maine has been occupied by people for a long, long time, which means graveyards, marked and unmarked, are all over the place. Pretty much anywhere you go in Maine, there’s bound to be a mysterious grave close by. Most impressive perhaps is Camp Etna (in Etna), a Spiritualist gathering place that, once upon a time in the early 1990s, drew thousands of tourists looking to connect with their dead through mediums and clairvoyants who offered table-tipping, dowsing, and aura readings, among other means of communicating with the nonliving.

You can read about it in Peaks Island author Mira Ptacin’s book, The In-Betweens, in which she describes her adventures at Camp Etna, including making contact with her deceased brother (as well as ghost hunting). Spiritualism, with a capital S, as Ptacin puts it, is a religion whose primary tenets are: (1) be good to people and (2) people are able to talk to the dead (so, be good to people, alive and not). Rule number four of the Spiritualist Declaration of Principles: “We affirm that the existence and personal identity of an individual continue after the change called death.” More than just a curiosity, the history of Spiritualism is fascinatingly linked with suffrage and abolitionism.

But if it’s mysterious graves you’re after, try this one: according to Strange Maine: True Tales from the Pine Tree State, by Michelle Souliere, there has long been rumor of a witch’s grave in the Western Cemetery of Portland. Souliere writes on her Strange Maine blog that one ornate limestone gravestone is thought to be the resting place of either a witch or a vampire. Souliere goes on to, well, debunk the myth, which you can read about here (and I won’t spoil it), while doling out one tantalizing tidbit: word once had it that “if a person stood on the grave at midnight during a full moon, the soul would be sucked out of your body.”

5. Ladies in Red and White, Walking Beaches at Night

Fashionably dressed ghosts? Yes, please! The “Woman in White” is said to live on Ram Island in Casco Bay and act something like a benevolent lighthouse, emanating her own white light to warning seafaring folk of danger. 

At Pemaquid Point Light, the ghost of a woman who appears shivering and drenched and dressed in a red shawl is said to have been seen trying to warm herself by the hearth of lighthouse keeper’s house (now the Fishermen’s Museum). Observers have posited that she could be one of the souls to have lost their lives on the treacherous rocks below, which have caused many shipwrecks. 

6. Lighthouses and the Horror of Seguin Island 

Pemaquid, Burnt Island, and Wood Island are all host to totally haunted lighthouses. But it’s Seguin Island Light, the second oldest in Maine, that might be attached to the most gruesome story. According to the tale, at some point in the 1800s the lighthouse keeper there bought his wife a piano, and after what was probably a long and depressing winte—and perhaps, hearing the only song she could play repeated ad nausea—he took an ax to the piano, then her, and then himself. Now, visitors say you can still hear piano music drifting languidly over the ragged shore.