Why not follow up a ghost hunt at the Lizzie Broden Inn with a stroll through the cemetery she was buried in a few days later? That’s absolutely what we, two lovably morbid history buffs, did today.
I had Oak Grove Cemetery on my big list of cemeteries to check out but I had long forgotten why until I was reminded this morning. Ooooh yeeeah, it’s where the Bordens are buried!
I was expecting another sprawling garden cemetery oozing personality in the form of varied monuments and when I drove up to the gate of this place I really felt this what it must be. Big iron castle-looking gates, an actual parking lot beyond with several cars, and an information center inviting you to check out their cemetery tour QR code. But that wasn’t necessary because there were giant white arrows on the pavement leading to Lizzie’s grave. This place certainly knew who to cater to! This is the first time in all my cemetery jaunts that I have seen a grave so well marked for tourists. And it was only a very short walk which was great because it was cold as a witch’s tit today.
Curiously Lizzie is buried in the same plot as the father and step mother she likely ax murdered. She was found innocent at the time and lived a long life afterwards but there’s proof here she never quite got away from the stigma of the crime in the form of her name – changed from Elizabeth to Lizbeth. I don’t think dropping the E helped much to be honest. She’d eventually move from the family home to her own mansion across town where instead of socializing with an entire town that was giving her the cold shoulder she prefered instead to host theater actrices from afar, more than a few of which she likely courted. In those days she would have been known as a spinster, today we probably would say something more along the lines of lesbian.
Lizzie Borden to me stands as a bit of a tragic figure. Forever memorialized by a children’s jump roping rhyme forever naming her as a killer and she probably was but I think if she were tried today she’d be seen in a little more sympathetic light. There’s quite a few historians who give her father more than a little side eye for potentially being not just a miser and all around horrible person but also one who may have been grooming his own daughters. I saw the crime scene photos – there is nothing left of the Borden’s faces, to me that suggest some serious pent up rage, built up from decades of abuse and held back only by the strings of a corset. Lizzie may still see her time as we grow as a society to have a better understanding of criminal psychology. We could recast her as a folk hero of the Me Too Movement for taking charge of her own destiny in a time when that was near impossible for a woman.
But back to the cemetery, would I suggest it to my readers here? Maybe, if you are into the Lizzie Borden story. Otherwise probably not. Although the cemetery was sprawling there were remarkably few monuments that looked unique enough to get my attention – less than a handful of statues, a couple masoliums, a single Celtic cross. I will note however there was a rather large murder of crows watching us from creepy bare trees the whole time which seemed fitting.
It’s been a while since I’ve gone out to eat and why not do so before a ghost hunt at the Lizzie Borden Inn? Such was the case when we wound up at McGovern’s.
The parking lot was pretty empty but I guess we were there near closing so that was probably why. Inside it was warm and cozy and had all the usual decore – and a random swordfish taxidermied on the wall which I think gave it character.
The menu was quite large and had a lot of sea food. Most was very recognizable but I was at a loss of what “Sea Legs” were, perhaps the tender loins of a shipwrecked pirate? Why does my brain always jump to cannibalism? I asked my companion and he said he had no idea what sea legs or the appetizer named potato pillows were. I wondered if they were anything like the soapy pillows I once ordered because I can’t speak or read Spanish and phonetics are all I got. I decided to ask about the sea legs, he decided to just order the potato pillows and see.
Apparently sea legs were not from a pirate but rather a crab. Pity, no long pork for me. However, I do like crab… so that’s what I ordered. My companion had the chicken parm with stuffed shells and we both shared the potatoe pillows which were baked potato skins with bacon, green onion, an impressive amount of cheese, and a side of sour cream for dipping. I learned a few years ago I have Irish ancestry which might explain why I’m never ever going to complain about potatoes. They are the food of the gods and this was no exception.
Of course our entrees were nothing to sneeze at either. I got mine with mashed potatoes with gravy and some very sweet butternut squash that seemed heavy on the brown sugar. Again, not complaining, sometimes diabetic comas are just the natural consequence of living. My crab was nestled on a plate of buttery cracker crumbs with a side of dipping butter. My ancestry also has a lot of poor farmers in it so my probably unhealthy affection for butter can also be easily explained. FOOD COMA!
My companion was also enjoying his dish with some crazy over stuffed shells and a generous heap of tomato sauce. We were both too stuffed for dessert. All and all it was a damn good meal with a very friendly staff.
I had been told about Moonstone Beach last summer, or perhaps even before that. Rumor was that during the off season it was a decently isolated beach that was perfect for gathering pretty rocks and I am a sucker for pretty rocks. Especially since I have a fish tank and an excuse to bring them home now!
So on this blustery Monday afternoon I headed out into the 39 degree weather forgetting that ocean = wind. I had attempted to come to Moonstone Beach once before but the road leading to it was flooded that day and if there’s one thing I won’t do with the Prius it’s drive into puddles of unknown depth. Today however I lucked out. I drove into their odd parking situation (no parking at the end of the road and only to one side on the rest of it) without taking the Prius swimming.
A pick-up truck drove in at the same time but no one ever got out of the car. I did! And wandered onto the beach. WOW was it coooooold!!! The wind was fierce and nonstop, waves were crashing on the shore and foaming up the beach and there were the promised rocks. Millions of them in all colors shapes and sizes, the vast majority completely smooth from the ocean’s battering. Next time I set up a new fish tank I’m totally bringing a bucket out here and picking a bunch up!
I tried to take a few artsy photos as this beach was made for such a thing but the wind was so cold my fingers were hurting and my face was bright red. The solitude of the beach almost made it seem colder.
The beach appears to be open year round but perhaps I’d suggest visiting it on a warmer day or at least in more layers of clothes if you’re insane enough to go in the dead of winter like I did. I wasn’t there for long but I believe I’ll be back to take more time feeding my need for gorgeous photography and pretty rocks of course. I’d heard whispers of finding the occasional agate or other vaguelly more valuable rock here. There was certainly a bunch of beautifully polished quartz in both white and rose sitting next to speckled smooth lumps of granite. I really don’t know much about geology so I couldn’t say what the rest were but I’m sure some rock hound out there might be able to.
Today there wasn’t any shells so to speak but there was the delightful rumble of the clattering stones as they were washed in and out on the waves. This was the sort of communing with nature I so desperately needed and it filled my soul with the greatest joy.
As I got back into my car and settled in to drive off another young woman drove in. Our eyes met through the car windows and we both gave each other only the biggest of smiles. It was a sweet and wholesome moment to end my trip out here.
All and all I think Moonstone was a wonderful place for a rock hound or introvert to poke at during the off season. I suspect in the summer its probably too peopled for my taste but to each their own!
If you grew up in New England you deffinately skipped rope to the sound of gleefully morbid children singing, “Lizzie Borden had an ax, gave her mother 40 whacks, when she saw what she had done she gave her father 41.” Before counting to the sound of the rope slapping the ground. The Lizzie Borden story is forever written in infamy – a grusome crime that was never officially solved. Was Lizzie, who was found by a neighbor burning a bloody dress guilty of such of crime? Or was the maid who claimed to be asleep in the house, or Lizzie’s sister Emma, or the mystery guest or uncle who showed up to town just two days before? Character reports of the murder victims painted them increasingly cruel over the years so whose to say who had an ax to grind with them? The people at the time did put Lizzie on trial (while heavily sedated by doctors to calm her nerves) and they found her innocent because ax murdering is just not something a proper lady of the time was capable of! Lizzie moved on, bought a different house across town, became a patron of the arts, took on the occasional mistress, and died a spinster, forever shunned by the people about town. And the house.. it remained more or less the same until someone decided to make it into an inn. Of course times are tough so it’s had to get creative to pay the bills. In addition to being an inn it also converted the barn to a gift shop and now hosts regular ghost tours and hunts. It sounded like a fun place to poke around.
We arrived early in hopes of finding parking and lucked out. There is a very small and hard to find parking lot but it only is comfortably big enough for four cars or so.
The tour started at registration in the little gift shop which was filled with all sorts of brutal memorabilia, the usual magnets and postcards scattered among black cat plushies and bloody ax pillows, and a whole corner devoted to ghost hunting devices – everything you could ever want in that department from simple EMF meters, to REM pods, to spirit boxes and more. Under glass at the counter there was a fun display of pottery fragments and metal things from the era that had been dug up on the property. Tonight the group was large consisting of I believe 19 people and the tour guide of course. Most of these people seemed to be young goths and couples looking for an interesting date night. I would expect no less. There was also one other family there with a small child who seemed quiet and content. We had come ourselves at the request of a very excited teenager and here we were!
After checking in we were led to a small kitchen and we all gathered around to be told the cliff notes version of the tale but this time it included the neighbors, relatives of the Bordens, who also witnessed murder in their household when the mother dropped her three babes in the well before slitting her own throat with a razorblade. Two of the children drown in the well while a third scrabbled her way out and survived the ordeal. Was it another attempt at a whole family murder at the hands of the husband or was this really the murder/suicide of a woman stricken with post partum psychosis in the days before medical science even had an inkling of such a thing? I guess no living person will know but we were told the children often skip on over here to talk with guests. And finally we were told of Max the cat who died at 21 just a week after his owners sold this house and moved. His paw prints and ghostly visage still showing up from time to time.
From here we were all given EMF meters to use and allowed to choose from a whole host of other ghost hunting goodies – spirit boxes, yes or no lights, dowsing rods, a thermal scanner, REM pods galore, one of those devices that puts green dots all over the place, headphones, cat toys that lit up when touched. We were given a brief instruction on all of them before being split up into two groups, one which got to go into the creepy basement first and one which got to play around the first floor where Andrew Borden met his fate. The top two floors were of course reserved for inn guests . And then we were basically off to free range and do as we pleased, as long as that wasn’t playing with a ouijia board!
Of course by now we had one super excited teenager and one who found the experience a little too scary at first – not appreciating the ghosts answering during device demonstrations nor the bloody manniken corpse on the couch at the site of the murder. But we encouraged her to get involved and ask questions of the yes/no light which would light up green for yes, red for no, and with quite a bit of coaxing she really warmed up to the yes/no box, so much so that in a few minutes it was just herself and I asking it questions and it was going off steadily, although at times it’d light up both red and green which was a bit confusing. That being said the lights were oddly comforting in their responses and she was able to see the ghosts here appeared to be of the friendly variety. Meanwhile my companion and the other teenager were in the dining room playing with dowsing rods and having just as much success. Hilariously both the dowsing rods and yes/no box appeared to prefer just the two people they were talking to keeping us separated into pairs for the time being though I did pop my head for a moment to see the dining room whose table had actual crime scene photos that despite being in black and white were no less horrific. There was just no recognizable face left on either corpse. That… that’s some potent familial rage there.
Other guests were in the other rooms playing joyfully with their chosen devices and apparently doing as well with them as us. I was pleasantly surprised. I sort of expected this to be a pretty boring tour-kind of exercise where we might hear one or two words on the spirit box so we could all oo and awe and come home but the amount of activity going on here was wild. I would have been happy with just that but on hour two we were instructed to switch with the other team and so we entered the creepy basement where we were shown a face in the bricks above a wash basin, a thermal photo of Max the cat’s ghost, pawprints in the paint also ascribed to Max, the luminol-sprayed and glowing blood stains that dripped from the floor above, and a room that was once used for seances and ouijia board readings.
At this point our whole group started in the room with the wash basin but it’d only be a moment or two before all three of them left me behind to poke at something else. So I found myself in a room with the yes/no box, a REM pod, a cat ball, an EMF Guage, and a set of dowsing rods at which point the yes/no box started going mental and blinking both lights without request, the REM pod started its high pitch squealing, the cat ball lit up, my EMF reader spiked all the way up, and just for shits and giggles I took out the dowsing rods which no matter where I stood just continued to point at the REM pod. What am I supposed to do with that? With everything going off and nothing stopping I resigned myself to find something else to do (mostly because the screaming from the REM pod was burrowing into my autistic brain and was irritating me more than I can express.) I left to find the teens both alone playing with the headphones and radio in the seance room. I made my way in and sat down. One held the earphones close to her head and stated words that she could hear as the radio flipped between stations. The other asked questions for a time but it got a bit mean-spirited and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I thought at first one may just be trying to scare the other with repeated words like, “death,” “die,” and “cemetery” but by the time it said, “go into the street” the mood didn’t seem jokey. Nonetheless teen two got up and demanded they get a turn with the headphones while teen one spooked out of a seeming trance and claimed to remember nothing of what they’d said. I shifted but continued to observe to make sure nothing got too out of hand. Teen two put the headphones on and started in on the same spooky malarkey. Teen one did not appreciate this and I think may have been a little spooked as well when they got up and put a stop to the whole experiment. Teen two left to see what everyone else was up to as teen one picked up the flashlight which had two settings – UV and normal light. They wanted to see the bloodstains so they put on the UV and directed it at the ceiling at which point it switched on its own to regular light. Annoyed they asked if we could turn out the light so we asked the guide coming around if that’d be alright. He agreed but the flashlight continued to switch. At this point the guide was curious and confused as we were. He took the flashlight and tried himself and it didn’t respond but upon handing it back to teen it switched three more times. He said it’d never done that before. None of us really knew what to make of it so we wandered off to see what my companion was up to. He was in a third room in the basement, in the dark, smiling the biggest grin I’ve ever seen him wear. His EMF meter was lit all the way and a group had formed here and was asking questions which were apparently being enthusiastically answered by the ringing of a little service bell. They believed they were talking to the drown children and were playing games with them. So at this point there’s three rooms in the basement and basically all of them were seeing an insane flurry of activity all at once. That is not what I expected! But the crowd was jubilant and we were all having a good time – until one young man sat in the seance room and put on the headphones. He immediately heard, “I hate you” and ripped them right off. So clearly whatever lives in that room is a turd to everyone. I felt a bit better for not yelling at the girls for being mean to each other as it really seemed to be just an angry ghost. I didn’t think I’d ever be saying that!
By now the night was winding to a close and our spooked teen was thoroughly involved and had a lot of fun but was still concerned about bringing something unwanted home. To appease the household spirits they gave a toy frog they had in their pocket to the tour guide to place in the room upstairs where guests had left all sorts of toys for the ghost children. I left my own tidings in the form if a tip to our gracious host for the evening who I must say wore a period top hat very well!
All and all it was a very exciting night and we were all absolutely tuckered out from all the activity. We did not get to go back to the gift shop which is a shame as we would have bought souvenirs but I did get a special memento in the form of a weird light/mist in one of my few photos which was coincidentally was in the same room as all the devices going on when I was in there alone.
Soooo, would I suggest a ghost hunt at the Lizzie Borden Inn? Absolutely! And having gone on one perhaps we shall join a ghost tour someday to learn more of the history. This place was a wild ride for sure!
This could quite possibly be the best place I have ever eaten. Dear God, did we find a winner with this one!
My companion had chosen this place because he wanted soup and he liked what they had on their online menu. When we got there, we realized there was live music (which was good!) as well as an assortment of games and Shakespearean books set aside each table in case we needed something to do while waiting. It was a typical Boston-styled pub, dark and loud, and I knew a place serving pub food was going to be my downfall. So. Much. Comfort Food. And a tin ceiling! Which was also really lovely. I watched out the windows at people walking by the Christmas tree across the street.
Of course, we were on vacation, so we ordered a ridiculous amount of food and tried it all starting with a molten cheese fondue pot that was served with pieces of baguette, kielbasa, broccoli and fingerling potatoes. Oh my God, those were all AMAZING. My favorite was actually the potatoes! This was an appetizer and we’d already eaten ourselves silly. We then had our soups, my companion had the French Onion and I went with the Hungarian Mushroom. He said his was pretty standard fair, wasn’t that impressed with it, but my mushroom? OH! It was so rich and earthy! It just felt like it was feeding my soul. I ate every drop despite already being full from the appetizer.
My main course was Chicken Pot Pie and my companion got Guiness Stew. Both absolutely checked off every box conceivable for comfort food and was exploding with flavor. We even exchanged a bite and his was as good as mine if not better! Very robust and beefy. Everything was a hit here and the service was quick and friendly and the live music playing just completed the whole ambiance. WE ARE SO COMING BACK HERE.
After a long day we wanted to come back to Bangor and find something to eat but after parking we decided we were close enough to this antique store to brave the negative degree winds and check out one more place. This was surprisingly large for being directly in the city but I guess Bangor isn’t that big of a city compared to others in New England where rent prices might be outrageous. As such it was easy to get to by foot and despite having an entrance that didn’t look spectacularly large it was two full floors of stuff!
The first floor looked like any Main Street antique store – just lots of stuff in cases and likely for higher price tags. There were coins, books, jewelry, and of course salt and pepper shakers which are a must! One of the walls had what really looked like a haunted photograph of a 1920’s or 30’s child star, though I couldn’t place the name. I also enjoyed finding a manual to oral birth control from the 60’s. What you should know about taking the new pill! Do tell me.
The basement was where the cheaper and weirder antiques were that were more our style. Bizarre squirrel taxidermy, retro Halloween decorations, TONS of paintings depicting pioneers fighting bears for some reason, old political cartoons, a few lovable cookie jars, and of course a haunted doll or two. This was a fun little jaunt to end the day, worth it if you’re already walking through Bangor and seeing the sights.
Two Old Goats Antiques was the second to last antique store we decided to visit and funny enough I don’t think we’d been there before even with a catchy business name!
The first thing I noticed walking in was a wooden whale on the wall that freakishly looked like it had human teeth (on closer inspection they were rocks but this somehow didn’t make it any less distressing to look at.) The second thing I noticed was the cutest goddamn pit mix wandering around greeting people and what a good pup she was! I did not steal her. I may have wanted to.
This shop was on the smaller side but the things in it were sufficiently weird to make me smile especially in their unheated garage section where I found a box of lawn darts on the floor. I’ve heard of lawn darts and how dangerous they were but I’d never seen them and was absolutely horrified to learn they weren’t the size of regular darts. These suckers were the size of soup cans and just as heavy with a goddamn spear on the end. No wonder they were taken off the market! How many jugulars did these flying death pokers hit?!
Other fun finds included a three-foot-tall soulless Easter Bunny with nothing but gaping black voids for eyes. The tag literally read, “Buy if you dare.” And I can appreciate the humor in that! I really liked this one painting of two weird carousel horses for 35 bucks, but I couldn’t justify buying it. I don’t have a wall to put it on but someday, should I ever gnaw my way out of Dickensian poverty I shall have the most glorious and bizarrely decorated house that ever existed, displaying all sorts of uncomfortable treasures from my trips to antique stores – deathly looking portraits of Victorian children, an iron piggy bank displaying a dentist ripping out the tooth of a small child, a row of haunted ventriloquist dummies, and the kind of folk art that will make you wonder if I bought it from a mental institution. Promises, promises!
It’s that time of year! Our few days of Maine vacation! And this was the first antique store that popped up on our radar. It was not disappointing – an expansive mall that seemed to go on for miles getting increasingly unhinged. Very Stephen King-like.
So many dolls! And they all looked so joyous to be probably haunted. Also an old ESP test card kit met us practically at the door. This place was going to be weird… and it was! The bric-a-bracs were just…. baffling. Clowns having tea, a fully dressed anthropomorphic elephant with a top hat, a “barber” holding his razor to some poor Joe’s throat?? WEIRD. Very weird. The kind of weird you shouldn’t look at for two long in case you become part of the display in the case. *Twilight Zone music plays*
There were also a few booths from local artists, a nice stockpile or uranium glass, an inordinate number of weird books, some distressingly well-done taxidermy, and some Christmas decorations that could have put Liberace to shame. HOLY GLITTER.
This place was definitely worth the drive. It was large and had something for everyone – even the all-out freaks. What’s not to love about that?
One of the surprising things about New England cemeteries is that they are some of the best places in the region to get GORGEOUS autumn photos of blushing trees turning vibrant yellow, orange, and red, especially if you go around noon to 2PM when the sun is behind them and they’re just glowing! This was the case with the Newton Cemetery on our last visit. We’d read it was not just a cemetery but an arboretum, or tree sanctuary of sorts, what better place to go leaf peeping!
I know most of my cemetery visits describe burials of historic figures or go on and on about how powerfully beautiful the monuments were but this cemetery’s character was almost entirely in the trees. Though there were a few interesting monuments of mourning women and mausoleums they were mostly drab and boring, the sort of stones you see in every cemetery, dull and conformist, new and uninspiring. But the landscape was sprawling and hilly with these gorgeous trees and duck ponds smattered all about. It brought my heart so much joy to see all the color! It was just phenomenal. What a wonderful way to wave goodbye to the last gasp of Autumn.
If you happen to be in the area the arboretum aspect of this cemetery would make for a lovely walk (and indeed there was a lot of people here doing just that on this particular day) but if you’re in it for the stones it may not be worth the travel, they just weren’t as brilliant as they could have been. That being said this was a FANTASTIC cemetery for fall foliage photos so if that’s what you’re looking it might be worth a little road trip!
I’m not going to lie – life circumstances right now have sapped me of any mental energies I may be taking to pick locations as of late, so this duty has been left to my usual travel companion and this location turned out to be a real gem!
Right in the gate there was this super sad statue in front of a geese filled duck pond, er geese pond? A fountain and fall foliage brought the whole scene together like some sort of morbid post card from beyond. And this place was huge! We hadn’t gone to find anyone in specific but we did hear this was a garden cemetery with a lot of gorgeous monuments and it did not disappoint!
Near the beginning we immediately came across a bizarre stone reading, “The Man Fortune, died 1798, buried September 13, 2013. Child of God, free at last.” The grammar was particularly confusing. Was this the Man Fortune as in a fortune of the Man family or a man named Fortune?? And what was up with the dates?! It was clearly a new stone.
As it turns out Fortune was this man’s name. He was a slave, born in Africa, who served under a local doctor who decided to take advantage of his death by using his corpse as a cadaver to dissect and teach other medical students since cadavers at the time were very hard to come by, there’s only so many criminals one can hang on a given year. We can be assured this was not agreed upon by Fortune himself prior to his death and insult was added to injury as his cadaver was rendered into a skeleton that then taught anatomy students and then took up residence in a local museum until the 1940’s under the name Larry. Eventually the origins of “Larry” was discovered almost 200 years later and he was taken down from display. It wasn’t until 2013 however that someone decided to give him a proper burial in the churchyard he was baptized in a year before his death. It was apparently a big news story that got national attention although now I didn’t see a single penny on his grave.
Beyond this there were a bunch of statues of mourning women scattered throughout the cemetery, an elk on a hill overlooking everything, and a few unique monuments as well. As expected in a cemetery of this sort of wealth we also came across a number of stone masons. Everything was just electrified by the blushing trees in the background, one was so golden we took a ton of shots of it, none of which showed just how vibrant yellow it really was. We spent a few hours wandering this place. It’s hilly and with every hill there’s a new view, none of them disappointing! This place was perfect for the would-be photographer looking for an afternoon out.
Although it does not have terribly many famous names here it was still worth a good walk through and the two hours it took to get there. We had an awesome time and I would highly recommend this place!
*Credit given to my BFF for taking the cover photo. His photographic skills often surpass my own and DAMN was that a brilliant photo!
