Haunted Places in Portland, ME

The history

Portland's haunted ground is a port that has burned twice in the record collected here. The Maine Atlas account of Eastern Cemetery, at the base of Munjoy Hill overlooking Casco Bay, sets the first burning: residents buried there include hundreds who watched Portland — then called Falmouth — burn during the British bombardment of October 1775. The cemetery itself is older than the city around it on that account: established in 1668, roughly seven acres, the area's oldest public burial ground and on the National Register of Historic Places, with an estimated 7,000 buried there, among them ship captains, political leaders, Revolutionary War veterans, family members of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Black abolitionist Reuben Ruby. Its burials expanded into segregated sections for Quakers, Catholics, Black people and "Strangers," in the Atlas account's words, with the last interments in the mid-1800s, and the nonprofit Spirits Alive, formed in 2006, now conserves it and leads its tours.

The second burning is the one Portland's grandest house survived. Victoria Mansion, at 109 Danforth Street on its own site, was spared by the Great Fire of Portland in 1866, on the museum's own timeline — the Morses summered there for the first time that year. The house had been built in 1858–1860 as a summer home, following plans by architect Henry Austin of New Haven, with interiors by Gustave Herter and surfaces painted by Giuseppe Guidicini, in the Italianate villa style, its brownstone dressed at Portland's docks and carted to the site — all on the museum's About page collected. Its builder's money is part of its documented history, and the museum publishes it plainly: Ruggles Sylvester Morse, born 1814 in Leeds, Maine, made a fortune in New Orleans as a manager and co-owner of luxury hotels, and among his other investments were pharmaceuticals and the domestic slave economy — the Morses enslaved at least 27 Black and multiracial individuals in New Orleans, contributing to the accumulation of their fortune, in the museum's own words.

The deaths the museum itself documents in the house are four, across two families. Olive Morse's brother William Merrill, occupying the newly completed mansion with his wife Abigail while the Morses remained in Civil War New Orleans, died in the Mansion in December 1862, on the timeline. Ruggles Morse passed away in the Mansion in 1893. Olive sold it the next year, fully furnished, to J.R. Libby, the Biddeford department-store owner; J.R. Libby passed away in the Mansion in 1917, and Louisa Libby in 1923. The Libby family used it sparingly after 1929, the department store closed in 1935, the Hurricane of 1938 damaged its stained-glass skylight, and — on the museum's About page — it opened to the public as a museum in 1941, surviving intact with over 90% of its original interiors more than 160 years after construction.

The legend

This section is folklore — reported by the secondary accounts listed below, and never asserted as fact here.

Victoria Mansion's haunting, in the collected secondary accounts, attaches to its builder. The Press Hotel's haunted-Portland account, collected in search, calls the mansion not only an architectural masterpiece but a site rumoured to be haunted: built in the mid-19th century, it is said to be visited by spirits from its past, with eerie footsteps and strange apparitions reported by visitors and staff. The Peaks Island and Portland haunted-history account collected in search names the figure: the mansion is said to be haunted by the spirit of its original owner, Ruggles Sylvester Morse, who has been spotted wandering the halls late at night, with flickering lights and eerie footsteps echoing in empty rooms reported by guests and staff alike. The Ghost Walk account carried by the tour-booking pages in search adds two specific rooms, in its own telling: the carriage house is said to be a hotbed of paranormal activity in one version of that account, and in another the music room is the hotbed, with a seemingly haunted piano. All of those are reported accounts in secondary sources. The documented deaths in The history above are the museum's; a wandering Ruggles is the secondary accounts'.

The two walking tours carry the wider Old Port repertoire between them, in their operators' own descriptions. Wicked Walking Tours frames its material as pirates, witches and more, with factual dark history dating from the 1600s turned into theatre — Indian attacks and witch trials in its listings' spelling of the period material. Portland Ghosts frames its material as maritime: phantom sailors and revolutionary soldiers who still linger by the sea, lost fishing crews and 17th-century figures who still walk the coastal avenues long after sunset, in its own page's words. Eastern Cemetery, Portland's 1668 burial ground, stands in the wider accounts as the city's classic ghost ground — tales of ghostly figures wandering the graves in the Press Hotel account, and generations of Portland's dead including many whose spirits refuse to rest in the Ghost City Tours account collected in search. Those framings are the operators' and the accounts', labelled as such; no tour's full stop-by-stop repertoire was available in the material collected here, and none is invented.

Haunted today

Hountix lists 4 places in Portland, ME. Seasonal attractions keep their own open dates, so check each business's own site before you go.

• Eastern Cemetery — haunted place, 224 Congress St, Portland, ME 04101
• Fort Gorges — haunted place, Island in Casco Bay, Portland, ME (boat or kayak access)
• Victoria Mansion (Morse-Libby House) — haunted place, 109 Danforth St, Portland, ME 04101
• Wadsworth-Longfellow House — haunted place, 489 Congress St, Portland, ME 04101

Attraction stories

Victoria Mansion

Victoria Mansion publishes no lore about a real haunting on the pages collected, and its story here respects that: what its own site publishes is one of America's best-preserved Victorian houses and the full, unflinching history of the two families who lived and died in it, and that record is set out in The history above. From its own collected pages: also known as the Morse-Libby House, it began as a private residence before opening to the public as a museum in 1941; today it serves the Greater Portland community as a centre for history, exploration and wonder, its mission to conserve, maintain and restore the property and collections to the highest standards and interpret them in their social and historical context. Its homepage adds the scale of the survival: a triumph of 19th-century architecture and design, intact more than 160 years after construction with over 90% of its original interiors, and its current Forward Facing capital campaign — a five-year, $8 million initiative to create a world-class institution to steward the building. The practical visit is the museum's own: 109 Danforth Street, Portland, Maine 04101, phone (207) 772-4841, open May 1 to October 31 daily 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in season. Against that record, the secondary accounts report the haunting set out in The legend above — Ruggles Morse said to wander the halls, footsteps, flickering lights, a carriage house or music room called a paranormal hotbed. None of those reports appears on the museum's own collected pages. A museum that publishes its builder's enslavement income and its four documented deaths in the house, and leaves its ghost to other people's pages: that is Victoria Mansion's record, presented as such.

*Website: http://www.victoriamansion.org/*