Walk Among the Shadows takes cemetery stroll down memory lane
It's four days before Halloween. Do you know where your chills are?
Here's an historically good bet: Walk Among the Shadows, a tour of the Eastern Cemetery that starts Wednesday night and continues Thursday and Friday. Guides take visitors through the 1668 burial ground linked to at least one ghost story, for a good cause.
Spirits Alive, the nonprofit group that looks after Eastern Cemetery at the foot of Munjoy Hill, also hopes to scare up interest in the maintenance and preservation of the cemetery as much as inspire shivers.
The tour features costumed actors from Waynflete School portraying those buried in Portland's oldest cemetery.
"It's not a haunted hayride by any means. It's definitely more historic and educational," said Jamie Kingman Rice, member of the board for Spirits Alive.
The goal isn't to frighten as much as intrigue, she explained.
"We're trying to promote the use of the cemetery and encourage people to think about it as a green space and to realize that it's available for people to visit, and we also use the funds from the tour to help conserve the stones and the landscaping of the cemetery," Rick said.
OK, that's not to say there won't be a a few eerie moments. Especially if fog rolls in tonight (if there's rain, the tour is canceled). Guests can look forward to the recounting of the tale of Lydia Carver, "ghost bride of Portland." She's the woman who drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Cape Elizabeth in 1807 and whose ghost reportedly still stalks the coast. Carver and her entire bridal party of 15 perished, according to local lore, and Eastern Cemetery is their last earthly resting place.
"The ship Charles wrecked off Richmond Island in the early 1800s, she was one of the ghosts from that, but there are a few people who were killed during the wreck that are buried there as well," Rice noted.
Anyone who glimpses Carver this week may want to take a second look. Most likely, that's one of the Waynflete School students, who wrote monologues and will act in costume during the tours.
Established in 1668, Eastern Cemetery is the oldest major cemetery in the city of Portland, with its earliest recorded burial in 1718. The cemetery is on the National Register of Historic Places.
From the famous to infamous, those buried in the cemetery represent a cross section of Portland's history.
Daniel Manley, one of Portland's first bank robbers, spent 12 years in prison after using a copied key to steal over $200,000 from the Cumberland Bank on Aug. 3, 1818. The story, recounted in 1938 in "Old Portland Town" by Herbert G. Jones, can be found in full at the Strange Maine blog (www.daapspace.daap.uc.edu/~murphyd4/pages/dan_manley.html).
Upon his death, Manley was buried in Eastern Cemetery with the epitaph, “Portland's First Bank Robber.” What happened to the loot? Reportedly, clam diggers in cahoots with Manley recovered the money from Scarborough Marsh and shared it with him after his release from prison.
Samuel Proctor, son of John Proctor, who was executed in the Salem witch trials, also makes an appearance during A Walk Among the Shadows. Also, Susan Bluefield, one of only two people who died during the Great Fire of 1866, will tell her story. So, too, will a famous survivor of the fire — Alice Greele, who lived, although her tavern, a famous relic from the Colonial Period, did not fare so well.
Greele was owner of the famous Mrs. Greele's Tavern, which stood on the corner of Congress and Hampshire Street, where the rebel county convention of Sept. 24, 1774 met, according to "Mr. Goodhue Remembers Portland," by Earle Shettleworth Jr. and William Barry of the Maine Historical Society.
In 1846, the building was cut in half and moved to Ingraham's Court off Washington Avenue, and the halves of the pub were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1866.
Greele earned fame during the British bombardment of Oct. 18, 1775, and is buried in the cemetery, although her grave has been lost.
"She rose to near legendary proportions during the British bombardment of Oct. 18, 1775, when she single handedly extinguished her burning tavern," Shettleworth Jr. and Barry wrote. "When a heated cannon ball landed in her yard, she scooped it up in a pan and threw it in an adjacent lane." History records her telling a passerby: "They will have to stop firing soon, for they have got out of bombs and are making new balls and can't wait for them to cool."
A different kind of war story will come to light as Spirits Alive remembers William Burrows and Samuel Blythe. During the War of 1812, Lieutenant Burrows died while in command of the brig Enterprise as a result of wounds he sustained during an engagement with the British brig HMS Boxer near Monhegan Island. Burrows and Blythe were interred next to each other in the Eastern Cemetery on Sept. 9, 1813. One of the 10 American sailors injured in the fight, Kervin Waters, was buried next to them two years later.
Legend has it that some of the graves from the Eastern Cemetery may have been moved and used as fill material for other housing developments in Portland. Surely there's a ghost story lurking in that historical tidbit. Rice said this legend may not stand up to scrutiny.
"There's some folklore about what happened to the graves, but I don't think there's any substantiated story on it. ...there is some folklore that they may have been used in other sections in building up the city, but there's nothing to prove that either way," she said.
The cemetery has changed over the centuries. Half of the burial grounds once was used as a public commons before an 1820 consolidation of the grounds, according to the Portland Public Works Department. Federal Street famously cut through the cemetery. The street was extended through the cemetery to Mountfort in 1868. To do this, a 12-foot wide swath of the cemetery had to be cut away, according to Spirits Alive.
Today, an eight-member board and a total of 25 "friends" make Spirits Alive an active organization that is busy recording the names on tombstones and maintaining the grounds. With winter approaching, a transcription project is wrapping up for the year. The goal, Rice said, is to create images of tombstones in a database that's available online for researchers. Transcriptionists are working in a section of the cemetery on the west end along Congress Street.
Spirits Alive also hopes to raise money to help the city replace a fence at the cemetery,
Many friends of the cemetery simply appreciate the value of this public space.
"I like the history of the cemetery. Some people are interested in the tombstones themselves. ... I think that it's an important piece of Portland history," Rice said. "It's in a position where the city kind of grew up around it. It's important to remind people that it's one of the only sections of Portland that looks as it did when people were being buried there in the 1600s. It's really a representation of what Portland looked like."
For more information about Walk Among the Shadows or Spirits Alive, visit www.spiritsalive.org.
On Friday and Saturday, just before 6 p.m. both nights, in a separate event, the Silver Stars acting troupe will feature excerpts from the “Spoon River Anthology.” Come hear the stories amid the tombstones of the historic cemetery from the mythical midwestern town of Spoon River — all spoken from the grave. Free and donations suggested. Call Sue Yandell at 899-1012 for more information.
INSET
SPIRITS ALIVE HOSTS 'WALK AMONG THE SHADOWS'
Tonight, Thursday night and Friday night, from 6:30-7:30 p.m. each night, Walk Among the Shadows will feature guided tours of the Eastern Cemetery, with young costumed actors from Waynflete School "portraying the interred in the background of eerie, dimly-lit, gravestone-filled scenery."
See and hear famous, albeit dead, Portlanders come to life and voice their strange tales!
Hear Lydia Carver, the Ghost Bride of Portland; Alice Greele, tavern owner during the Great Fire, Samuel Proctor, son of John Proctor of the Salem witch trials, and War of 1812 sea captains, William Burrows and Samuel Blythe. Tickets are $10 per person ($5 for children 12 and under) and payable at the gates; tours run every 10 minutes and last less than an hour. The event will be canceled in case of rain (call the tour hotline for the latest information on the day of the tour -- 318-2982).
Reservations are available. Leave a message with a reservation request (day, time, number of people) at: 318-2982 or email the details to: leana@spiritsalive.org. Expect to receive a confirmation if your requested time and date are available.
