EP 215 - The Haunting of Seguin Island | Maine

Hometown Ghost Stories

This episode explores the maritime history and paranormal legends of Seguin Island, Maine. The hosts recount chilling tales ranging from a m

Key takeaways

• A lighthouse keeper allegedly committed murder-suicide after being driven to insanity by his wife's repetitive piano playing.
• President George Washington approved the plans for the Seguin light station in 1793.

Main topics

• Seguin Island hauntings
• Maritime shipwrecks

Notable quotes

The nights were long. The days were short in the winter season.

Conclusion

A hauntingly detailed look at how Maine's maritime tragedies have birt

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) I'm John Grylls from Creepy, and I listen to the Be Afraid Podcast Network. Speaker 3 (0:06) This week on Hometown Ghost Stories. A few miles off the coast of Maine sits Seguin Island, the home of one of the oldest lighthouse stations in the United States. For more than two centuries, lighthouse keepers, their families, and Coast Guard crews lived on this small island surrounded by some of New England's most dangerous waters. Over the years, Seguin has grown a reputation for some pretty unsettling paranormal occurrences. Strange apparitions, disembodied laughter, and a phantom piano song heard emanating from the lighthouse that some believe has ties to a dark story from the island's past. Join us as we delve into the history and hauntings of Seguin Island, Maine. Speaker 1 (0:56) Hometown Ghost Stories contains serious and often distressing events and is not intended for all audiences. Viewer discretion is advised. Speaker 4 (1:08) So I'll tell you a story. And this story takes place off the coast of Maine on an island called Seguin. And the purpose of this island was a lighthouse to warn sailors of impending doom. It takes place in the mid-19th century where a lighthouse keeper and his wife stayed for an extended period of time. And it was a long, lonely time. The nights were long. The days were short in the winter season. The storms were unrelenting. The lighthouse keeper noticed that his wife was growing bored. So he decided to get her something to entertain herself. He bought her a grand piano. When the piano arrived, it arrived with sheet music for one song. Now, she wasn't what anybody would call a maestro or a talented musician even, but she knew her way around the keyboard, and she dedicated herself to learning that one song. She practiced it day and night, hour after hour, again and again, over and over, correcting her mistakes, mastering her techniques. And once she had it down, she played it again and again, ingraining it into her memory. Speaker 4 (2:33) By this time, the lighthouse keeper was getting very, very sick of hearing the same song over and over. He felt like he was starting to go insane himself. And to remedy this, he decided to order her sheet music for new songs. But she wasn't interested in new songs. She was only interested in this one song. So despite her husband's efforts, she continued to play it over and over again, unaware of the impact it was having on her husband. Speaker 4 (3:05) The days went on, the nights were cold, and the lighthouse keeper found himself even lonelier than before he had bought his wife the piano. Because at least before, he had her company. But now, she was just incessantly playing this piano over and over again. The same song, the same notes, the same tune, the same melody, repetition, over and over and over. He was losing. His mind. One cloudy evening, just before dusk, the lighthouse keeper decided to go out and chop some firewood to try and distract himself from the monotony that his life had become. And after what only seemed like a few minutes of splitting logs, he heard it from inside the house. The piano. The same riff. Over and over again. And at that moment, something snapped. He grabbed the axe. He marched into the house. He kicked open the door. And he swung the axe, chopping into the piano that he had bought for his wife. Startled, she stumbled back. He swung the axe again and again, chopping over and over. Wood was splintering. Ivory keys were bursting. His wife kept screaming, but all he could hear was that piano riff. It wouldn't stop, even though the piano was in pieces on the floor. So what did he do? He turned to his wife, and he continued swinging the axe. The lighthouse keeper stood there, observing what he had done. A mangled mess of splintered wood, piano chords, blood, and guts. At that moment, he thought to himself, there was only one thing left for him to do. And he turned the axe on himself. Speaker 4 (5:18) This was over 150 years ago, and this lighthouse still stands on Seguin Island today. You can actually go to the island and visit this lighthouse. But if you do, you should know one thing. It's believed to be haunted. Recent accounts from modern lighthouse keepers have reported the sound of a piano being played despite nobody being in the building. And despite no piano being in the building. What's even creepier... as sailors who get close to the coast of this island report also hearing the faint distant sound of the piano playing that same repetitive tune over and over. I'm Dave Wilkins, and this is Hometown Ghost Stories, Seguin Island, Maine. Speaker 4 (6:28) Seguin Island sits about two and a half miles off the coast of Maine, near the mouth of the Kennebec River. The island was known to European explorers by at least 1607, when members of the Popham Colony Expedition anchored nearby before continuing up the Kennebec. By the late 1700s, increased shipping along the Maine coast made a lighthouse on Seguin increasingly important. In 1793, President George Washington approved plans for a light station, and the first lighthouse was completed a few years later. Revolutionary War veteran Major John Polareksky became its first keeper. The original wooden tower deteriorated quickly with the harsh coastal weather and was replaced by a stone lighthouse in 1819. A fog bill was added in 1837, and as shipping traffic continued to increase, the station was rebuilt again in 1857. That third lighthouse is the one that remains today. It has a first-order Fresnel lens, which is the largest lens class for American lighthouses, and sits 180 feet above sea level because of the island's elevation. For much of its history, Seguin wasn't occupied by just one keeper and his family. Assistant keepers and their families also lived at the station. Maintaining the light and the fog signal required constant work, and supplies had to be hauled from the island's landing up a steep hill. In 1985, a tramway was constructed to make transporting these supplies easier. The water surrounding Seguin also claimed the number of lives. In 1883, Captain Bradford Merry was aboard his ship, the Niger, when he was swept overboard off the coast of Seguin and drowned. In December 1890, the Canadian schooner Gondola was driven onto Seguin ledges during a gale. Five crewmen escaped, but Captain Perez Martin remained aboard. The ship was destroyed, and Martin disappeared. His body was never recovered. In 1940, 21-year-old Royal Chaney was living on Seguin when he invited a group of friends out to the island for a visit. At some point, Royal decided to take his lobster boat out to pull some traps and get some lobsters for his friends. The weather was rough, and apparently nobody thought much of Royal's absence until Assistant Lighthouse Keeper Maxwell Deshawn noticed something out on the water. It was Royal's boat. It was being thrown around in the heavy seas. rising into view and on the waves and then disappearing behind them. But from the island, Deshaun couldn't see anybody aboard. He contacted the Coast Guard and headed out toward the boat himself. According to his daughter Maxine, the conditions were so bad at the time, her father's boat completely disappeared from view behind the waves. It took him roughly half an hour just to reach Royal's boat and climb aboard, but the boat was empty. Royal was nowhere to be found. There was no way to know how long the boat had been drifting or exactly what had happened before Deshaun spotted it. One possibility was that Royal became tangled in the lines attached to his lobster traps and had been pulled overboard. So they began hauling the traps. One by one, the lines came up from beneath the water, but Royal wasn't attached to any of them. The Coast Guard searched the surrounding waters and dragged the area for days. They found nothing. Royal's body was never recovered. His mother was still on Seguin. According to Maxine, the loss sent her into shock. In the period that followed, the other residents kept an eye on her because she would walk down toward the shoreline and call out for her son. They were afraid that in her grief, she might fall from the rocks. Royal Chaney was never found, and no one ever learned exactly what happened to him in the waters off Seguin Island. Speaker 4 (10:17) The Coast Guard took control of the lighthouse in 1939 and continued staffing the island for several more decades. For generations, lighthouse keepers, Coast Guard personnel, and visitors to Seguin Island have reported strange activity inside and around the lighthouse. Some of the most common reports come from the tower itself. People have described unexplained footsteps on the spiral staircase, often sounding as though somebody is climbing the tower when nobody else is there. Others have reported hearing voices, laughter, and movement coming from empty areas of the station. Former Coast Guard personnel also reported seeing figures inside the lighthouse. One of the best known was described as an older man, sometimes called the Old Captain. According to accounts collected from the men who served on Seguin, the figure was seen wearing old-fashioned foul-weather clothing and climbing the lighthouse stairs before disappearing. One Coast Guardsman reported seeing the figure while playing checkers with another man. He looked up and saw somebody standing behind his opponent. When he asked who it was, the man turned around, but nobody was there. Speaker 4 (11:26) Aside from the phantom piano music that can be heard from time to time that I mentioned in the opening ghost story, there's another particular account that sticks out. And it happened in 1985 when the Coast Guard made the decision to automate the lighthouse. Automation meant that the staffed era of the station was ending. As the Coast Guard prepared the station, furniture was packed for removal. According to the Lighthouse Digest, the warrant officer supervising the operation went to sleep. Then... His bed began to shake. He woke to see an old man standing in oil skins at the foot of his bed. The apparition begged him not to take the furniture and to leave his home alone. Then, he disappeared. The officer apparently ran from the room in terror. And then, it gets weirder. The next day, despite the ghost's pleas, the furniture was loaded into a dory that was positioned on the track that led toward the water. The mechanism stopped, the restraining chain snapped, and sent the boat, packed with all of the furniture, plummeting into the water. It sank to the bottom of the ocean, with all the furniture on it. One of the spirits most commonly reported on Seguin Island is that of a young girl. Speaker 4 (12:37) According to accounts collected from former Coast Guard keepers, several men stationed on the island claimed to have seen a little girl running up and down the lighthouse stairs. She would sometimes wave at them before disappearing, while others reported hearing a child's laughter when no children were nearby. Local tradition holds that a young girl once died on Seguin and that her parents buried her somewhere near the generator house. Who she was, when she died, and how she died are unknown, and no surviving record has been found that positively identifies her. Over the years, caretakers Speaker 3 (13:11) and visitors have Speaker 4 (13:12) reported similar encounters. The girl has supposedly been seen running around the grounds and gardens, laughing and smiling. Some witnesses have also reported unexplained coughing, while others have heard what sounds like a ball bouncing in an upstairs room of the keeper's house. I'll end with this story that isn't actually a ghost story, but it's a crazy one nonetheless. In September of 1949, Coast Guardsman Daniel Irvine returned to Seguin Island with his wife Joyce and their two young children. To get from the landing to the lighthouse, the family climbed aboard the island's tram, a small flat car pulled by cable up a steep 750-foot track. Daniel and Joyce had made the trip before, and everything seemed normal as the car climbed the hill. But when it reached the top, Daniel noticed something was wrong. Rather than stopping and settling into place, the car began rolling backwards. Daniel grabbed their two-month-old son, Daniel Jr., and jumped from the moving car. Joyce was still aboard with their 18-month-old daughter Millie and a small dog. The tram began picking up speed. Daniel shouted to his wife to get Millie off the car. About a quarter of the way down the hill, the tracks passed over a patch of grass only a few feet below. As the tram raced over it, Joyce picked up her daughter and threw her from the car. The baby landed safely, but by then the car was moving too fast for Joyce to follow. She was now alone as the car continued accelerating down the hill. About 250 feet from the bottom, the wheels jumped the rails. The tram twisted sideways, but somehow remained on the trestle, its wheels dragging across the wooden ties and slowing it down. Then it reached the bottom. The car slammed into the bumper, throwing Joyce into the air, but somehow she survived. Speaker 4 (15:01) She suffered a broken thigh along with cuts and bruises and was eventually taken to a hospital and bath. The Coast Guard officer who investigated the accident later said he didn't know how she had survived it. He believed the tram jumping the rails and the resulting friction slowing it down probably saved her life. The accident effectively ended a long-standing tradition on Seguin Island. Afterward, the Coast Guard prohibited its personnel and their families from using the tram. The fact that Joyce was able to save her daughter by tossing her from a runaway tram is nothing short of astounding. Little Millie got to live a full life, passing away just earlier this year in February. And even though the light is automated and no lighthouse keeper occupies the building, when the night comes and the fog rolls in and that phantom piano tune comes echoing across the water, you can be sure that it's occupied by something. Speaker 3 (16:14) What is going on ladies and gentlemen, welcome into Hometown Ghost Stories episode number 215. I'm Jesse Wilkins joined by Rob Coakley. Hello Rob. Speaker 2 (16:21) I love haunted lighthouses. This one was especially spooky and we have axes. Speaker 3 (16:29) Yes, yes there was an axe story. We're also joined by Dave Wilkins. Hello Dave. Speaker 4 (16:34) Hi, I love a good axe story. Although this one was... Pretty bad. I guess they're all pretty bad. There's a few X stories where one person hacks up another person that are happy stories. Speaker 2 (16:48) Very few. Can you find me one? Almost none. I'll work on that. Just so I can hear the contrast between the two. Less Speaker 3 (16:56) than 10, probably. Probably. Speaker 3 (17:01) What's up, everybody? Hanging out in live chat. We appreciate you all for joining us on this Tuesday evening. If you're listening to the podcast or if you're watching back this video, you can join in the live chat here and get your comments read out. You can just be a part of the show. Just join us every Tuesday at 9 o'clock Eastern Standard Time right here on YouTube, Facebook, Twitch. We stream and we are joined by many beautiful people who are in chat. And shout out to... I think it was Aaron who has no power, but he's just plugged in in his car right now. So we appreciate the dedication there. We got 20 gifted memberships in YouTube from Whisper. Thank you so much, Whisper. Happy to announce that Block Island has officially sold out again. Yeah. Speaker 2 (17:45) We're Speaker 3 (17:46) good Speaker 2 (17:46) this time. There are no more rooms. Beth C bought the last one. She's in chat tonight. Thank you for purchasing that room. We are sold out of rooms on Block Island. So thank you all that did purchase a room. If you do want to join us, you might have to, you know, book your own accommodations. We might be able to fit one or two more into the investigations if you wanted to go that route. But message us if that's something you were interested in. But again, thank you to everybody. Also, another way you can support us is over on Patreon. And this week, well, this month, actually, Dave did a special episode for our Warren's Wards and our VIPs where he created a game show that me and Jesse had to compete against each other. No spoilers in the