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The Haunting of Ghost Road

Introduction This cemetery has a history so haunted it’s actually on a road called “Ghost Road”. We’re taking you with us as we explore Springfield, Maine’s Cushman Cemetery.

Why it’s called “Ghost Road” The history of this haunting isn’t exactly clear. No one is really sure why it’s haunted, or who haunts it, but there have been too many experiences by too many people to deny something weird happens out here.

First – we have the name of the road it’s on and how it got it’s name. The Ghost Road came into its name, it’s thought, because of this little blond haired girl that went missing and her body was never recovered.

There are 2 versions of this story floating around. The first is that the little girl was playing out near the road and a woman known by townspeople as the “Green Eyed Witch” stopped her horse and carriage to talk to the child. She beckoned the child to come closer and asked her get into the carriage. The little girl told the old lady she wasn’t allowed to go off with strangers and ran home, telling her parents when she got there. Her parents warned her to stay away from the woman, known as “The Green Eyed Witch” but some time later the girl was outside playing in the area of the road again, and when it was time to come home, she was nowhere to be found.

She and the “Green Eyed Witch” disappeared forever.

The other story goes like this – The little girl was out playing on her bike and the “Green Eyed Witch” drove up to her in a car and asked her if she wanted a ride home. The girl kindly refused, but a short time later, playing out on that same road, the girl went missing, and the “Green Eyed Witch” was never seen again, either.

The older generation will tell you they see an apparition of the girl, always on the road, and always at a distance. When she’s approached she disappears before anyone can make contact with her or talk to her in any way.

Reports by people in more recent times say she’s a blond haired little girl who’s seen riding her bike on the road. But the same thing happens when she’s approached. You can’t get too close before she disappears.

The Haunting of Cushman Cemetery

Cushman Cemetery has quite a haunted history, and while no one really knows why, there are few who have been here who have witnessed the weirdness who can deny it has a paranormal edge to it.

One of the earlier accounts of odd happenings occurred in the 1960’s when some of the civil war graves were unearthed. The townspeople say the graves were mysteriously opened, but a more logical assumption was that someone dug up the bodies to retrieve Civil War artifacts the soldiers may have been buried with, such as guns, bayonets, or medals. There was never any definite conclusion as to how the graves of these soldiers were opened, so the mystery remains to this day.

That said, there have been personal experiences documented by a wide range of witnesses who claim this cemetery is definitely haunted.

The first was the experience of 2 young boys who accidentally found the Cushman Cemetery off the side of the road. In a state of disrepair and really overgrown, it was in pretty bad shape. So they decided they’d clean it up.

They returned at a later date and brought garbage bags and rakes and things to clean up the area to make it look nice. At one point they came across this teddy bear over a grave. It had been there so long it was tangled in a mess of plants and weeds. They tugged it out of the entanglement and set it off to the side while they continued to rake and pick up trash. When they left, they forgot to put the bear back where they found it. When they returned the next time they looked for it, first thing, so they could return it to the grave site, but quickly realized it wasn’t where they put it.

When they went over to the grave they originally encountered it, they found it in the exact same position and circumstance they had seen it the first time. Entangled in weeds and plants, sitting beside this gravestone like it hadn’t been touched or moved in ages. After seeing the bear in this position, and knowing they had moved it the last time they were there, it freaked them out. They ran out of the cemetery area and out to the road. Just as they were making a mad dash for the road they heard a voice holler out from the cemetery “Help Me!”

They never went back.

Another account is of an older gentleman who was charged with conducting a land survey with a bunch of other men. Each member of the survey crew was assigned a specific area in and around Cushman Cemetery.

One man, in particular, was in charge of the area just off to the side of the cemetery and out of sight of the others. As he was doing his work he noticed the wind started to pick up and a storm was coming in fast. Before he knew it he was completely overwhelmed with darkness and leaves blowing around, the wind whipping things up from the ground, and branches flying all over the place. Clearly it was time to get back to the work truck.

So he headed out of the area and the closer he got to the road he noticed the storm was making its way out of the area.

When he reached the other guys on the job he commented about that quick storm that had just passed through, and they had no idea what he was talking about. They told him it’s been just as bright and sunny a few minutes ago as it was right then.

And for a more recent encore –

There’s a report of a witness account within the past few years where a couple of women were out hunting for gravestones for a genealogy project they were working on. We’re not sure if they found what they were looking for but when they came back out onto the road, after they were finished, one of them looked over into the brush and saw a little blond haired girl watching them.

They attempted to talk to her, but she didn’t talk back. She just watched them.

Noticing the girl was dressed in clothes that seemed a bit dated, they grew increasingly uneasy about the situation. After several attempts of trying to communicate it became clear there was something not right, here, and they fled the area in a very quick way, convinced they had just been in the presence of the ghost of the little girl said to haunt “Ghost Road”.

That’s basically what we know about the Cushman Cemetery on Ghost Road in Springfield, Maine.

There have been accounts of people hearing a little girl crying, and hearing their names called out by unseen people, but you can basically get the gist of why folks find this cemetery to be so haunted.

If you’d like to visit the Cushman Cemetery we ask that you do so with respect. Be curious, but be respectful, first. A haunted cemetery is not a paranormal playground. It’s sacred ground where people are buried, and we ask that you keep that in mind above all else.

The Ghost Road is located on Route 6 in Springfield and the cemetery itself is set off the side of the road. Not entirely obvious, but if you look, you can find it.

MaineGhostHunters November 7, 2023 8 min read 0

BlogMainely Histories & MysteriesVlog

Sarah Ware and the Haunting of Silver Lake

Introduction Over 100 years ago a murder took place here that was so brutal its victim has never been able to rest. Today we tell you the story of Sarah Ware and the haunting on the shores of Silver Lake.

The Story On the night September 17, 1898 Sarah Ware was making her way home by foot through the fields and streets of the tiny town of Bucksport when tragedy struck and she was never seen alive again. 2 weeks later she was found in an open field. She had been so beaten and brutalized her head fell off her body when it was picked up to be put into a wagon to be transported into town.

Although there were suspicions that one of the local men in town was a prime candidate for Sarah’s murder, the case against him took so much time to bring to trial that key evidence was lost and witnesses recanted their stories against him. The case against him was dropped and Sarah’s murder was never solved.

Who was Sarah Ware? Sarah was a 59 year old divorcee in 1898, a time when failed marriages were blamed entirely on the wife. She had grown children who had married and moved away, an ex-husband and his extended family – all who still lived in the same town as her, and no family support structure to help her through the hard times of being a single, financially destitute, woman with no established means to support herself.

Life was very hard for a single woman with limited means. Sarah depended on her neighbors in a tiny town where everyone knew each other, during a time when being associated with someone who was divorced wasn’t exactly great for their social reputation.

Sarah moved to Maine from Nova Scotia and her ex-husband’s family was actually from the town of Bucksport, and highly regarded within the community. So even though she had lived there a number of years, raising their children, reestablishing herself as a single woman was doing so among her husband’s peers, more than her own.

That said, Sarah made her way as best she could. She took odd jobs cleaning people’s houses and providing childcare services to whoever would hire her.

Mysteries of the Murder Who killed Sarah Ware? That’s what everyone wants to know. Who killed this woman and why?

If you read write-ups in blog entries or websites that tell her story, you’ll likely read that Sarah was a “woman of the night” or a “prostitute” but in historical documentation this isn’t supported all that strongly – or at all, for that matter. In highly researched documentation you’ll find that Sarah was a hard working woman who was prone to getting taken advantage of financially, and being stiffed for the jobs she’d done for people in town – mostly men.

On the night of her murder it was thought she was out and about collecting payment for the work she’d done in the previous week, and she’d arrived at one particular residence where she encountered trouble. This was the Treworgy residence. It was the home of a divorced father whose ex-wife left him and left their 2 young girls behind for him to raise. Sarah had worked here, at length, before quitting for not being paid, and some say, because the man of the house kept hitting on her and she wasn’t interested.

William Treworgy was known to be a guy with a really short fuse, a hot temper, and he would have been the last stop on Sarah’s way home. He also became “Suspect Number 1” when a bloody hammer with his initials were found with a bloody tarp, and witnesses came forward and told police he paid them to move Sarah’s body.

The Haunting of Silver Lake So why would Silver Lake be haunted?

One of the more obvious reasons this lake might be haunted is because it’s man-made and was put into place after a cemetery had already been established on the land that’s now covered with water. The graves were supposed to have been removed and reburied up on a hill overlooking this lake in the 1930’s, but there’s been this undying rumor that all the grave markers were moved, but not necessarily all of the bodies.

That said, more to the point of this blog entry; Sarah Ware’s murdered body was found not too far from the water’s edge, and you can walk a trail from Silver Lake that leads you closer to the exact location. But more importantly, her headless body was originally buried in a pauper’s grave at Silver Lake.

The story is that her body was moved along with all the others, and placed in Oak Hill Cemetery in town, to rest for eternity behind the graves of her mother-in-law and father-in-law in her ex-husband’s family plot, along with their daughter. But not everyone is convinced this actually happened, since her original place of burial was less prominent than those with headstones and clearly visible grave markers. There have been many witnesses who have come forward over the years who have stated they’ve seen her wandering the edge of the lake, or simply gazing out over it, still waiting for her killer to be brought to justice.

Conclusion Sarah Ware’s murder has been officially, and legally, considered unsolved, but the facts of the case still stand:

William Treworgy was the prime suspect because;

He knew Sarah Ware very well, given that she worked as a sort of live-in nanny for his children for an extended period of time, and they didn’t part ways on particularly amicable terms.

After her body was discovered, a bloody tarp was found next to a bloody hammer with his initials carved into it. And since Sarah’s head was clearly struck repeatedly with a blunt object, the hammer became a primary piece of evidence.

Witnesses came forward and told the police that he paid them to help him move Sarah’s body

By the time the case against him went to trial – years later – the sheriff and undertaker had already died, and a bunch of witnesses had either moved or had died.

A couple of those key witnesses were even thought to have been murdered before the trial. One was actually beaten to death.

Sarah’s head was of the utmost importance to the case so it was kept as evidence in a lock box and basically forgotten about for the next 80 years. Someone came across it in evidence lock-up and the discovery caused quite a stir amongst the present day population. It was finally allowed to be reunited with her body in her final resting place. The trouble is, Sarah’s head is thought to have been buried in the wrong location – a original place her body was buried – in a pauper’s grave. But, it’s thought her body was moved to another location within that same cemetery and her head was actually buried in a family plot in a completely different cemetery.

It’s no wonder why Sarah Ware might not be at rest, and why she could be haunting the edge of Silver Lake.

If you’d like to visit Silver Lake to try and catch of glimpse of Sarah for yourself, THIS IS HOW YOU GET THERE:

Put 362 Central Street – Bucksport, Maine into your GPS.

The road to Silver Lake Trails can be found just before this building.

DIRECTIONS

From Main Street in Bucksport, turn onto Central Street (beside MacLeod’s Restaurant and across from Fort Knox Park Inn). Follow Central Street approximately 1.8 miles and turn left into the parking area of Bucksport Public Works (362 Central Street). Follow signs for Silver Lake Trails to the left of the blue buildings and down a dirt drive to the parking area for the trail network. A kiosk with a trail map marks the trailhead.

MaineGhostHunters November 3, 2023 8 min read 0

The Haunting of Ghost Road

Sarah Ware and the Haunting of Silver Lake

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