The theme for Week 45 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge is a fun one – Ghost Story! I’ve had a few strange things happen to me – mostly premonitions – but I’ve never seen a ghost. For the record, and to quote the Cowardly Lion, “I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks. I do, I do I do, I do!” Because no ghost stories have been passed down through my direct family, I reached out to extended family members to see if they had any spooky experiences. I learned from my mom’s cousin that my Grandaunt Diane and Granduncle Henry Wing lived in a haunted house. They purchased the home on Mitchell Street in Westbrook in 1977 when they moved back to Maine from Connecticut. Located in the same neighborhood where Diane grew up, and the same neighborhood where her father, only brother, and nieces and nephews were living, it seemed perfect.
The Wings purchased the home from Evelyn Bellefeuille after her husband Ovide’s death. Evelyn grew up there and she and Ovide purchased the house from her parents, Arthur and Josephine Lavigne. These Lavignes weren’t directly related to us, but we share common relatives. Arthur Lavigne was the brother of Joseph Lavigne, the husband of Mary Anne Duchesne – my great-great grandmother, Georgiana’s sister. In simple terms, this means Evelyn Bellefeuille and my great-grandfather, William Laviolette, shared first cousins, but were not related to each other. As I recounted in a previous post about that neighborhood, just about everyone was related or almost related somehow. It was a community within itself with strong ties to the French-Catholic church.
The house was supposedly haunted by a little boy. The way my mom’s cousin remembers the story, Evelyn’s brother was accidentally shot in the stomach while he was hunting with friends. The wounded 12-year-old was brought into the kitchen of his home for treatment, but regrettably didn’t survive his injuries. He was buried in the old St. Hyacinth’s Cemetery, and the family couldn’t afford a gravestone at the time of his passing. By the time they could afford one, they were no longer able to locate the grave, so instead they put the stone on their property by a tree to honor him.
While being unable to locate the grave sounded somewhat implausible to the Wings, it tracks with a story my grandfather wrote about the cemetery. He was a church historian for St. Hyacinth’s, and claims part of the cemetery was known as the “Old Iron Cross” section because the graves there were marked with numbered iron crosses. Families that wished to do so could erect their own markers, but many opted not to, likely due to the cost. At some point between WWI and WWII, vandals ripped up and destroyed many of these iron markers. During WWII, the remaining crosses were removed and melted down for scrap metal to support the war effort. Surviving church records list some, but not all of the graves in that section. Grampy Phil compiled a list of the St. Hyacinth’s burials, which can be found here on the Westbrook Historical Society’s website.
When Di and Henry took ownership of the house, they were told two important things: don’t move the gravestone by the tree in the front yard and don’t mess with the unfinished room at the top of the stairs, which belonged to the boy. They didn’t listen.
They moved the gravestone. They thought the unfinished room at the top of the stairs was creepy with all of its religious iconography and palm leaves. They decided to refinish the room. As soon as the room was emptied, strange things began to happen. The kitchen where the boy had died and where the viewing had been held filled with the cloying aroma of flowers, like you’d smell at a funeral home, and the room became ice-cold. They tried everything they could think of to eradicate the smell, but nothing helped. Thoroughly freaked out, they abandoned any plans they had for the room, put everything back the way it was, and padlocked the door. They returned the gravestone to its original place. After that, the house settled down, though there were still unexplained, strange noises, and the feeling of being watched. My mom’s cousin said sleeping there always made her feel uncomfortable. She was in her late teens when her parents bought the place, and she experienced an overwhelming sense of dread every night before she fell asleep, as though she wouldn’t wake up in the morning. She moved out as soon as she was able.
One of Diane and Henry’s granddaughters says she recalls hearing footsteps upstairs in her grandparents’ house and remembers lights occasionally flickering. Her grandparents eventually sold the home to the Peavy family. One of the children who moved in claims they saw a boy in the basement.
My mom’s cousin gave me a bit of history about the house. It started off as two rooms that were pulled up the hill from Lincoln Street by Arthur Lavigne. Additional rooms were added to the home, and with the additions came new cellar spaces. She remembers the cellar as large and creepy, with several rooms and a toilet. While doing renovations, the wall fell off the upstairs bathroom, so the family had to use the spooky cellar toilet until it was repaired. Toilets in cellars weren’t that unusual in pre-WWII houses. There was one in the house I grew up in, and I came across an article that covers a couple of theories on why these toilets existed. Having used my own cellar toilet a time or two growing up, I wholeheartedly agree that it’s an unsettling experience! My house definitely wasn’t haunted, but I always had the heebie-jeebies when I used it.
Me being me and having an overabundance of curiosity, I wanted to know more about the alleged ghost. Who was this 12-year-old boy who died? How accurate was the story of his untimely death? I had already traced this Lavigne family to see if they were related to mine. Arthur and Josephine Lavigne had three sons in addition to their daughter, Evelyn. Their first son was a preemie who died at birth. They had another son named Henry who died in 1998. That left the final son -- Albert. He was born in 1914, and was on the 1920 census with his parents, but absent from the 1930 census. If he died at the age of 12, he would have died around 1926, however, I couldn’t find a death record for Albert Lavigne between 1920-1930, even though I tried variations of the spelling. I also couldn’t find any mention of him in the newspaper – not even a mention of a boy in the area who was shot.
Frustrated by the lack of facts to prove the grave belonged to Arthur, my mom suggested that I reach out to Ovide and Evelyn Bellefeuille’s daughter, who is still living. Guys, I have reached a whole new level of genealogy obsession. It’s strange enough that I use a combination of obituaries and social media to track down distant relatives to answer questions about our shared family history, but this time I did it to track down someone who wasn’t even related to me. I’m like a dog with a bone when it comes to uncovering the facts, and in lieu of a death certificate or a newspaper account of the accident, this was my only chance of learning the real story.
When oral history is passed down, it’s like a game of telephone, and details get distorted over time. Sometimes our own minds fill in the missing pieces. I vaguely remember seeing that stone as a young child and could have sworn someone told me it belonged to Debbie – Diane and Henry’s first child who died as a toddler. My mom and her siblings all said they remember something about a gravestone, but couldn’t remember the specifics. When I mentioned the hunting accident, it rang a bell, but none recalled the story or the stone with any great detail. Diane, who heard the story from someone, shared it with her daughter back in the late 1970s when they bought the house. She shared it with me last week in 2022. So how do we differentiate between the facts, the distortions due to retellings, and what the various storytellers’ minds were filling in? The closer I could get to Albert’s relatives, and possibly the original source of the story, the better. Surprisingly, I lucked out. I located the Bellefeuille’s daughter, who was Albert Lavigne’s niece, and she graciously agreed to speak with me, despite how weird it must have been to essentially hear from a stranger, “Hey, I’m Connie and Phil LaViolet’s granddaughter. Whose grave is at the haunted house you grew up in? You know -- the one your mom sold my Aunt Diane and Uncle Henry?”
Yeah, that's weird! She was kind about it, and we had a nice chat about the old neighborhood.
The Bellefeuille’s daughter confirmed that the grave did belong to her Uncle Albert, and the story of his death was more or less true. Again, it’s like the telephone game – some of the details were a little off. Albert died while out hunting in the field by their house, but he was by himself and not with a group of friends. He leaned his gun up against the fence, and when he jumped the fence, it somehow went off. Maybe he kicked it. Maybe it fell over. No one knows for certain. His body was taken into the kitchen, but there was no need to call for the doctor – the poor boy was already gone when they found him. She also confirmed my theory that Albert’s actual grave was lost because it was in the section of St. Hyacinth’s Cemetery that was destroyed. Her grandparents even went to the parish to see if they could help them locate the grave, but they no longer had the burial records. That’s why the headstone was placed by a lilac bush at the front of the house instead of at the cemetery.
I asked the Bellefeuille’s daughter if she experienced anything odd in the house. She lived there from the time she was born until she was 19, and had no ghostly encounters, nor did her mother ever mention any supernatural experiences to her. When I asked about the room at the top of the stairs, she said that as far as she knows, it was always just a storage room and never belonged to Albert. She vividly remembered the layout of the house well and went through a mental map of all the bedrooms and to whom they belonged. She remembers which room was Albert’s and is certain it wasn’t the storage room.
A gravestone on a property – even if it is more of a memorial than an actual grave marker – is an unusual feature. It’s easy to see how such a house could acquire the reputation of being haunted. Does the ghost of young Albert Lavigne haunt the house on Mitchell Street? Did his spirit quietly watch his family members from the shadows only to kick up a ruckus when the Wing family moved in and began changing things around? Is there a logical explanation for the floral aroma in the kitchen and the chill in the air, or was it a restless spirit? I’m left believing both parties because I have no reason to doubt either. I believe Albert’s niece never experienced anything strange in her childhood home ... but I also believe my Aunt Diane did.
I grew up in that house, feel free to reach out to me for details about my encounters with “Albert” epeavey85@gmail.com