Episode 43: The Schooner Seance

In 1841, the merchant schooner, The North Star, owned and operated by Wendell Aldrich, sank and everyone, including the crew and his young wife drowned. But is there more to the story than a shipwreck? Could there have been supernatural forces at work? Lucas investigates this historical case in hopes of shedding light on the tragic history of the Aldrich family.

Content Warning:  occult practices, black magic, murder, drowning, seances, spirit mediums, fire and burning, ghosts/spirits, revenge

Host: Chris Estes
Writer: Lucas Knight & Chris Estes
Senior Investigator: Lucas Knight
Sound Design: Chris Estes
Producer: Megan Meadows

Transcript

 Malevolent Maine

Episode 43: Schooner Seance 

Malevolent Maine is a horror podcast, and may contain material not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

INTRO: 

LUCAS: An elusive creature that may be able to communicate with Maine’s natural vegetation. An update into our ongoing investigation into the being known as the King Beyond the Desert. And a strange encounter in the woods with a woman who begs hunters for pieces of their kills. These are the stories we’ll be bringing you in the coming weeks.

Hi everyone. It’s Lucas. We want to thank everyone for listening. Here’s your every episode reminder to follow us on social media so you can get updates and interact with us. If you’ve got the means, consider joining the Malevolent Mob over on Patreon. For just a small monthly contribution you’ll get access to hours of side stories, including all six episodes of The Black Tarot and our soon to launch shows: Cardinal Sins and Witch’s Mark. 

As always, if you have a story of the unexplained or the supernatural, feel free to reach out to us. Who knows, your story may feature in a future episode! 

The room is cold and quiet. Dust dances through the air and the only sound you hear is your own breathing echoing back at you, muted and muffled by the walls of books, but you know you’re not alone. There’s something in here with you. SOmething you can't see, but you can feel in the air like an electrical charge. You turn, just as a book comes flying off the shelf, thrown by an unseen hand. Behind you the fireplace suddenly roars to life all on its own and you hear a furious, wailing shriek fill the small room. 

This is Malevolent Maine.

TITLE SEQUENCE

Batten down the hatches, MMers, we’re in for a bumpy ride. We had this episode all ready to share with you last season, but the activities of the witch covens we were covering preempted that. We’re excited to now bring it to you.

Maine has a long history of shipbuilding and sailing. When early settlers established communities here, they soon realized Maine with its over 3,000 miles of tidal coastline and its dense forests, was ideal for building ships. From there it became only natural to use those ships to send Maine’s tradable goods - mainly lumber, but also granite, lime, and even ice - to distant locations in return for other commodities.

The West Indies became a trade staple for Maine merchants. The island region, so named to distinguish it from India and the East Indies, or  south Asia, includes The Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and the Cayman islands, among others. In the early 19th Century, much of the islands had been deforested for the farming of sugarcane, and lumber was badly needed for construction. Maine became the natural trade partner and for the next century trade with the West Indies was a regular occurrence. Many exporters and shipowners became quite wealthy off the trade. 

Our story features one such merchant: Wendell Aldrich of Yarmouth. Alrich was a successful lumber merchant throughout much of the early 1800s. By the 1830s he had established himself as one of the premier exporters of Maine lumber to the island nation of Cuba. There, Aldrich would trade the wood for sugar which he brought back to Maine and sold to the local rum distilleries. There had been some rumors about Aldrich’s ship running some other things, living things, human things, but Aldrich had always firmly denied any involvement with the African slave trade. The whispers continued behind closed doors, but if Aldrich let them bother him he never let on.

Wendell Alsrich had married Frances Alcock, the literal girl next door in 1804, when he was nineteen and she eighteen. Few pictures exist of Mrs. Frances Aldrich, but those that do show a woman with dark hair and severe looks. It was said she rarely smiled, but often a wild light would come into her eyes when she was amused or had come upon a brilliant idea. 

It was well known that Mrs. Aldrich was a voracious reader, reading far more than just the King James Bible and the local newspapers. Frances Aldrich had a veritable library at the house Wendell had built for her with the money he had made trading lumber, and perhaps, more nefarious goods. It was said that she read any and every book she could get her hands on, including some that weren’t fit for polite conversation. Some thought these might be of a more salacious bent, like John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, but others claimed her private collection was of a more occult nature, including grimoires and books of rituals, along with several texts said to have been smuggled out of the temple of a Himmolayan death cult. 

LUCAS: One of the books believed to be in Frances Aldrich’s possession was Rituals of the Silent Ascendants, a book of secret rituals performed by the disciples of the Dark Sea, an ancient order of monks whose temple had been lost to antiquity. This group supposedly worshiped death and had rituals and spells that could allow a person to transcend their mortal end. There is no proof Mrs. Aldrich actually had this book, but several eyewitness accounts from known friends describe a book that appears to be eerily similar to other descriptions in historical sources. A partial copy of Rituals of the Silent Ascendants is in the archives of Armitage College, though it is not available for public viewing.

Mrs. Aldrich was keenly intelligent. Her sharp wit was more than a match for most people, including her husband, but by all accounts that’s exactly why he fell in love with her. She would often regale him with stories from the various books she had read, telling him about exotic places and people, and new ideas for understanding the world around him.

Aldrich saw his bride as at least an equal, if not a better. Everything they did was in partnership, and Mrs. Aldrich was known to sail with Wendell on his voyages to the West Indies, always looking for new stories and new knowledge.

For a time, life was good for the Aldriches. The lumber trade was making them a good deal of money and they lived quite comfortably. Many expected that the young couple would soon start a proper family, and it was known that both of them were hoping for a large brood of children.

Sadly, none ever came from their union. As time went on and the Aldriches grew older, from young adults, to middle aged, it was agreed upon by their friends and acquaintances that their hopes for a family had passed. Instead, each of the Aldriches threw themselves into their passions - he with shipping, and her with her books. Their marriage remained as strong as ever, at least publicly, but over time a distance grew between them. Frances traveled with Aldrich less and less, preferring to remain at home in the library she had constructed.

It was sometime around 1834, the year Wendell Aldrich turned 49 that he formed a business partnership and a friendship with Claude Lemendeux, the wealthy owner of a large plantation in Cuba. 

Lemendeux was originally from France and had relocated his family - his wife, nine children, and a house full of servants to Cuba to oversee the large plantation devoted to growing sugar cane, coffee beans, and molasses. Lemendeux was in his early sixties when Wendell Aldrich met him, and the two struck up an easy friendship. On the surface, the two men had a lot in common - wealthy merchants who were continuing to grow their fortunes - but there was one key difference between the two men: namely Lemendeux’s large family, something Aldrich desperately wanted.

It was at dinner one night, while his ship was being loaded with sugar to bring back to New England that Wendell Aldrich was introduced to Lemendeux’s youngest daughter, Adeline. Adeline was nineteen at the time, the second youngest of all the Lemendeux children. She was beautiful, full of youth and energy. It was said a light followed her around wherever she went and that everyone was happier in her company.

Wendell Aldrich and the young Adeline hit it off immediately, trading jokes and quips through dinner, with the latter providing Aldrich a tour of the property after the meal had concluded. It was said they talked long into the evening, with Aldrich telling her stories of New England’s rugged wilderness and the people who lived there.

The next day Aldrich set sail for home, and Adeline was there on the dock to wave goodbye.

LUCAS: What happened next comes from a journal kept by Benjamin Smith, the steward aboard Aldrich’s, the North Star. This journal was discovered in 1967 in a trunk of old books in Baltimore. Experts concluded the journal was authentic by matching certain historical facts, as well as hand writing samples from Smith on ship manifests and shipping invoices. 

According to the journal, Wendell Aldrich made three more trips to Cuba and spent more and more time with Lemendeux’s daughter. On the fourth trip back, in early spring of 1835, Aldrich invited his wife to accompany him on the voyage. After much coercing, Mrs. Aldrich agreed.

It is difficult to say why Aldrich insisted his wife come with him. Perhaps, his time with Adeline had reminded him of his own youth and the warmth he had felt for his wife and he hoped to rekindle that. It’s impossible to say. What is known is that by this time the married couple were hardly living together with Aldrich spending most of his time at sea, and Frances at home growing her book collection. Still, in April of 1835, the two, along with the crew, set sail for Cuba.

According to Benjamin Smith’s journal, which experts now believe was written some time in 1841, the Aldrich’s dined with the Lemendeux’s, as had become the captain’s custom when visiting Cuba, but returned to the ship nearly as soon as the meal had concluded. Smith noted that this was odd, because Aldrich was often a guest in Lemendeux’s mansion.

The ship set sail the following morning, and Smith noted a new iciness between husband and wife that he claimed had mostly thawed on the voyage down from Yarmouth. Roughly a day out port, the steward claimed to hear an argument between the Aldrich’s. He said the shouting had grown quite fierce and the two appeared heated.

He wrote that he had never seen Wendell Aldrich in such a fury and for a moment, Smith feared the captain would strike his wife and duty would force him to intervene. 

LUCAS: Instead, pushed to his limits by his wife’s accusations and curses, Wendell Aldrich grabbed his wife and threw her over the side of the ship. Benjamin Smith writes how time seemed to freeze for not only him, but Captain Aldrich as well. “I stood, rooted to the deck,” he wrote. “It was as if all the life had drained from the captain, and he slumped against the rail, as we heard the cries of Mrs. Aldrich, first lusty and full-throated, but quickly dying away all together. It was only when we could no longer hear her cries that the captain and I made eye contact. I don’t know what look of fear, terror, or confusion showed on my own face, the look I saw on his was twenty-fold worse.”

It’s hard to believe that Wendell Aldrich planned to murder his wife during the journey in the spring of 1835. What happened next, of course, seems to imply motive, but if Aldrich were looking to get rid of his wife, there were easier means than sailing her across the ocean with dozens of witnesses in sight.

No, what seems more likely is that Aldrich gave in to a fit of rage, and perhaps subconsciously acted on a feeling he hadn’t even realized he possessed. Things had cooled considerably between Aldrich and Frances over the years, and perhaps that coupled with his newfound friendship with Adeline Lemendeux and his wife’s fury at him, all mingled together in one horrible, unfathomable act.

What is known is that soon after returning to Yarmouth, Benjamin Smith was named captain of his own ship and the crew of the North Star was quietly shuttled off to different ships in Aldrich’s small fleet or let go all together. Mrs. Aldrich’s death was reported as a tragic accident - she was swept overboard while attempting to stargaze one night and was left behind before anyone realized what had happened. Attempts to rescue her were made, but in vain. No sign of the captain’s wife was ever found.

Anyone who could say otherwise had been discreetly removed from everyday life in Yarmouth, or were rewarded beyond their wildest measure. 

Slowly, life moved on from the tragedy. Wendell Aldrich mourned his wife and had a large monument erected in her honor in what is now the Old Ledge Cemetery on the Gilman Road in Yarmouth. The monument is still there, though like many of the memorials there, it is old and in a delicate state.

For all his grief, no one was surprised when in the late fall of 1835, just before winter set its icy grip on New England, Wendell Aldrich returned from Cuba with a new wife. Adeline Aldrich was just the bright spark that Wendell needed, his friends said. She brought a light and warmth to the home that had grown only colder since Frances’ death.

LUCAS: Things were good for the newlyweds for about a year. They continued to live in the home Aldrich had built for his first wife with very little changes made to the household. The couple was often seen arm-in-arm, walking the streets of Yarmouth, Wendell pointing out things that his French-born, Cuban wife was unfamiliar with or found amusing. Many said that Wendell appeared much younger than his fifty years, and there was speculation that soon little Aldrichs would fill the grand house on the hill.

After making it through her first Maine winter, Adeline began to show some strain on her usually bright smile. She was struggling to adapt, not just to the colder climate, but also  the harsher lifestyle. She had grown up the youngest daughter of a sugarcane plantation owner. She had been treated almost like royalty by those that worked for her father. Here in Maine, despite being the wife of a wealthy merchant, she found there were more expectations than she was used to. The cold winter had forced everyone to eke out a living, and Adeline wasn’t accustomed to such labor.

On top of that, many of Wendell’s friends and their wives were much older than the second Mrs. Aldrich. At only 21, Adeline didn’t have the same experiences that Wendell’s older friends had lived through. That, combined with the cultural difference, and the young woman soon found herself feeling isolated and alone. 

The one bright spot in Adeline Aldrich’s life was the dresses she had made at the local tailor. Farris’s Fine Clothes used to be located in downtown Yarmouth, near where Portland Street meets the Marina Road. It was where Wendell Aldrich had all of his suits made, and it was where he took his young bride for all the new dresses he piled her with.

Samuel Farris had made a name for himself designing men’s clothing for the upper class in the Yarmouth area, and his wife, Martha, designed the most elegant dresses. It was said that if you surveyed a Christmas Eve party of Yarmouth’s finest, all of them would be wearing Farris clothing.

By the time Adeline Aldrich first came to her, Martha Farris was well into her sixties, but for whatever reason the two women soon became fast friends. Once a month Adeline would come in for a new dress and after the fitting, she often found herself sticking around, helping the older woman sew it. 

The years went by, and again no children were born to the Aldriches. Some said the family was cursed. They hinted that the souls of those taken from Africa that Wendell had transported to the states, were blocking the birth of any child, stealing away their souls until the debt was paid.

While still young, the strain of the Maine winters had begun to line Adeline Aldrich’s face, and some of the warmth she had first brought to her husband’s home had faded. She was still regarded as one of the most beautiful women in town, but her smile came less and less and her laughter, once like a song, was now curt and polite.

It was on a June afternoon in 1941, nearly six years since he had first come to Maine, that the second Mrs. Aldrich confessed to her seamstress that she believed the home she lived in was haunted. 

It was a well-known “secret” that Martha Farris was a medicine woman. In her youth she was known to have practiced some of the old rites and ceremonies, what was commonly known as hedge magic - cures of colds, potions to make a man more virile…or sometimes less. She was known to perform more potent rituals for those who paid the right price and could keep their mouths shut. 

As time went on, she refined her practices. Focusing on the reading of palms and the diving of fortunes using a well worn deck of Tarot cards she had procured from a merchant who made frequent stops in Haiti. She had been known to borrow a book or two from the previous Mrs. Aldrich, and had in turn gifted her more than one curious tome she had come across.

As her more advanced years set in, Martha Farris became something of a spirit medium, performing seances and attempting to contact the other side. If there was someone who could help Adeline, it would be the seamstress.

LUCAS: Only one of Adeline Aldrich’s letters survived. It was written to her sister, Aurelie back in Havana, Cuba. It’s dated January 7, 1841, about six months before Adeline revealed to Martha Farris what she had come to believe. In the letter, Adeline wrote about the strange things she had witnessed since moving into Captain Aldrich’s home. Doors slammed on their own, candles guttered and went just as she or her husband sat down, though there was no draft in the room. In one passage, Adeline describes an encounter in the library, the one the previous Mrs. Aldrich had kept. “I rarely enter the library at all,” she wrote. “I would redo this room, but the Captain has forbidden it. Nothing has been touched in the room since the death of his first wife. He keeps it, I think, as a memorial to her, but I tell you it is as cold and lifeless as a tomb.” She goes on to explain that as she was searching for a book to read, one fell off the shelf on the other side of the room. When she went to retrieve it, another one fell where she had just been. A third, then a fourth fell from the shelves. She continues, “Suddenly the fireplace blazed to life as if an unseen hand had stoked it. I feared the fire would erupt from the stone to consume me, but it blazed quickly, then went out. I ran from the room then, scared for my life. Later, when the Captain returned to the library to inspect it, he found nothing out of place, as if no one, not even I, had been there at all.” 

Martha Farris had  become something of a local curiosity by 1841. She had done seances for several of the wealthier families in town, attempting to connect them with lost loved ones. All of these were done in the dark of night under a veil of secrecy. Seances had become quite popular in the 1800s, but the more conservative coastal Maine communities weren’t ready to talk about them openly in the light of day.

A seance typically involved a medium - a person said to be sensitive to the energies of the dead and who could communicate with them - leading a group, usually six to twelve individuals through a ritual to talk to the spirits of the departed. Often the medium would have everyone sit around a table and form a circle by holding hands. There could be side effects to the medium - producing ectoplasm - the residual energy of the dead, levitating, and falling into fits were common.

Many seances were shams - performance pieces mixed with a little carnival trickery. Often these kinds of seances would be performed in total or near complete darkness. A table could be made to “levitate” by use of a secret pedal beneath that the medium would press. Ectoplasm could be faked by a scarf dyed a bright color that would be swallowed and then regurgitated by the medium. Even cardboard-like cutouts of figures would be used to stand in for a spirit, manipulated by unseen assistants dressed all in black. These kinds of seances had the feel of a modern day haunted attraction or scary movie. They would startle the participants and elicit gasps of terror, but when the candles were relit and the medium safely sent packing, often the guests would laugh at their experience.

Others, however, produced far more serious results. To this day there are hundreds of seance experiences that cannot be explained by trickery or even modern day special effects. These ones often involved the medium knowing information that only the dead person would know and revealing it to the participants, temporary possessions of either the medium or the guests, objects flying across the room, or even physical manifestations of the dead. All of these were done in full light, with no outside influence.

Martha Farris, as near as we can tell, fell into this latter category. She does not appear to have been a fraud or a trickster, and she rarely performed these seances for mere entertainment. It’s highly likely that Farris was a true spiritual medium.

When the young Mrs. Aldrich told her seamstress about the strange happenings at her home, Martha Farris agreed to come to the house to investigate.

According to the story her husband would later tell, Farris instantly felt a negative energy when she entered the house. She said it was like a perpetual chill in the air, as if a window had been left open during the winter months, though this was the middle of summer. 

As she progressed through the house, Martha began to feel ill. At one point she swooned and Adeline Aldrich called for a cup of tea for the dressmaker. Farris reportedly took one drink of the tea before she flung it across the room, claiming to have seen a sinister reflection in its surface.

Finally, they came to the library, the room the previous Mrs. Aldrich had so lovingly curated. Martha Farris herself had been a guest in this room from time to time, but it took a tremendous effort for her to enter the abandoned room. She told her husband it was like someone was physically pushing against her or that she was moving through thick water. 

Once inside, Farris burned a cluster of herbs she had produced from a pocket, and traced strange symbols in the air with the smoke. As she moved about the room, drawing her glyphs, she muttered to herself, asking questions, and apparently communicating with someone…or something.

As Farris’s movements became more grandiose, and her voice rose, Adeline Aldrich explained that she felt an energy in the air, a tingle on her skin that made every nerve stand on end. Suddenly there came a loud sound, part scream, part ominous droning, and a dozen books flew from their shelf across the room, pelting the two women.

Both Mrs. Aldrich and Martha Farris rushed to the shelf where the books had been and found a secret compartment built into the bookshelf. Inside they found a collection of six tomes of potent black magic that the former Mrs. Aldrich had kept hidden. These, Farris wrapped in a white shawl she produced from another pocket, before binding them with a rosary and putting them in a lambskin bag.

When that ritual was complete, the two women retreated to the gardens. There, Martha revealed that she had been able to communicate directly with the presence she felt in the house, and the one that had been manifesting against Adeline.

She claimed that this apparition was the spirit of the previous Mrs. Aldrich, Frances, who had been turned into a supernatural being of complete rage.

LUCAS: The idea of a hate-being, a presence made of rage and fury, isn’t a unique concept. We encountered something similar when Mark and I visited the Ramsdell Lighthouse back in Episode 27. There, the theory was that the spirits of fallen unknown soldiers buried in a pauper’s grave commingled into a destructive, spiteful force. It’s possible, however, that Frances Aldrich, with her knowledge of the occult, coupled with the betrayal she felt upon learning of her husband’s feelings towards a younger woman and her violent and sudden death could have allowed her to become such a being on her own.

Martha Farris explained that it was only a piece of Frances Aldrich’s spirit that haunted the home - the spiteful, jealous portion who had seen the burgeoning romance between her husband and the plantation owner’s daughter and was now taking it out on the woman who had replaced her.

The rest of her spirit remained trapped in the place where her death occurred: on her husband’s ship: The North Star. 

According to Farris, there was only one way to be rid of the spirit. They would need to get together on the ship itself and conduct a seance. Martha would attempt to convince Frances Aldrich to move on and let go of her vendetta. But, the seamstress warned, all of the people who had been there the night the first Mrs. Aldrich had died must be present.

At first, Wendell Aldrich balked at the idea. He too had noticed the strange happenings around his home, but he was hesitant to go along with the seamstress’s plan. For one, it would mean rounding up all of the men who had been there that night; the men he had scattered to the winds so that no story of the night’s events could spread. Secondly, it would mean coming face to face with the spirit of his first wife, the woman he had tossed overboard and left for dead.

Adeline pleaded and eventually the merchant acquiesced. His young bride had convinced him that it was his first wife’s spirit that was preventing them from conceiving, and that with her soul finally laid to rest, they would be able to move on and start the family they always wanted. Wendell Aldrich was in his mid fifties and may have seen this as his last chance for an heir. In the end, he agreed.

It was in late August by the time Aldrich rounded up his former crew. Everyone, save for one man who had suffered a horrible accident involving a loose pallet of crates and died. Even Ben Smith, the former steward-turned-captain returned at his employer’s request. The men, together with Adeline Aldrich and Martha Farris sailed out of Yarmouth aboard the North Star.

The ship would never be seen again.

Martha Farris explained that the spirit of Frances Aldrich was trapped between this world and the next, her soul forever bound aboard the ship. She instructed the men to sail out until land was no longer visible and then drop anchor. There, they would perform the seance and attempt to exorcize the spirit.

As the sun began to set, Farris began laying out runes and strange circles on the deck of the ship. The majority of the crew retreated below deck as Captain Aldrich and his former steward set a table and chairs out on the deck. Martha Farris lit several candles and told Mr. Smith to keep the hood on the lantern pulled tightly closed.

Seated together around the table, the four of them began the seance. Farris called on the spirit of Frances Aldrich. As she did, the wind began to pick up from a gentle breeze to a howl. There had been no indication of a storm that evening, but as everyone knows, the weather in Maine can be quite fickle. Was the growing gale natural…or the scream of a betrayed wife?

Clouds gathered and drops of rain began to fall around them. Farris summoned the spirit to show itself, to reveal herself to those gathered.

At first it was faint, but soon they all heard the sound of a woman’s voice rising above the storm. It came from a distance, but it was growing stronger and stronger, as if the speaker grew closer. It was hard to make out the words, but then the voice raised in a large snarl.

The candles on the deck blew out and one of the riggings tore free. Ben Smith ran to secure it, grabbing the hooded ship’s lantern to offer him what feeble light it could.

At the table, Mrs. Aldrich grew pale and swayed back and forth, looking like the victim of an invisible game of tug-o-war. Wendell Aldrich’s face turned bright red, then purple, as if he were choking, but he kept sucking in deep, heaving breaths. Between them, Martha Farris kept calling to Frances Aldrich, imploring the ghost to reveal herself, to manifest before them.

The storm grew in intensity. Waves began to splash up over the side of the deck, and still the Aldriches and their medium sat as if both table and their chairs had sprouted roots and grown into the deck itself.

“Come, Frances!” The seamstress cried, as the torrential rain soaked the four people above the deck. “Come and get your revenge!”

Across the deck, struggling with the rope that kept flapping in the wind, Ben Smith looked back to the table. For a split second he thought he saw someone in the seat he had just vacated, a shadowy form of a woman, outlined in bluish light. He swore it looked like the previous Mrs. Aldrich. He watched as the ghostly woman reached out and grabbed onto the outstretched hands of her husband and the woman who had replaced her. Then she opened her mouth and a terrible shriek of fury issued forth.

As she screamed a gust of wind tore the lantern from Smith’s hand. It crashed against the back of Wendell Aldrich’s chair, spewing oil all across the table and the strange symbols Farris had drawn there. Despite the soaking rain, the flame from the lantern spread to the spilled oil and before Smith could react the three people seated at the table were engulfed in flames. Their screams mingled with the howling wind.

The former steward ran to the inferno, attempting to put out the flames by beating them with his jacket, but to no avail. Neither the Aldriches or the seamstress rose from their seats, but instead were consumed by the spreading fire.

In moments the entire ship was swallowed by flames. The last thing Ben Smith saw was the form of a woman, seemingly on fire, walking away across the tumultuous waves.

LUCAS: The crew of the North Star was never found. No trace of them or the ship were ever discovered. We can reasonably assume that at least some of them must have attempted an escape from the burning ship, but it appears that, to the man, they all died. Captain Wendell Aldrich and his wife were also never found and most likely died in the fire that consumed the ship. Three days after the North Star left port, the crew of another shipping vessel, the Mirage, captained by Arthur Willis, came upon a man floating on a piece of flotsam. He was horribly burned on nearly every inch of his body, but miraculously he was alive. They pulled him aboard their ship. Three days later, he awoke in a doctor’s office in Portland. It was some time before he was able to communicate, but eventually he was able to provide his name: Benjamin Smith. 

Smith would live for several more years, eventually penning the story of his experience in the very same journal that would be found over a hundred years later.

As for Martha Farris, she turned up in Yarmouth a week after the tragedy aboard the North Star. She came walking into town one morning, barefoot, her clothes singed, but otherwise unharmed. She remained tightlipped on what happened that night, but there was a strange smile on her face.

Two days later the Aldriches’ house burned to the ground. As near as anyone could tell, the fire started in the library of the first Mrs. Aldrich.

What happened that night at sea is unknown. All we have is the journal of a man who barely survived. Is it possible that Martha Farris communicated with the spirit of Frances Aldrich when she visited her library and learned the truth of her death? It seems likely, especially considering she requested everyone be there, and included the only witness to the murder to be a part of the seance.

Did she summon the spirit of her dead friend to enact revenge on the men who had slain her and the woman who had taken her place? Did Frances Aldrich manifest on the deck of the North Star and start the fire that would claim the lives of twenty-one people? Or was it more natural than that? Did a freak storm start the fire that sank the ship and years of guilt finally wore away at Benjamin Smith until his broken mind created a fanciful tale of supernatural revenge? We may never know.

Stay safe out there, Maine. 

Malevolent Maine is Lucas Knight, Tom Wilson, and myself, Chris Estes.

If you’d like to read more about our investigations check out our website at malevolentmaine.com

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Thank you for listening to Malevolent Maine.

And as always, stay safe out there, Maine.