Lore Alive 3: Under the Rug

Aaron Mahnke (0:01)

Every Friday this October, we're bringing one story from history to life with immersive sound design and talented actors to create an atmosphere that fits the tale. It's the style that you know from other shows I've made, like 13 Days of Halloween or Havoc Town, applied to true tales from history's darkest corners. This is Lore Alive. I've been at this for nearly 12 years now, and that means that I've told you hundreds of stories that sit at the intersection of history and folklore. Sometimes those tales are of a strange beast that roams the nearby woods, or maybe stories of a person who went too far, crossed the wrong line, and transitioned from normality to infamy.

Most though are legends of the things we leave behind, our pain, our troubles, our suffering. Sometimes those hard moments cut so deep that they leave a mark. They haunt us in more ways than one. By the way, this entire Halloween bonus series was made possible by the generous support of Warby Parker, my absolute favorite maker of prescription glasses. I've been a loyal customer of theirs for over a decade, and it means so much to have their support. More about that after the show.

For today's spooky tale, we're traveling north to Maine, where a tiny island in Penobscot Bay is home to a small community called Dark Harbor. And it's here that locals still whisper about a promising marriage that fell apart and the horrifying legend that took its place. There are no warm fuzzies here, my friend. Just anger and pain and terror.

And if you're ready, let's begin.

Sarah Palm (1:46)

There was a lump underneath the rug in the parlor.

You expect old houses to have quirks, poorly patched wiring, leaky pipes, creaks and groans from multiple lifetimes of settling. These things are not unusual. All of this is to be expected. And with a house as old as the one we bought, you have to accept the occasional haunting. A child who gets drowned in the bathtub, a gentle grandmother who drew her last breath from the bedroom down the hall. It's rare that you stumble upon something truly horrible that has somehow seeped into the floorboards and walls.

I do so love this house, but I do so wish I'd never laid eyes on it.

My husband and I moved here from New York. It was hard to leave. It's where we'd met in a graduate program that my husband, Charlie, still loves to name-drop 20-plus years later. And we lived there for a very long time after, nearly half of my life now.

But the city had begun making us both anxious in recent years. And so when my husband got brought on as a lecturer at a community college, well, we both decided that we could ride anywhere and that a change would do us a world of good. And it is lovely here in Dark Harbor, though I do find Mainers to be sometimes maddeningly closed off. I also find Winters to be interminable. On the whole, they can become claustrophobic even in this large house with the vast wilderness surrounding us.

It was six months into our time here when the disturbance began. One morning, I came down the stairs to find that every single piece of furniture in the parlor had been moved in the night. Sofas, chairs, end tables, all of it pushed against the walls of the room, leaving the center of the room bare, but for the rug.

We thought at first that someone had broken into the house in the night, but after inventorying everything, we came to the conclusion that nothing had been stolen. A sheriff's deputy suggested that perhaps it had been the work of local teenagers playing a prank. It seemed unlikely to me that they could have come up our gravel drive in the middle of the night, broken in, and moved our heavy furniture without our noticing, but I could find no other explanation. We moved the furniture back and went on with our lives, making sure each night that every door and window was locked.

And then the blood stain appeared.

Like before, I'd come down half asleep in the morning to brew coffee. The furniture was all where it should be. I didn't think to look down until my socks were wet. I cursed and bent to pull them off. Looking down, I saw it. Large and unmistakable, a massive red stain on the carpet. Again I called the police. Again they came, although this time in larger numbers, with more serious questions. They tested the DNA. It was, in fact, human. It didn't match either of ours, nor anyone in their database. No one had been reported missing in dark harbor for years. They passed it to the state, who promptly forgot about it. But I wouldn't. I'm a writer. How could I? First thing the next morning, I went into town hall, looking for records of who had lived in our house previously. The house was old and had seen many owners in its time. I wrote down the owner's names and cross-checked them at the library. Could there have been a death in the house? I found four obituaries of previous owners, though three of four had moved from the house before passing. I was only partly surprised that the fourth was a murder victim. Another cross-check against the micro-fiche records from the town's sole newspaper gave me all of the answers that I was looking for. There were breathless articles, many bordering on tabloid, reports of strange behavior, swatches of a diary published without meaningful omissions, as the editor-in-chief assured his readers. I printed everything out to peruse at my leisure at home. I present it here, back to you, without, I assure you, any meaningful omissions.