MAITLAND HOUSE
Location: The Maitland House is located off of Rural Route 10 in
Description: A rural white two-story house with a full attic and basement, the New England structure has half-moon windows and three bedrooms upstairs. It was briefly re-modeled Retro New Age, but has been converted back to its natural Colonial innocence.
Ghostly Manifestations: Charles and Delia Deets purchased the house in the spring
of 1988 shortly after the deaths of the previous owners in a car accident.
Delia started remodeling the house in her own eclectic style and personality,
which according to her stepdaughter, Lydia, did not sit well with the spirits
of the Maitlands.
Lydia Deets was a Gothic wearing teenager in
the Eighties. Possessing a short range of psychic awareness, she is now a
newspaper reporter who occasionally uses her psychic skills to help the police
or tag along on haunted house investigations. Her life in the Old Maitland
House helped her to open up her psychic awareness.
“My first encounter with the ghosts was
rather………” She slightly sways her head as she looks for the right word. “Anti-climactic. I was going through the
house shooting pictures to keep a record of what it looked like before my
mother trashed it and one of my pictures showed two faces staring down from the
attic. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Maybe they were my parents or workmen
looking down on me, but the truth is that the attic was locked and we didn’t
get up there until about a week later. That and the fact no one was in the
picture when I snapped it sort of told me that the images were something else.
I even showed the picture to people who knew the Maitlands and they agreed it was
them.”
Lydia’s stepmother, Delia, also had her
experiences, but she was not as rushed to openness with the afterlife as her
stepdaughter. Her and her half-brother were going through the house to convert
it to garish New Age when she saw a brief glimpse of someone rushing through
out the corner of her eye. She barely acknowledged it and went on with her
business. When they started going through the closets, they remarked later on
about a cold spot “as if dipping your hand into frozen water.”
Lydia carried on taking constant pictures
excited by the prospect of living in a haunted house. Most of her instant
Polaroid pictures showed nothing, but then two out of a whole sequence showed
vacuous floating shapes almost similar to people with sheets over their heads.
Dark holes even appeared where she expected their eyes to be.
“For the most part,” Lydia recalls in
retrospect. “They were harmless, but they really hated my stepmother. She
viciously rearranged their home and they retaliated by acting out. The shower
turned hot on her, things she put away vanished from her never to be seen
again, doors suddenly locked on her and kept imprisoning her in parts of the
house……….” She grins a little devious smile. “I loved it. I rooted for them.”
Lydia has seen them often passing though the
house. On one occasion, she was them dressed in their bridal clothes floating
in the living room.
Lydia’s father, Charles, emerged through it
as an untouched witness as Delia screamed and blamed his daughter even when she
was away from home during the activities. She eventually gave in and switched
the style of the house back to its New England charm and the hauntings abated.
Lydia said the ghosts retreated to the attic except for one.
“Beetlejuice.” She leans back with a grin. “My spirit guide. I don’t know what his real name is, but that’s what I call him.”
History: The moderately old farmhouse was built sometime in the 1940s and was the home for several families before the Maitlands acquired it. They were a young couple that lived in the house for a short time before they died after a brief few months residence. Their car crashed through the wooden bridge over Winterhaven Creek and they drowned while trapped in their car under water.
Identity: Most of the activity seems centered on the restless spirits of Adam and Sarah Maitland. The poltergeist that Lydia named Beetlejuice may also be connected to the house. She thinks he was a member of a previous family that lived there. She comments that he is quite a practical joker who likes moving and hiding things
Comments: Beetlejuice (1988) Hauntings based loosely on the motion picture.