ROFF HOUSE

Location: Roff House is located on the furthest town limits of White Cliffs, Maine, 55 miles east of Bangor over Pleasant Bay on the Maine Coast.

Description:  White Cliffs, Maine is a small quaint New England community surrounded by an open countryside and a small but modest population.  Sometimes called the Cliff House do to its proximity to the cliffs, Roff House is situated quite near to the local lighthouse which is also a local teenage meeting place. The many gabled Victorian has a roof covered with balustrades and an interior furnished with antiques. The wide property is surrounded by woods and foliage at the top of a thirty foot precipice.

Ghostly Manifestations: The Roff family has been natives of White Cliffs for over a hundred years. Their home has stood for over a hundred years, but after the death of Clay Roff’s wife, Ann, in 1990, he moved his family to a much bigger house closer to town and left the family house available to be sold. After a few tenants moved in and left, the house and grounds was sold to Laura Vellum and her daughter, Annalisse.

Possessed of baby doll good looks and a bit of psychic awareness, Annalisse took to the house immediately as she commenced with restoring the old over-grown garden. In the first few days of her work pulling weeds and cutting back bushes, she had an annoying feeling that she was being watched. She often found herself looking up to the house and even her bedroom on the top floor, but she never figured out why she felt she was being watched. Sometimes, there would be a figure in her bedroom window out the corner of her eye, but every time she looked up, the window would be empty.

Gradually, other things happened around her that made her believe that she was living in a haunted house. She saw the reflection of a younger blonde girl in the reflection of her mirror once as she was brushing her teeth. The sight of her actually caused her to nearly choke on her toothbrush. A few days later as she slept at night, she thought she felt someone get in bed with her. She turned round to see what it was, but no one was there. As she placed her hand to the space by her, it felt as if it was submerged in a bucket of freezing cold water. As she told her mother that she thought they had a ghost, her mother just smiled and humored her as if it were a joke.

Usually alone when her mother was off to work, Annalisse continued to see and hear things. She once heard music in the house and traced it to a radio up in the attic. She had not yet been up there yet since moving in to the house and she wasn’t sure how it came on. A few times, she heard crying up there and thought it was just birds, but as they seemed to be more human, she tried to find out who it was. As she entered the attic, she saw the brief image of the blonde girl before her once more, but then she vanished and passed through Annalisse as she fled downstairs. Annalisse was then struck with a name, “Mary.” She then did some research and recalled that Mary was the daughter of Clay Roff who had vanished after her mother died. Annalisse started wondering: if she was haunting the house, maybe she hadn’t run off after all.

Mary’s ghost seemed to become curious about Annalisse. Annalisse woke up several times during a week feeling that Mary was had been in the room watch her sleep. She started feeling she was seeing Mary a bit more often than usual around the house and grounds.

As Annalisse and her mother stayed in the house, other things occurred. Annalisse started sleepwalking. She had never done it before as she started wondering if Mary was using her to explore the boundaries beyond the house. In one such state, she actually walked to the Roff’s property in town and took Mary’s old horse for a ride through town. Remembering nothing of the experience later, Annalisse later learned that Mary’s horse had never let anyone else but Mary ride it.  

History: Roff House is believed to have been built sometime in the early Nineteenth century.  Ten to twelve generations of the Roffs lived there until 1990 when Ann Roff stumbled and fell to her death from the cliffs on the property. Her daughter, Mary, vanished soon after. Clay Roff married his second wife, Danielle, shortly thereafter and they had a new baby girl before another year passed. Danielle had been Mary’s doctor.

Laura Vellum with her daughter Annalisse purchased the house in March 1996.

Identity of Ghosts: Annalisse believes the ghost is that of Mary Roff and that she may be buried somewhere on the property. Sometimes her spirit acts a bit bi-polar with two different personalities, one friendly, and another dangerous. This is very typical for Mary because at the time she supposedly vanished, she was taking drugs to help her deal with her mother’s death.

Comments: “Buried Secrets” (1996), Loosely based on the Miles Mansion in VeVay, Indiana.