"Haunted Houses" - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Every house wherein Man has lived and died are haunted houses"


Dear Diary,


"It was a dark and stormy night..."  Yes, it was and my tour of the "haunted" Longfellow house in Portland was great.  The guide used Longfellow's poem Haunted Houses as his inspiration because he believed Longfellow was referring to his childhood home on Congress Street where we gathered.  I wasn't able to take interior shots but this is the front of the house processed like an old Daguerreotype, which was just becoming fashionable when the poem was written, around 1852.

Houses do have residual energy I think.  Old houses absorb it and it lingers in the very fiber of the house.  Some people feel it, most don't.  Several members of Longfellow's family died in this house and we heard their stories as costumed "apparitions" appeared briefly in doorways and on stairs and then disappeared.  It was very well done.  I've never really enjoyed the commercial "fright houses" that pop up at this time of year but this was just my cup of tea.

We are entering the "thin time" of Samhain in the Celtic tradition.  I've placed my ancestor stones on my dining table.  I made them last year when I was doing the on-line course, "Honoring Ancestors".  As I walked through the rooms last night you could just feel the energy of this notable Maine family.  My 5X and 6X great grandparents lived quite nearby and perhaps they even knew members of the Wadsworth or Longfellow family.  I would like to think they did.