Terror Tuesday: More Maine Haunts

It’s another Terror Tuesday and a living mist is crawling in off the sea, caressing unsuspecting tourists in its silvery blanket of tiny white teeth…oh, no, sorry, false alarm—it’s just diesel smoke…

Screened: Curse of the Werewolf. Probably my least favorite Hammer horror film, partly because of gory animal killing and partly because of Oliver Reed, the British Bill Shatner, whom I have never cared for. The werewolf looks pretty shoddy and the story, based on a French novel, is weakly transferred. Hammer’s production, as usual, is top notch, however.

Brides of Dracula. 1960 entry from Hammer and a supposed sequel to the excellent Horror of Dracula that starred Christopher Lee. Lee, however, is nowhere to be found in this film, which is probably the weakest (excepting the awful Satanic Rites of Dracula) of the Hammer Drac films. Not only is Lee nowhere to be found, but neither is Dracula. Instead we get a Baron who’s being kept manacled in a gloomy castle by his mother, who also brings him tasty buxom maidens to keep him alive. On a dark and dreary night, the Baroness brings her son a nubile French teacher, who in the expected bone-headed plot device lets the fang-banger out of his manacles. The Baron quickly turns his mother into a vampire, along with a couple village lovelies, and mayhem ensues. The high point of this film is Peter Cushing, reprising his role as Van Helsing. It’s not a bad movie, but David Peel as the threatening vampire leaves a lot to be desired and some of the plot is pretty loose. Without Lee, it is just another vampire movie.

Although Old Orchard is my hometown, I grew up mostly in Scarborough, Maine, the town next door. Also a coastal community, it has its share of ghost stories (and a wooly mammoth skeleton discovered in an old pond.) One such tale belongs to Massacre Pond, formerly called Black Point, the site of a horrendous bloodbath by Indians. The blood-drenched ghost of Richard “Crazy Eye” Stonewell haunts the pond where he was buried in 1697. Originally Stonewell’s wife and infant son were murdered by the Indians and he avenged them by killing every Indian he could find. I can find no refrence as to why he was called “Crazy Eye” but folks claim to see his bloody apparition to this day. So on certain nights, when the moon is misty and low, and the tang of sea air haunts the night wind, do the cries of Indians and shrieks of dying settlers still ring out? Does Stonewell cackle and wail? You’ll have to visit and judge for yourself. Alas, I neither saw nor heard a thing. The site is now located at Scarborough Beach State Park on the Black Point Road, so if per chance you happen to be in Southern Maine, stop by and bring your EVP recorders and old Polaroid cameras. You just might catch a glimpse of something unearthly…


My name is Chloe Everson…and I kick demon ass…
THE CHLOE FILES by Howard Hopkins
In the tradition of Sookie Stackhouse and Buffy, The Vampire Slayer…
In paperback from http://www.bn.com/ and http://www.amazon.com/