Description: Two stories tall from the front with a three story high dome, Hill House is a massive and intimidating fortress-like structure behind a high stonewall and vine-entwisted front gate. The Gothic Romanesque stone structure is a regal and palatial style edifice, round in shape with bedrooms on the outer perimeter around a great hall that doubles as a ballroom. It has huge wooden front doors and a preserved interior with a museum-like atmosphere radiating heightened opulence with an arrogant air. Baroque sculptures and excessive carvings cover the majority of the great mansion to the point that there are barely any empty corners through the maze-like interior. The main hall has a high ceiling, parquet floor and a grand staircase flanked at the top by staircases to the third floor. Numerous chimneys highlight the roof as nearly each bedroom has its own fireplace. One section of the house has been built into a green house, now filled with dried out plants and vines.

Ghostly Manifestations: Hill House has largely a reputation for being haunted, but in truth, very few hauntings have ever come from out of its walls. Partly because of this is the fact that it has barely been lived in since Abigail Crain passed away in 1948. The huge domicile does have an overwhelming and intimidating presence in addition to its sensory deprivation atmosphere, which somehow preys on the fears and imaginations of its visitors.

In 1963, parapsychologist John Markway visited the house to confirm the stories of the ghosts. Accompanied by three others, he was able to confirm a few of the activity reported, describing a sudden vibration across an untouched harp and numerous strange sounds varying from modest rapping sounds to loud pounding from throughout the huge structure. The pounding noises sometimes sound as if a massive person is marching over the top floor, but then, Markway concedes that the size of the edifice straining against itself causes grinding and groaning noises.

His first night, Markway and the young assistant with him noticed a stray dog on the property and followed it off the estate trying to befriend it. When they returned to the house, they heard screaming from upstairs from the two ladies on the investigation. They were both huddled in the same room scared out of their wits because they said someone, or something, had been trying to break into the room. Markway later wondered if the phantom mutt was supposed to be leading him away from the house on purpose.

Sounds on the estate range from the distant sounds of children and disembodied voices. One of his crew heard her name being called several times - close enough to be heard but vague enough that it had to be far away from her. The thought that the ghosts knew her by name greatly concerned her. On one occasion, the voice even impersonated Markway himself.

The most haunted room in the house is supposed to be the nursery that sits forebodingly and ominously at the end of the hall at the top of the third floor landing. This is the room that Abigail Crain lived in for all her life. Quite possibly the most intimidating room in the entire house because of its lack of windows, this room has been haunted by a fierce pounding that hits the wall and echoes through the house. Legend says that Abigail’s ghost still strikes the wall calling for a servant who is no longer there.

A cold spot was found outside this room during Markway’s investigation. He later believed a breeze coming through the house caused it. Sometimes, the coldness pervades the entire house, causing the breaths of the investigators to mist.

In 1999, Dr. David Marrow conducted his own investigation of the house and its ghosts for one week. Most of his observations matched Markway’s along with a few added manifestations such as children’s voices from empty halls. He also reported unusual distortion effects that appeared in mirror reflections. His cell phone did not want to work in parts of the house. During the stay, the heavily ornate ceiling in one of the bedrooms inexplicably collapsed and pinned one of his female witnesses to her bed while coming just short of killing her. One researcher peering at a water-damaged painting swore the face in it was turning into a skull, but that observation is debatable. All four of them also described the thunderous footsteps of a huge man walking the upstairs hall as if he were trying to come through the ceiling. Poltergeist activity also moved furniture around and even carried one of the researchers to a different bedroom in the middle of the night.

Needless to say, they cut short the investigation.

In 2001, the Collinsport Ghost Society was allowed two days, the shortest investigation yet at the location, to visit the location. Recording a volume of audio and photographic evidence, they left a camera going by itself in an upstairs hall and got footage of a dark shadow that darted from door to door and past the camera. A tape recorder picked up incoherent children’s voices that stopped with a slamming door. Investigators, Steve Barnette and Henry Desmond had sensations of being watched and of being followed, sensations they compared to explorations at Waverly Hills Sanitorium, and excused themselves from camping out on site in the ballroom overnight. On the contrary, Michael Hoskins expressed several times that the place had an oppressive air, sapping him of his breath and energy. In the most disconcerting phenomenon yet, Field Director William Collins was asked to confirm a voice by Matthew Oh from the footage in the main hall that sounded like his wife calling his name. Still very much alive at the time, she was at home in Maine at the time.

History: Hugh Crain built Hill House for his first wife, Renee Crain. Construction lasted from 1869 to 1873 in what was then the remotest part of New England. While en-route by horse and carriage, Renee was tossed from the carriage by something that spooked her horse and dropped the carriage on top of her. She left behind a surviving daughter, Abigail, but some references claim they had died childless.

Crain eventually married again to a woman named Caroline. Unable to have children, she was often visited by the children that worked in Crain’s textile mills, but she was purportedly ostracized and rejected by Abigail. Caroline reportedly committed suicide from the top of the stairs, but Markway reports rumors that she was pushed by Renee’s jealous spirit.

Hugh Crain became a recluse thereafter, although he still brought the children home to play with Abigail. The remains of bones in the fireplace suggest he murdered a few as they grew to be too old, or perhaps to keep them from becoming adults. Theoretically, when the disappearances of the children began to be looked into, he left the house and moved to England. Abigail meanwhile was left with tutors, a governess, housekeepers and servants after her father died.

Even after she grew up, Abigail never left the nursery even after she became an adult. Bedridden after an unconfirmed accident, she was eventually left with one servant who carried out all responsibilities for her. Abigail, however, died at 93 in 1948 while pounding for the servant who was fooling around downstairs with her boyfriend.

This unnamed servant ended up inheriting the house and quite possibly went mad by her conscience or by the overwhelming size of the house. She hung herself from the stairway in the study.

The Sanderson family bought the house sometime later, but never lived there. Instead, they employ a husband and wife known as the Dudleys as caretakers, but they don’t live there either. The house meanwhile sits alone and empty, visited from time to time by ghost hunters.

Identity of Ghosts: The house is supposed to be haunted by Hugh Craine and the children whose spirits he holds captive, the vindictive specter of Renee Crain, the sullen phantom of the elderly Abigail Crain, the neglectful maid or possibly by all of them together.

Comments: The Haunting (1963/1999) based on the book by Shirley Jackson. Haunting largely based on the movies, but also inspired by Hickory Hill in Harrisburg, Illinois, Decatur House in Washington D.C., Phelps Mansion in Stratford, Connecticut and Woodburn Mansion in Dover, Delaware.