Description of Place: 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 an extended parlor and veranda, four bedrooms, attic space, a full basement and a roof covered with balustrades and an interior furnished with antiques. The manor house has a wide property 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 his wife in 1990, Clay Roff decided to move 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 doll-like good looks and a bit of psychic awareness, Annalisse took to the house immediately as she commenced with restoring the old overgrown garden, a hobby in which she was very much interested. 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.

Meanwhile, 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 current 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.

"Seeing Annalisse on that horse almost convinced me my daughter was back in town." Clay Roff mentioned to CGS in 1996. "To see her horse bond with Annalisse was very strange, and to this day, she still let's her ride him."

In 1996 when CGS initially asked to visit the old Roff House, Laura Vellum was very courteous and gracious for advice and insight in the reputed ghost in the house. Annalisse, however, was a bit distant and unreceptive to a paranormal investigation. In 2008, Mark Thiessen began renting Roff House and upon hearing about the hauntings, invited CGS back to see if Mary's ghost was still around.

"At first, things were simple..." Mark starts. "We heard noises, creaking, groaning noises - we thought it was a squirrel in the attic, but they graduated into footsteps and doors closing."

"I saw the figure of a girl." Ashley Thiessen adds. "About a year after we had moved in, I was up late this night, just hesitant to go to bed and running out of stuff to watch on TV, and just before I finally decided to go to sleep, I decided to go downstairs to get something to eat. When I went downstairs, I immediately felt as if there was a presence. There was this sensation I was being watched. I just remember nervously looking around as I stood in the refrigerator and then hurriedly raced back upstairs, and despite the fact I was barefoot, I thought I heard footsteps in the house. We didn't even have a guest in the house, and the stairs are carpeted, but I heard someone moving around down there.

"Upstairs, the hallway ends at this large window over the garden. As I was heading back to my room, something made me look in the window ahead of me and I saw my reflection from the light in the bedroom, and right next to me was this other reflection. I remember her face just as if it was yesterday. It was this short blonde young girl, late twenties I think. I saw her, and I think she saw me because she then slowly backed away out of the light and vanished and the whole time, there was nothing there!"

"When the Vellums moved out," Mark continues. "Annalisse really asked us to keep the garden, and I've put a lot of effort into it. I don't mind, because I used to do gardening and landscaping. I replaced several of the plants, added fresh dirt and sowed the garden with fertilizer. At that time, the soil was very loose; if you stepped in it, your foot would sink about an inch. Anyway, that day, I had been working hard gardening, mowing and clipping and at dinner, I washed up and cleaned to settle down for the night. As Ashley and I were sitting and talking, she immediately looks out to the garden and I look at what she's seeing and through the curtains and windows, we see this young female figure moving steady through the garden and disappearing around the corner of the house. Now, I'm expecting to see someone out on the front porch looking for a room, but no one's there, and the garden, which is freshly gardened and manicured is undisturbed. There's not a single footprint in it, and I'm positive this girl had been walking through 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, however, believed her mother had met with foul play and soon vanished afterward. Broken-hearted by these affairs, Clay Roff married his second wife, Danielle, shortly thereafter; they had a new baby girl before another year passed. Danielle had formerly been Mary’s doctor and therapist. Shortly after Mary's body was found buried on the family property, evidence was revealed that Danielle might have been part in both her murder and that of her mother.

Laura Vellum with her daughter Annalisse purchased the house in March 1996 and lived there for eight years. She now lives in New York City, and although, Annalisse stayed in the house an additional two and a half years, she eventually moved on herself. She rented the house to Mark and Ashley Thiessen, a couple looking to run a bed and breakfast. Both Laura and Annalisse return to stay as guests from time to time.

Identity of Ghosts: At the time, Annalisse believed the ghost was that of Mary Roff. Believing she might be potentially psychic, it was her belief that she may have been buried somewhere on the property, a theory which lead to Mary's remains being uncovered. She also believes that Mary's spirit acts a bit bi-polar with two different personalities, one friendly, and the other terrifying. 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; however, since then, she seems to have stabilized. She's not nearly as active, but she still makes herself known.

Investigations: During the CGS investigation, team members in the house experienced temperature fluctuations and electro-magnetic signatures in the attic and Mary's old room that vanished. A heat sign picked up on Mary's chair actually moved off camera when Brian Carradine tried to find it. Steve Barnette and Matt Burton both attempted EVP sessions but got uneven results. Barnette got a voice that failed to record, but Burton got a voice he thought was asking "Where's Annalisse." During that session, Liz Stride and Ed Brannion followed what they thought was a figure on the grounds. That later learned the area where it had vanished was the same area where Mary's body was found in 1996.

Source/Comments: “Buried Secrets” (1996) - Loosely based on the Miles Mansion in VeVay, Indiana, the Kelsey House in Fish Springs, Nevada and Foxall Hall in Georgetown, D.C..

Tim Matheson (Clay Roff) also starred in Bay Coven ( 1987) and in The Hardy Boys: Mystery of the Chinese Junk (1967).