Irish Ale and Pirates

We heard about an Irish Pub that has live music after lunch. Let's go, we said. It didn't matter that it was in Lubec, the last town downeast before you reach Canada—about two hours from us. So we hopped in the car on a perfect late summer morning around 8:00 a.m. We decided to make a day of it and return to Schoodic to see how it faired after Hurricane Bill took a slap at it. It was less than an hour out of the way.

What we found when we got there was pretty amazing. Trees that had a tenuous hold on the rocks were uprooted and toppled to the ground. Their skeletons will bleach in the salt air, then be carried away by the next big storm to land who knows where. Boulders weighing several hundred pounds were strewn across the road, many feet from where they'd been settled as barriers, pushed off the pavement by heavy equipment and left as reminders of nature's fury. Perhaps, those who hadn't seen what it looked like before the storm wouldn't see the changes, but we did.

Click on the first link to view a video that gives you an idea of how serene Schoodic normally is. We tried to match the exact location and tide yesterday to the tide we took in the video during the hurricane (click on the second link).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN2qsAX7fpc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVs--h90agM

After taking in the calm beauty of the sea at Schoodic, we ventured further downeast along Route 1, through small fishing villages, blueberry barrens, and old, open farmland, resting now, without plough or livestock to tend to it. Soon it will be reclaimed by trees and turn back into the woods it was a couple hundred years ago.

A little after noon, we arrived in Lubec. It's a small fishing town overlooking Canada. Home of West Quoddy Lighthouse and some pretty large tides that rise and fall at the rate of 5 feet an hour. You'd best know were high land is if you're on the beach or exploring and island at low tide so you have time to get to it before you're stranded.



We drove right to the end of the road, literally. At the juncture where you can choose to go to Canada or stay in the US, you take a left and follow the coast for a few hundred feet and then you see it. Cohill's Inn and Pub.


We searched for a place to park, as across the street is the ocean and a busy boat launch. We find a spot and walk in.

The place is filled with pirates!! Yup, Aaarrgh, matey! Eye patches, buxom women in wench-wear, men in ruffled shirts, breeks and long coats. And ale. Lots and lots of ale.

We walked up to the bar and the owner/bartender is wearing a kilt with a skull and cross bone t-shirt. I can't help it, but I love pirates! I looked at the owner with a broad grin and said excitedly, "I didn't know there'd be pirates here today!"

"We were invaded," he said happily, as though it occurred regularly.

So we took a seat with an incredible view of the water and ordered a Guiness and Harp. With our ales came a slightly inebriated older gentleman who took a seat at our table. He was a happy sort and told us he lived in the Virgin Islands, a place where there were no virgins.

"You saw to that, I suppose," I said to him.

He smiled and feigned shock, sadly said that he had nothing to do with it, then introduced himself as Mr. Moe. We chatted for a while until his wife was finished talking with a few of the pirates. I hope you're getting an idea of how crazy this was, and it was very fun. Music blasting, beer bottles clinking together, and pirates talking with themselves and anyone who wanted to join them at the tables, and walking around town. The funniest thing is that Mainers aren't fazed by much. They'd just drive by, take a look, raise an eyebrow and continue doing what they were doing. It's a bit like dream where everything—no matter how absurd—makes perfect sense. You gotta love it!

Soon, the pirates—and Mr. Moe, along with his lovely wife, Beverly—meandered out. The the landlubbers returned to their car and the pirates returned to their ship. Well, lobster boat. See, a Pirate Festival was happening in Eastport, just up through the Lubec Narrows, that's where they came from. Apparently, Lubec had more of an appeal for them. Maybe Eastport didn't have an open pub! Either way, we were happy to have been entertained by the jovial lot.

When our meal was served, we ate and watched the seals and seagulls across the street catch their own lunch in the swirling waters. The seals are the black heads popping up and down. They're black and gray speckled and look much like dogs.



We got home just before dusk, tired from the day, but happy with the excursion.

The Dark Side

I wonder how many people have had experiences such as the night my husband and I were awoken because we couldn't breath. There seemed to be a dark presence sitting on our chests, pinning us to the bed. We could both "see" it in our mind's eyes; an angry black blob is the only way to describe it.

For hours we battled this thing, asking for the light forces to remove it from our space. It didn't belong here and the fact that it was actually interfering with us on the physical level is not allowed, in our books.

It finally did leave, but not after having to be ripped apart to make it see that what it was doing was totally wrong.

You see, the house we were renting for the winter was on a jut of land with a tidal river on the east and the open waters of Frenchman's Bay barely twenty feet to our south. And when it rained, we had a small stream run under the house, which was on pillars. This confluence of so much water created a large negative vortex on the property.

Ghosts wearing colonial dress were seen in my kitchen, and perhaps those going back before that time when the Native Americans used it for fishing grounds shadowed the spare bedroom.

When you walked past the guest house, the hair literally rose on your arms. All you felt was death, and worse. There didn't seem to be any way of clearing the house of gremlins, and in the dark, the place could hardly be spookier. It felt as though you walked through air thick and cold with crowds of those who'd passed, but hadn't left. It was a congregation of ghosts.

Some people wouldn't go near the place. Said it gave them the creeps. It certainly didn't look like a haunted house. It was the perfect summer vacation house on the coast of Maine. White clapboard two-story farmhouse with a great covered porch overlooking the ocean. The inside was all shiplap pine ceilings, dark wood paneled walls and wide pine floors. Each window had a view of the water and some amazing sunrises were seen from the bedroom.

But it wasn't lived in on a permanent basis. Many houses on the coast aren't. They remain vacant for most of the year; their owners using them for only a few weeks to a couple months during the year. This allows for displaced spirits to gather and call the place their own. They seem to know a good thing when they see it.

After doing some research, I found that the property once had a Revolutionary War era fort on it, and who knows what went on there. I had crystals everywhere to try and break up the negative energy in the house. Nothing you could do about the outside, though. Just too much area. At the end of our lease, we were happy to move on and leave the place to those who called it home.