The three men made their way down the lonely trail that skirted the fields outside of Machiasport, Maine. These hills were wide open and bare, but the trees in the distance belied a deep forest toward the west and if they listened intently, they might have heard the waves in Machias Bay.  It was dusk and the last light of the setting sun burned a bright red gash across last grey light of day. One of the three was a skeptic, certain that the events which had been occurring for the past six years were nothing more than an elaborate hoax played out to fool the locals into believing that it was possible to speak with the dead. His mission was to stop this foolish dependence on chicanery and parlor tricks and get the people back to believing properly about the living and the dead. The other two had seen the spirit before, had even had conversations with it, but that had been in the confines of the cellar of Captain Blaisdel and his family. They knew it was real. They were there as witnesses. Besides, this meeting was something else entirely and none of the three knew how this rendezvous with the dead would turn out. The year was 1806. For the past six years, a ghost had been speaking from beyond the grave to hundreds of locals in the Machiasport area. This was a good fifty years before the Fox girls of Hydesville, New York began hearing rappings in their house and started the American Spiritualist Movement which still lingers in our modern world as the NSAC (National Spiritualist Association of Churches). Situated on the edge of the new country, this out-of-the-way Maine hamlet would serve as the locale for the largest mass witnessing of a ghost in American history.  Reverend Cummings, the skeptic on his was to the rendezvous with the ghost, claimed that he had his doubts. What would happen on the edge of that barren field that night would change his world forever and help him prepare a view of life after death that took the world by storm when the Fox girls popularized the idea of communicating with the dead more than half a century later. The Machiasport Ghost been called ‘America’s First Ghost,’ but that would be stretching the truth. Certainly the new world had its share of hauntings long before 1799. Native Americans have passed down their stories of spirits by the oral tradition for centuries. Folklorists can call upon hundreds of stories of hauntings and specters from each of the original thirteen colonies. But the difference between these hauntings and the Machiasport haunting is that they were old and based upon memory alone, with few witnesses. The appearance the ghost of the woman in the cellar of the Maschiasport home could be dated and witnessed by dozens of living people. Also, the ghost appeared at a time when science and the value of impartial observation was beginning to become valued over time-honored belief and superstition. The other difference between this haunting and the others that came before it was that this ghost wanted to talk and well over two hundred people claimed to have heard her spoken words. Over a hundred also claimed to have seen her while she spoke. Stranger still, many in the crowd knew her while she was alive. It was like she had never died. If you’ve ever spent time alone in a house, you may recall that there are moments when you can swear you’ve heard a voice. You can’t really make out the words and if you live in the city, it’s easy to write it off as a conversation between two people walking outside as they pass your house. If you live in the country, however,  it’s harder to find an explanation for the sound. The experience can leave you with goosebumps and a sudden urge to get in the car and go for a long, long ride. Many people who claim to live in a haunted house describe the experience of hearing the mumbled sound of someone talking, but it’s faint and i