It's a cold and gloomy winter's day to be out here on the shores of Maine.

Yeah, it is. Not really a day for the beach. It looks downright, I don't know.

Ominous?

Ominous, yes, ominous. You almost get the feeling like something bad is in the air. Hey, look out there.

Look at the icy fog rolling across the water.

Ooh, yeah. Okay, I'm a little freaked out now. I'm sure the islands of Harpswell, Maine are picture perfect in the summer. But right now, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Being here near dusk, I mean, it feels gloomy like something bad could happen at any time.

Yes, yes.

So keep your eyes peeled on the water, Ray, because we're looking for a ghost ship.

And I hope for the sake of the people of Harpswell that we don't see it, because if we do, it means a local is going to die.

We're in Maine searching for the dead ship of Harpswell.

Hello, I'm Jeff Belanger. And I'm Ray Ozier. Welcome to episode 331 of the New England

Legends podcast. We're on a mission to chronicle every legend in New England one story at a time.

So many of our story leads come from you. So please reach out to us anytime through our website with your tales of ghosts, monsters, aliens, roadside oddities,

true crime, and the just plain weird. We love hearing from you. Hey, quick announcement, Ray,

zombie prom 2024 is coming back to Milford, Massachusetts on Saturday, February 17th to benefit the Community Harvest Project in Grafton. Ray and I have been hosting this event for years. It's a ton of fun for a great cause. We had so much fun last year. Absolutely. Doing it again. It's the same weekend. So if you were there last year, plan on it again. You can check out our website for ticket information and hotel deals. and we'll get back to searching for the dead ship of Harpswell right after this quick word from our sponsor. Okay, Jeff, ghost ships always freak me out. Yeah, I get it. And we've covered a few of them before. Well, we've learned over the years that there's two kinds of ghost ships. Right. There's the physical ship. It's solid. You can touch it, but it has no living

person aboard, yet it sails itself. Like the Mary Celeste. We covered way back in episode 88.

That's right. Then there's the other kind of go ship, a phantom ship that's seen and then

vanishes. Like the ghost ship of New Haven Harbor. We covered way back in episode 43.

Right. We've actually covered in episode 43. Right.

We've actually covered several ghost ships over the years, both kinds. So is this one of the cruelest kind or the phantom kind? Okay, so this one is a little of both. And they say it's a harbinger of death. If you spot the ship, it means someone in Harpswell is going to die. The legend even made it into one of John Greenleaf Whittier's poems way back in 1866. If you've been listening to us for a while, that's a name that you've heard before. Whittier covered many New England legends in his day, but he did it with poem form. He did, yeah, that's him. A little more about Harpswell, Maine. The town is made up of a peninsula in more than 30 small islands. The town was incorporated in 1758 and grew on the back of farming,

fishing, and shipbuilding. Author Harriet Beatriceau once called Harpswell home. No doubt the sea has been

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