Ghost Man Tom of Bar Harbor

by D. T. Harris

In fall, here, the "downeast" wind blows down not up, off waters to the north and east. With ghostly misdirection, this wind feels even more like the cold, wet fingers of a dying season, as they work their way between the window and the frame, the door and jamb, the warp and weft of coats pulled tight around the shivered bodies that remain. In the coming months these remnant bodies will cling by their electric, telephone and cable tethers like colonies of fragile lichen to this island rock of land, held by a wire to life, throughout the winter's inhospitality.

But now the wind off Frenchman Bay is just the creaking door of what's to come, as it finds the town and sweeps deserted streets, blowing empty burger wrappers, french-fry envelopes and Big Gulp cups to the shelter of a bush or fence. The summer yachts are gone, summer houses shuttered, and many shops, restaurants and taverns sit closed. The flocks of summer money have all flown south, and once-crowded sidewalks are now open promenades for gulls and terns -- and Ghost Man Tom, the limping phantom you might have seen, just there, across the street, before that van drove by.

Ghost Man Tom is as much a landmark of Bar Harbor in the autumn as is Egg Rock Light. He's rumored to be toothless, which means that no one has ever seen him speak, or smile, or knows for sure if he does have teeth. Look there -- that was him, standing at that mailbox down the block.

In fact, since no one has seen him from closer than eighty feet, or for longer than three seconds, some people think he's bodyless, too -- just an old, wool overcoat, a hat and pair of pants that have, somehow, been kept together and blown around each autumn, for years now, by the wind. There -- he just slipped down that alley.

To the locals -- both the ones with tongues still labored by their roots, and more recent emigrants "from away" -- it doesn't matter if he's real or not. They let him be in quiet peace, which is how he seems to want his social intercourse.

A life lived close, here, to the rock that weathers into soil creates a stark but leveled personality of place. The ghosts of people living, and those dead, are offered similar respect and expectation -- which creates another apparition, as individual regard becomes a clay that shapes itself to form the hallowed ground of character.