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By DOUG HARLOW
Staff Writer 10/31/2007

Its stark, brick exterior and vacant windows stare back, silent now, mute to a history of suffering, disease and death. The wind shivers through ancient maple trees that have survived the rise and the demise of the place locals called the Fairfield San.

At night, what remains of the old place gets downright scary.

And on Halloween, the night when the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead becomes blurred and ghosts are said to return to Earth, it is a place to stay well clear of.

Just ask Aaron Dixon and Jo-Ann Stitham, who live just down the street.

"We were recording one night, making a CD, and we just took a walk up there with a camera -- I don't know why we brought a camera," Dixon said. "We started shooting pictures up there because we'd heard of orbs before, but we never really expected to see any.

"Then we started picking them up in the pictures."

Orbs, according to Ghoststudy.com, are believed to be ghosts in the form of balls of light. You cannot see them live, so to speak, but they can be photographed.

The orbs -- small ones and large ones -- are thought to be life forms that travel in groups and are believed to be the human soul or life force of those that once inhabited a physical body here on earth, according to the Web site. Ghoststudy.com, dubbed "A paranormal adventure," calls itself the biggest free ghost photo site on the Web. Based in Sacramento, Calif., the site was launched by "Ghost Master" Jim Eaton in May 1999.

It is said that orbs are spirits that have willingly stayed behind because they feel bound to their previous life or previous location for some reason.

The longer they stay behind, the harder it is to find their way to the next level, the spirit world.

After seeing the orbs in their photographs, Dixon, 50, and Stitham, 40, along with their friend and music partner Duane Carpenter, 43, of Fairfield, went to the Fairfield History House for some advice and background on the sanatorium.

Stitham said their research has found the patients were exposed to the cold, fresh air of central Maine to cure the terrible effects of tuberculosis, which cut off the breathing of its victims, in effect suffocating them.

"We found pictures of the patients that they would bring out in the winter time to give them fresh air therapy and cover them up and they'd be out in the snow," Stitham said. "That was how they treated them, I guess, back then."

Dixon said he thinks the sanatorium workers might be the ones lingering at the old place, perhaps from the anxiety of having been so dedicated to people who could not be saved.

"I kind of figured if there's any spirits hanging around here it's probably the help more than it would be the patients," Dixon said. "It sounds like they really dedicated their lives to them. And I'm sure a lot of people didn't want anything to do with them, working up at the TB place."

THE INCURABLE

The Central Maine Sanatorium, a hospital for the treatment of tuberculosis patients, was established on what was called Atwood Mountain, off what is now U.S. Route 201, in 1910, according to files on record at the History House on High Street.

The treatment center began as a tented summer camp, with wooden buildings constructed in 1912. After a fire in 1913, the new buildings were constructed and over the years annexes, including a surgical wing and a children's section, were added.

In 1915, the state Legislature took over the hospital and another in Hebron, retired Fairfield doctor Loring W. Pratt wrote for the Historical Society.

Those deemed "curable," Pratt wrote, were transferred to Hebron.

The others remained in Fairfield.

Pratt said this week there is no way of knowing how many people may have died during the lost history of the sanatorium.

Mark McPheters, director at Fairfield History House, and Barbara Gunvaldson, vice president of the Fairfield Historical Society, said floating orbs and ghosts are common currency in their line of work.

Gunvaldson said she has seen the pictures taken by Dixon, Stitham and Carpenter.

"In the pictures there are these little orbs," she said. "One of these little orbs actually has a face on it -- the face of a lady."

Gunvaldson said she believes in ghosts -- she even has one at her own house.

"I've come to believe that in places where there is a huge expenditure of emotion, particularly if it is unresolved, something is left," she said. "I wouldn't want to put a name to it, but something is left and I suspect that the sanatorium is such a place. It seems like a likely place for that sort of expenditure of emotion."

'THOSE WHO LINGER'

McPheters, who joined a group at the old sanatorium on a recent night, said he first learned of orbs from a book and a Web site about "those who linger" at another TB sanatorium at Waverly Hills, near Louisville, Ky.

"They took pictures the same as that fellow did," McPheters said of Dixon's photographs of orbs suspended in the night. "In his pictures he has orbs like that, the same as his. Is there some coincidence between the people that had the same anxiety here and what those in that other hospital had?

"Their spirits or whatever must have had the same anxiety. There's some connection, because you don't just go out and take pictures and get gobs on them, right? You can see the same round circles at that other tuberculosis hospital."

The extensive complex of connecting buildings on the hill in Fairfield had more than 200 patients and more than 90 employees at one time.

It closed in 1970. It was the state's last TB sanatorium.

The brick building that remains at the site later became the Pleasant Height nursing home, which closed in 2001. It is now owned by a Portland property management company.

So, are the orbs actually ghosts, or are they flashes of light, reflections or simply moisture or dust on the camera lens?

Dixon said he could only venture a guess. He said they have taken hundreds of photographs -- some have the orbs appearing in them; others taken seconds later do not.

"It's my fade-to-black idea -- for quite a few years now I thought that you die and you fade to black and that's it," he said. "This kind of put me back on the fence a little bit."

Doug Harlow -- 861-9244

dharlow@centralmaine.com

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