By Harrison W. Crow

It is doubtless some of the long-time Hopelessers remember the history or have heard the stories about how, centuries ago, medieval monks from Ireland landed on the island and built a community upon it, totally unaware that they had landed on an island on the Maine coast and not in Scotland, as they had thought.

We now have reason to believe that their community was not limited to an abbey and a distillery; it may have been bigger than thought. In the thickly-wooded uplands of the island, Jim Farnsworth – 7-year-old son of Daniel and Winona Farnsworth – was out late playing in the woods against his parents’ wishes with his imaginary friend Guy O’Hara, 8-year-old son of unknown parents (though we may surmise at least one of them is also named O’Hara,) when O’Hara tripped on a rock and skinned his knee. In turning back to cuss the stone, he and Jim saw the stone was unusual.

“It wasn’t like any rock we’d ever seen in the woods,” said Jim, whose
parents allowed him to speak with the Vendetta during his grounding. “Guy and I know the rocks here can be jagged, but it looked too clean cut, like a large brick almost.”

News spread quickly, and amateur archaeologists Hephzibah Corey and James Hansen were interested in the boys’ story.

The young Messrs. O’Hara and Farnsworth, the latter under the watchful eyes of his accompanying parents, guided Corey and Hansen to the spot, which is memorable for a prevalence of dead and curiously crooked pine trees. There they found the stone. The two archaeologists decided to clear it off, and after only a little brushing away of fallen leaves and pine needles, found the site consisted of even more stones, of similar shape.

“We could already tell that what we were looking at was something far grander in scale than any old drystone wall built up by any common farmer,” said Corey, who added, “though I have to give credit to Mr. and Mrs. Buxton for coming closest with their ambitious 100-foot-long 9-footer. We’re still trying to figure out how in Tunket they did that
and why, but I digress.”

With shovels, mattocks, and willing hands John Adam, Damien Chevin, and Paula Greenstone, (hands which were undoubtedly difficult to come by, what with Ash Peterson’s archaeology- related death still imprinted on town memory) they returned to the site and conducted a fuller
excavation. What they dug up was that O’Hara had literally stumbled onto the collapsed remains of a stone cathedral! Several well-worn inscriptions in Latin were found, two branding the building as “The Church of St. Brendan,” built “in the year of the Lord, 12__.”

“I don’t want to jump to conclusions,” said Hansen, “as the stone is so badly effaced to be certain, but the tens digit looks like it could be a 1 or a 7. Don’t quote me on that.”

According to the team, it is safe to assume that the builders, having made a long ocean voyage, were inspired by St. Brendan the Navigator’s sea travels to strange lands. This corroborates a few tales about the medieval monks that are extant on the island, as well a recently rediscovered tale of a particular accursed dwelling lost in the woods of the island, still recalled by Lorraine Gagnon, a local Algonquian mythologist and storyteller.

When the team began digging at the floor, John Adam pried a flagstone with a prybar and was hit with a stench.

“It was foul and musty,” said Adam, “like the dry fart of death.”

Moving the flagstone revealed something wholly unexpected: a shallow recess beneath the floor with a bony foot. Removing more flagstones not only revealed one body, but a total of 48 skeletal corpses, all in the same state: they were bound by the wrists and ankles, their arms and legs were broken, iron nails were driven through the joints of their limbs and jaws, their sternums were each pressed under a boulder, and a rock was jammed between each of their jaws.

In the words of Corey, “To see them all at once, for the first time…it was paralysing. Of course, we’re aware of things like animal sacrifices made to be church grims, and even of people buried under the floors of churches, dead and sometimes alive. But this…all we could do was stare, in stunned silence, probably for a solid minute.”

The bindings and mutilations suggested that those who buried the corpses believed them to be revenants – most likely vampires. The belief in revenants is corroborated in Gagnon’s story, in which the people from across the sea who settled into their new stone dwelling succumbed to a
strange sickness, and “despite their sickness, refused to die.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Corey says. “If these are foundation sacrifices, why did their buriers take such extreme measures? If these are church burials, why entomb so many dangerous ‘sinners’ on holy ground? Surely such a strong, evil presence would taint the ground, in the buriers’ minds.”

The next day, the team returned to the ruins of St. Brendan’s Church to conduct an even more thorough investigation, as well as to search the surroundings for other buildings and a quarry, to find the site disturbed; ground stakes were knocked over, tarpaulins moved, and every last one of the bodies was gone. According to Corey, “It was as if they had somehow wriggled out from under the boulders and left, like every last one of them was Harry Houdini.”

The team will pay for any information regarding the whereabouts of the corpses, and will pay handsomely for their return. They are each a few inches over five feet tall, with tawny, leathery skin stretched tightly over crooked, skeletal frames, and bearing multiple rows of sharp, pointed
teeth. They will probably be attempting to communicate in Latin or cussing out in pain in Old Irish if not for the rocks in their mouths, and shambling with stiff joints and a wicked limp, if not still squirming or rolling around in their bindings.

Ask about Hephzibah Corey and James Hansen at the Historical Society or the Squid and Teapot for more information.