Ahhh, it’s all over. The night of all nights has come and gone. I feel the way sports fans feel after Super Bowl Sunday, the way political reporters feel after election night. My big event is Halloween and it’s a long 359 days until the next one.

It was great though, wasn’t it? Halloween. A time to peek beneath the veil that divides life and death. A night to explore our connection with the afterlife. One day of the year to forget the ghosts that haunt your head and concentrate instead on specters cavorting in dark places.

Or maybe you sought more earthly pleasures on the big night. Maybe you dressed up as Miss Piggy, downed shots and goosed your boss at the office party. Hey, good for you. Whatever gets your ghost.

Me, I was off down some dark New England roads in search of things that howl, moan or cackle from beyond the veil. Bewitching haunts in Salem, stark raving haunts in Gloucester, revolutionary haunts in Boston.

We love our ghosts, don’t we? We loved them as kids hanging around the campfire. Later, we passed worn ghost stories on to our own children and tried to convince ourselves it was only make believe.

Asking the Ouija board

After all, our capacity for fear isn’t limited to late October. Most of us have a curiosity about those things that cannot be explained, no matter what time of year it is. We harbor an ancient yearning to better understand what awaits us on the other side of the grave. We delight in the tales of Edgar Allan Poe or Stephen King, because hey, whatever lies out there beyond the shadow of death will be waiting for us one day.

We fill cinemas when scary movies come around. We laugh over Ouija boards, but leave our fingers pressed gently into the planchette, wondering if answers to our most pressing questions can be found from beyond the shadow.

We gather around tables in séance, skeptical but curious to see whether the dead will speak. And if they do, what do they have to say?

And so, with all of this in mind, I went searching for this year’s local haunt.

In Franklin County I’m told, a mean-spirited spirit appeared in the most unlikely of places. He communicated through harassment rather than words. He made life uneasy for a family of five until they found a way to send him at last to the great beyond.

Forget about your dark and stormy night or that massive, decrepit house on the hill. A recent report from the Maine Paranormal Research Association paints a different picture.

A family of five in a brand-new mobile home. About as creepy a Wal-Mart, I know. Not exactly the House on Haunted Hill.

Yet the family members there insist they were tormented by a belligerent spirit. A child shoved by unseen hands. Things going bump in the night. The menacing sense of an invisible presence.

“They constantly felt like they were being watched. Their own bedroom spooked them so much, they slept in the living room,” said Nancy Caswell, co-director of the paranormal research group. “They also described how their baby would sit in the swing and look up and babble away to an unseen person.”

The couple’s 9-year-old son was pushed hard enough that he stumbled and gashed the upper part of his foot. Yet, when the boy wheeled to see who had assaulted him, there was nobody there.

Place ominous piano music here.

Hunting for a ghost

Caswell and her team were contacted, and they visited the haunted mobile home. They looked around and took pictures. They breathed in the unquiet atmosphere and narrowed in on the source of the spook.

“I had a very uneasy feeling from the garage area,” Caswell said. “It was like we were not supposed to be there.”

The team agreed there were restless spirits about. But what to do about it? A new mobile home cannot have much of a haunted history. More data was needed. The ghost hunters pressed on, coaxing details from the nerve-jangled husband.

“As we talked, he told us that his grandfather had passed away several years ago, and he had possession of the ashes,” Caswell said. “This didn’t seem overly strange until the story progressed. It seems Grampa was a rather, shall we say, mean-spirited fellow.”

Further discussion revealed more clues. It seems there was a bit of a debate among family members after the ornery grandfather was cremated. Nobody wanted the ashen remains of a man they remembered without fondness.

“Somehow, it was decided that our client would hang onto him. They packed him into a Maxwell House coffee can and put him on the shelf among the oilcans and jars of nails and screws.”

The indignity! Who can blame the old man for expressing his frustration?

The good people at the Maine Paranormal Research Association advised the family to give their long-suffering relative a proper burial. His soul would finally rest and the heebie-jeebies would end. A happy conclusion, all things considered.

So, now it’s November. We’re on our way to dismal weather, horrid driving conditions and unbearable heating costs. But if there’s a lesson to be learned from the Mobile Home on Haunted Hill, I suppose it is this: Don’t be afraid to believe. Believe like you did when you were 5 or 6 and let the imagination soar. You can always get back to those bills, that dull job and that dentist appointment you’ve been putting off. Believe now, and long-sought answers might emerge.

And, of course, be nice to your grandfather. Even if he’s dead.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.