There were 15 stories in all. They didn’t look much like stories, sitting there on page C8 in the back of the Sun Journal, told in hard-to-read seven-point type. In newspaper-speak they’re called “legal ads,” and they advertised upcoming foreclosure auctions for homes their owners could no longer afford.

On this Jan. 15, they nearly filled the page, every one a story of loss, hard luck or mismanagement.

It was a shocking sight. But what made it even more startling: all of those ads represented just two counties, Androscoggin and Oxford, and they were just one day’s worth. There would be more the next day.

And the day after that.

The country’s foreclosure problem is easily boiled down to numbers. Maine alone saw nearly twice the number of homes fall into foreclosure last year, from 1,600 in 2007 to more than 3,100 in 2008.

The Sun Journal wanted to tell the stories behind those 15 on the 15th of January.

Pulling public court records, we learned when the mortgages were made (mostly in 2005 and 2006, the height of the housing boom), how much the homes were mortgaged for (between $62,800 and $223,200), and who owned them. We made every effort to contact the owners – calling, e-mailing, going to their door. Most of the owners disappeared behind disconnected phone numbers and empty homes. But we found four out of the 15, and they were willing to tell their stories. In a fifth case, we talked to the building’s tenants.

There were a few common themes. Job loss was prevalent. Refinancing was common. Many said their bank either refused to work with them after they got in trouble or made it foolishly easy for them to get a loan that they couldn’t afford in the first place.

“It wasn’t all their fault. I was there knocking on their door, begging them. But they just said ‘Come on in, baby. Yeah, we can help you. We’ll find a way,'” said Walter Beganny, whose Lisbon home was one of the 15.

Beganny and his wife would be the only lucky ones. Their home sold late last week and their auction canceled. The rest of the 15 are slated to be sold at auction over the next two weeks.

The first go tomorrow.

17 Pleasant St., Lewiston

Located on the corner of Pleasant and O’Connell streets, the older yellow two-story sits unoccupied, with feet of snow clogging the driveway and spilling over the front stairs. Boards cover some of the glass in the door of a detached one-car garage, but the property looks otherwise unscarred. A satellite dish sits on the roof, a faded basketball hoop stands in the driveway.

But in an unusual twist, the property’s owners seem to have walked away from more than the house. A 1998 white Windstar van – registered through Jan. 31 – sits in the driveway, buried under the snow.

11 East Ave., Lisbon

On Jan. 30, the brown Cape Cod with its faded yellow shutters and bright green door sold for $110,000. The short sale meant the mortgage holder agreed to take less than the $148,700 owed and allow Walter Beganny and his wife, Pamela Johnson, to walk away clean.

The couple had the house on the market for nearly two years. It sold exactly 20 days before it was set to be taken by foreclosure auction.

For Beganny and his wife, the last-minute sale was their first bit of good luck in years.

Beganny, his brother and sister inherited the modest Cape from their mother in 1999. Since his siblings already owned their own homes, Beganny bought their share. The house cost $72,000 and his payments were $450 a month.

Soon after, Beganny was laid off from his job as a recruiter for a staffing agency. His wife worked and he found other jobs at L.L. Bean, Geiger and a local car dealership, but their family income wasn’t enough to pay their bills. When the house payments started running late, he was terrified the bank would foreclose. He was frantic to find a way to make their finances work.

Over the next 10 years Beganny would refinance the house five or six times, drawing out equity in an effort to keep up with his taxes, credit cards, mortgage and other bills. He financed more and more with each turn and rolled the refinancing fees into the mortgage.

His payment ultimately ended up at $1,200 a month.

“Which I wasn’t even making,” Beganny said.

Beganny takes responsibility for his financial mistakes. It’s his fault he financed so often, he said. It’s his fault he lost the house that had been in his family for 46 years, he said.

But he doesn’t understand why someone would loan him so much money – $132,000 at the last refi – when his income so obviously couldn’t support it. Although he didn’t see the financial catastrophe looming, he thinks the bank should have.

“They found a way to fit us in a crack and I appreciated it. In my mind I had somehow felt we were somehow going to be capable or things were going to get better or I was going to make money selling cars,” he said. “I accept responsibility for our failures, but we were led there.”

With their Lisbon home up for sale and the foreclosure process well under way, Beganny and his wife moved to Florida in October. A family member there had cancer and they planned to spend time with her, find new jobs, start over.

Four months later, both Beganny and his wife are still out of work.

“I’m not looking for sympathy,” Beganny said. “This is what has come and you take it. But you say ‘Damn, why couldn’t things be a little different?”’

6 Macadamia Lane, Lewiston

The newer two-story home and its attached two-car garage are clean. Well cared for.

And still being lived in two weeks before the scheduled foreclosure auction.

A wreathe adorns the front door and a small snowman statue decorates the front steps. The driveway is plowed, scraped to the pavement. Located in the middle of a new development, the house looks just as well-kept as its neighbors.

Unless its owner finds a way to pay off the nearly $232,000 owed on it – almost $221,00 of it principle – the home will be sold to the highest bidder on Feb. 19.

359 Court St., Auburn

The gray two-story sits at the corner of Holly and Court streets, unoccupied. The shades are drawn tight and the house looks like it’s huddled against the snow that fills the yard, reaching almost to the windows.

A pair of satellite dishes sit on the roof, the only indication anyone has lived there in decades.

58 Olive St., Auburn

Like most of 15, the simple white ranch is unoccupied. Snow covers the property, including the ERA Worden Realty “for sale” sign in the front yard. The home’s owners stopped returning calls from ERA months ago. Their cell phone numbers were disconnected soon after.

The Auburn real estate agency said it last heard from the couple in November.

56 Millett Road, Minot

The mobile home and two-car garage sit on a plot of land on a wooded side road. Someone has been there recently – footprints lead to the house – but the driveway is under at least two or three feet of snow and the front steps haven’t been shoveled off.

The home is tidy, well kept, like a house whose owners left for vacation. But they never came back.

20 Maple St., Mechanic Falls

It’s hard to tell whether anyone is still living in the rundown apartment building in the heart of downtown Mechanic Falls. The driveway has been plowed recently, but a pair of CMP notices are posted on the front door and the electric meters are not running on this day. Trash and toys are strewn across the side porch, as if someone started weeding through their belongings and decided the kids’ bikes and air conditioning unit weren’t worth taking.

In the middle of it all, a welcome sign still hangs beside the door.

28 Crossman St., Lisbon

Carolyn Provencal and her husband lived in their little gray ranch for 18 years. It was where they spent most of their 20-year marriage, where they raised their children. They were happy, employed, able to meet their financial obligations.

Then in 2005, Provencal’s husband suddenly died.

“I just fell apart,” Provencal said.

Grief-stricken and plagued by panic attacks, she left her job at TD Banknorth. Severe anxiety made it hard to find another.

The family income plummeted to nothing.

Provencal said she asked for help from the mortgage company, calling repeatedly and sending them multiple packets of information to back up her hardship claim. But she said the bank’s customer service representatives – based in India – didn’t understand her and those who did told her the packets of information were not in her file.

In 2007, Provencal refinanced the house in an effort to save it. She hoped to pull out enough equity to keep her mortgage and other bills paid for a while.

But the deal, she said, went wrong. She ended up with far less money than she expected. Unable to pay the new mortgage, Provencal quickly faced foreclosure.

In October, Provencal left the house and moved into a rental home a couple of miles away. She now lives with her fiancé, Mikel Tuttle, a man she’s known since high school. The pair struggle together to make ends meet.

Provencal’s house is slated for auction on Feb. 19. The thought of it still upsets her.

“It’s the American dream, but it’s a friggin’ nightmare now,” Tuttle said.

83 Federal Road, Livermore

Set on a small rise, the older two-story overlooks Route 4 and the traffic that runs through town. From the road, the house looks tidy, well kept. But it’s impossible to get closer.

The shades are drawn and the driveway is blocked by snow. There are no signs that anyone has been there for months.

10 Maple St., Paris

Last June, when the bank started foreclosure proceedings on the old apartment building, the owner wrote a letter to the court. He didn’t dispute the late and missed mortgage payments, but he said his wife was ill and could not work and the family was dealing with mounting medical bills. He said some tenants hadn’t paid rent, some of the units were vacant and heating oil cost him $12,000 over five months.

He said he placed the building on the market for $149,000 the month before and he believed it could sell.

Apparently it never did. The building is slated to go to auction. Feb. 9.

Two of the building’s tenants said the four apartments are now fully occupied. They said none of the renters learned about the foreclosure until a couple of weeks ago, and then only by happenstance – one of them accidentally received a letter addressed to the owner from a foreclosure recovery service.

“We all in the building went ‘What?'” said Martha Sargent, one of the tenants.

When they asked their landlord about it, the tenants said he told them not to worry, that the foreclosure wasn’t going to happen.

But as of Friday, the bank’s lawyer still lists the property on his auction sheet.

The tenants aren’t sure what to think.

“The landlord’s still collecting the rent, so I don’t know,” said Lena Pulkkinen, another tenant.

The tenants say they aren’t sure what they’ll do – or where they’ll go – if the building is auctioned off Monday. They hope the landlord’s right in his advice not to worry.

“He’s a really good guy,” said Dennis Damon, who lives with Sargent. “I don’t see him dumping us out in the street.”

15 Wheeler St., Paris

When Salvatore Rubino III saw the 100-year-old fixer-upper, he fell in love. It had four bedrooms. Wood floors. Solid cinder-block construction. An acre of land within walking distance of town.

He bought the place for $33,000 in the mid-1990s and thought he and his wife would live there forever.

Fourteen years later, Rubino found himself in the middle of a divorce and with a soon-to-be ex-wife who was entitled to half the property. Distraught over the possibility of losing the house, Rubino agreed to buy her out. In order to get the cash to do it, he refinanced.

Rubino’s new mortgage was $110,000. His payments doubled, jumping from $457 a month to $900. It was money he could barely afford while working. Then he got laid off.

The bank, he said, wasn’t sympathetic.

“If they’d let me pay $600 a month, I would have kept it. They didn’t want to work with me,” he said.

Rubino put the house up for sale. It had been appraised at $135,000 two years ago, he said. He asked $68,900.

No one bought it.

When the bank’s foreclosure proceedings moved forward, Rubino moved out and rented an apartment in West Paris. He still thinks about the neighbors he left, about the work he did around the place, about all the summer evenings he walked to the local park for community concerts.

“I’d rather have it back,” he said. “It was very, very hard owning it that long and then losing it.”

21 Myrtle St., Paris

Less than a week before it’s slated to go to auction, the house received an oil delivery.

Someone is still living in the tattered home, which is located on a narrow side street in the middle of town. A dog – alert and vocal – is tied behind the house. A car is parked in the driveway. The area is plowed and shoveled.

The oil delivery driver left a bill. The auction is scheduled so soon, the house could have a new owner before payment is due.

2221 Main St., Hanover

It’s clear from the snow that the house is unoccupied. The steps and yard are piled high with snow and a mound of snow and ice has slid from the home’s tin roof.

But if not for the snow, the little brown house would look like any other on the road.

15 Bird Hill Road, Woodstock

It looks brand new.

The two-dormer Cape Cod is located at the end of a long driveway on a wooded parcel less than a tenth of a mile from North Lake. Everything, from the home’s maroon shutters to its side deck, is pristine.

The only hint it’s in foreclosure: the unplowed driveway with its three feet of snow.

37 Old Gore Road, Woodstock

At the edge of North Lake, an old blue A-frame house and a red saltbox home sit just steps from the water.

The homes, both part of 37 Old Gore Road, were mortgaged in November 2006 for $159,000. Payments stop less than a year later.

The property’s owner, Robert Tucci, had died.

Tucci left the homes to his young daughter, but his ex-wife couldn’t afford to pay for both her home and the lake-front property. The homes lapsed into foreclosure.

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