I know this house isn’t haunted, and I wish it were, I do. For it wouldn’t be so lonely if it had a ghost or two. — “The House with Nobody In It” by Joyce Kilmer

There was a house along my walk to school back in the day that looked particularly forlorn. 

Its eaves seemed to sag like the shoulders of a depressed man. The door had become crooked in its frame, shutters drooped around dusty windows and the whole place took on the visage of a sad face staring out on the street over a weed-choked lawn.

Mark LaFlamme

The house was dreary and I found myself crossing to the other side of the street when I passed it; not because I thought it was haunted or anything imaginative like that, but just because the defeated look of that old house filled me with gloom. 

It was especially sad because I remembered it from more recent years when it was a happy and vibrant place, filled with kids who stomped up and down stairs, slid down banisters and played on the neatly mowed front lawn any chance they got. The house was the scene of Christmas parties in winter, backyard barbecues in summertime and all sorts of hoopla that made for a happy home.

At night, you’d see the colors of the TV flickering against the windows as the family settled in for movie night. In the morning, the house would bid farewell to the little ones as they went off to school and then you’d hear the hum of a vacuum cleaner as the lady of the house made things spic and span again. 

It was a happy place for many years and then like that, it was over. The house was emptied, the family moved away and the place quickly fell to neglect and disrepair. The sad face gazed out on the neighborhood and I don’t know if it ever smiled again.

Do houses realize it when a good thing is gone, I wondered at the time? Do their very bones ache with longing for the happy little family that dwelt within its walls? Do they feel unloved when their rooms are empty, floorboards pull apart, ceilings sag and cupboard doors fall off their hinges?

These thoughts haunted me as a kid and they haunted me again two weeks ago as I watched the house at 149 College St. in Lewiston go up in flames. 

Just about everybody who is local knows a little bit about this house. A 168-year-old Victorian (of 15th-century French design, some say) with an ornate mansard roof, it was at one time a house of great distinction. One could imagine the prominent families who lived there over generations; families who no doubt hosted parties and showed off every inch of this home of such grand design and splendor. 

For many years, the house was occupied mainly by local doctors, including one Dr. W.W. Bolster, who moved in around 1900; and Dr. E.C. Higgins and his family, who lived there for decades in the middle part of that century. Mrs. Hazel D. Higgins, in fact, died in the home in 1974 at the age of 83. 

In latter years, the house at 149 College St. was the home to a watch repair man and various others. Later still, starting around 1993, the grand old house was home to a couple who ran the Grateful Earth, a store that advertised crystals, incense, beads, teas, candles and natural foods, among other things, to locals with a taste for such things. 

The store operated for many years, until around 2007, and one can imagine that the old Victorian was plenty pleased in its new incarnation. Where it was once filled with the families of local physicians and Bates College alumni, now it saw people coming and going all day long. There would have been laughter, funky music and exotic gatherings with tie-dye clothes and the scent of natural substances burning in pipes. 

“They were into music and invited anyone who played guitar, keyboard or drums to join them to play,” said one woman who frequented the Grateful Earth. 

For that period, 149 College St. was a hippy store, yesirree, and it was home to people who no doubt appreciated its ornate design and fancy, handcrafted features. The house had been revived and for that period of 14 years or so, the future must have seemed bright.

And yet soon after, the good times were over for 149 College St., possibly forever. The people of the Grateful Earth departed, as all others had, and soon the house became a hot spot for drug dealers, squatters and no-account drifters. 

A one glorious house at 149 College St., Lewiston, a 168-year-old Victorian with an ornate mansard roof, has been the center of a storied past in the city and home to many prominent residents. In recent years the house had become a nuisance house, according to local officials. The home burned Aug. 28.   redfin.com

The police were called to the home over and over, making arrests and shooing people away. Each time the cops arrived, the house looked a little bit worse, full of unhealthy trash, empty liquor bottles and needles left behind by the hopelessly drug addicted. No signs of love existed within these walls. Wood was left to rot. Holes appeared in walls and the heaps of festering trash just grew higher and higher by the day. Those who glimpsed beyond the door of the once beautiful house reacted with revulsion and horror rather than with awe. 

In time, the great house on College Street had not only lost the love of the community around it, it had lost its dignity. After 150-plus years of enjoying the reputation as one of the finest showpieces in the area, now it was just a drug den; a nuisance house, as city officials called it. A place of disease and despair, absolutely hated by neighbors who were constantly subjected to the noise and iniquity within. 

So, as I stood in the street watching this great house burn, I wondered if the very soul of the place wept for what it had become. Maybe as they burned, the very beams and walls of the home cried out that they had once been better than this and it would sure be swell if people knew that. It would sure be swell if people remembered the lavish parties, the open house tours, the good times the house had been witness to over so many decades. 

If there is any sentience at all in wood and plaster, I imagine 149 College St. doesn’t wish to be remembered as a place where meth was cooked and where dope was doled out in baggies to addicts who might later die from their doses. 

And when I drift off into these weird trains of thought, I always figure that others would deem me daffy for imagining such things. Houses don’t have souls, they would tell me in that eye-rolling way. They have no way of registering joy or pain or regret.

Yet all over social media, lots and lots of people were lamenting the decline of the once stately house at 149 College St. It deserved better than this, they insisted, as though the beleaguered Victorian was a distinguished old woman who had been subjected to unspeakable abuse. 

Some see beauty in her still. 

“The architecture of the building was just amazing,” one local woman said. “I went by yesterday and it was a mess but the bones of that home were lovely!” 

And as we all brooded over the lamentable decline of this great house, several people remarked that the same fate awaits many a once-glorious house across the Twin Cities. 

A magnificent Second Empire on Pine Street in Lewiston slated to be transformed into an apartment house. 

“Is it getting a face-lift?” one lady wanted to know. “Or is it getting its soul destroyed?”

A house at the corner of Birch and Bartlett streets in Lewiston. 

A spectacular house on Academy Street in Auburn showing signs of ongoing neglect. 

And of course, the old Sun Journal building at 104 Park St. in Lewiston, which I’m convinced weeps deep into the night as it recalls its storied years as the very hub of news in the Twin Cities. 

An old Greek Revival here, a 200-year-old Victorian there, and a whole lot of historic houses in sad decline in between. 

Whether all of these old buildings actually feel woe over their own falls from grace is maybe best left to the imaginations of authors like Stephen King, Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson, who have written extensively about the memory of old houses. 

As for 149 College St., city officials have hinted that it may be torn down and who knows? Maybe we’ll get another dollar store there, or a variety market where people can get butts and booze on the cheap. 

If Lewiston itself has a soul — and I think it does — it must feel itself being picked apart, the best parts of it plucked clean, destroyed and forgotten. 

Who needs a soul, anyway, when there are chain stores and apartment complexes to build to stuff the city coffers with tax bucks? 

If there ARE ghosts in these old houses, I imagine they’re hanging their heads in shame and we’ll never hear another sound from them as they await their unhappy fates.