Clifford Roy believes he’s haunted. Nancy Caswell thinks he’s right. Just not in the same sense of the word.

Roy, who lives at Tall Pines in Lewiston, convinced the Sci-Fi Channel’s TV show “Ghost Hunters” that goblins and demons are afoot throughout his apartment.

The network was scheduled to air his story, complete with on-location footage, at 9 p.m. Wednesday. But all this left Caswell fighting a case of only-in-America disbelief.

“Yeah, we’ve been over there,” Caswell said in a tone fit to describe a root canal. “Sci-Fi got wind and decided to run with this even though we said, Run away, the whole thing’s a scam and you’ll look like the biggest idiots.’ It’s a bunch of bull. I told them please don’t mention our name.”

Caswell represents the Maine Paranormal Research Association, a group formed in 1998 and based in Lewiston for the last two years. Last year, she said members of her group toured the apartment where Roy lives with his parents, Joseph Leo and Marguerite, and his girlfriend, Lisa Jordan.

Aside from what she called a “superb acting job” by a wailing Marguerite Roy, Caswell said her people observed “minimal” supernatural activity.

Tale from the crypt

She claims the family has concocted this tale from the crypt in a last-ditch effort to avoid eviction. And indeed, Roy, all the while alleging discrimination, acknowledges that his family has been ordered to leave Tall Pines by next Tuesday.

Roy, who said he’s had a lifelong battle with social phobia, anxiety and depression, said management informed him that he needs a working smoke detector in his bedroom.

That’s one bone of contention. Roy doesn’t want the apartment’s management in the room. Roy said he hasn’t walked into his room for more than five years because he says a voice told him a member of his family would die if he did.

“One of my doctors (suggested) that it was crazy,” Roy said. “You know, I wouldn’t have believed it until I started experiencing it myself.”

Tricia Wilson, an office clerk at the 296-unit apartment complex, said she couldn’t comment on the reasons for the eviction. The manager wasn’t available Tuesday afternoon, she said. But, she noted, “There’s more to the story” than a smoke-detector problem.

While his bedroom’s the current bugaboo, Roy believes much of the evil lurks below. He’s heard that previous tenants used the basement for devil worship.

Jordan and Roy insist they heard faint, groaning voices while cleaning the basement one day. After consulting everyone from priests to paranormal societies, Roy returned downstairs with holy water he obtained from a clergyman.

“My neck started to hurt almost immediately,” Roy said. “The next day, there was a dark circle around my eye as if somebody punched me.”

Tall Pines has been fertile soil for tall tales. One legend has it that the complex was constructed on an old burial ground. Its name actually was changed to River Valley Village last year when the nonprofit Caleb Foundation purchased it and began rehabbing all the units.

Ghost of a chance

Caswell laughs.

“Hello!” she said. “Why would (Roy) stay if he believed any of that stuff?”

Heck, Caswell and her fianc believe their own house is haunted. She’s convinced that ghosts follow them home and “stay for a day or two.”

But Tall Pines? Spooky? Total balderdash. Not that she’s in a hurry to return.

“After we went there in January, one of them confided to a family member that the whole thing was a fraud,” Caswell said. “They’re desperate to capitalize on something.”

Sci-Fi Channel and its research team, the Atlantic Paranormal Society, apparently were convinced in three visits to Lewiston. Roy says he signed their waivers and contracts in late August.

Caswell said Roy told her that his anxiety disorder precludes him from owning a TV or radio. Oddly, in an interview on Wednesday, he said that he was looking forward to the show.

And his family reached out to touch the media plenty this week as the date of its impending eviction approached. Caswell even received a plea from Jordan.

Her answer: not a ghost of a chance.

“They knew they were getting evicted a year ago,” Caswell said. “She called again (Tuesday) with this whole story. We’re going to be evicted on the 12th. Please help us.’ And I said, My God, no thanks.’

“I do not ever want to go back there.”

Kalle Oakes is the Sun Journal’s staff columnist. His e-mail is [email protected].