It was only a matter of time. Buck’s monument is one of the most well known ‘haunted’ stories in Maine. I figured I was over due to stick my nose in there too. I know you’ve all heard the stories before so I will try to keep it interesting.
Jonathan Buck was born in Massachusetts in 1719. He married a woman named Lydia, had NINE(!!!!!!!!) children, six of whom lived to adulthood. In 1762 Jon decided he would move his family to Maine after not being able to get his shipbuilding business off the ground due to property issues. He traipsed around the East Coast from Castine to Bangor until he finally decided on the perfect spot. He built a sawmill, the plantations first general store and settled his family in nicely.
In 1776, at the start of the Revolutionary War, Buck was named Colonel in Maine’s 5th Malitia. Although Maine had a bigger army and more steam then the British, he lost the battle in one of the most humiliating and terrible losses in US Naval history at the time. They held that award until Pearl Harbor. One of the main issues leading to the loss was the leaders under Buck were too busy trying to one up each other and couldn’t stop arguing over who was in control.
(Buck, why didn’t you pull a three stooges and bang their heads together or something, knock some sense into them and tell them to stop bickering in the middle of a war. Did they not know they were on the same side?)
The remaining Americans decided to bail, leaving ships to burn in their wake. Buck also fled with his wife and youngest daughter to Brewer. From there, Buck (at 56 years old and with a case of gout) walked over 200 miles back to Massachusetts, to wait out the shit storm that was taking place in a town that would eventually be named after him. He stayed there for four years until the war ended in 1783. He then decided it was safe to come out of his hiding place and return to the town he originally founded.
In March of 1795, Jonathan Buck died and was buried with his family. The town was renamed Bucksport (from Bucks’ Town) in 1817 and in 1852 a monument was erected in the same cemetery with a stellar view of Fort Knox.
Now let’s get to why you are all here-the cursed monument. Bucksport is straight out of a ghost story book. Around every corner there is a haunted location or a curse or a murder that once took place. If a place can be charming and oppressive at the same time, this would be it.
The cemetery is enclosed behind a wrought iron fence and contains many of Jonathan Bucks relatives. At one point his more recent relatives were so fed up with certain stories of the witch’s curse tarnishing his good name that they threatened to sue. It seems as though the town of Bucksport saw some money making potential, however, since they have a huge sign and plaque that’s just screaming “tourist trap” in front of his monument depicting the supposed curse.
The story has many different versions, the most common one being that as his time as Judge (he was never a judge, but a justice of the peace) he sentenced a woman accused of witchcraft to death by burning. As she met her demise she shouted over the flames, throwing out some hocus pocus hellfire cursing his tomb. So now we have, not a tomb, but a monument with a witches foot stained on the front of it. This ‘foot’ actually showed up over 50 years after it was erected. Talk about a slow burn. The curse goes a little something like this:
‘Jonathan Buck, listen to these words, the last my tongue will utter. It is the spirit of the only true and living God which bids me speak them to you. You will soon die. Over your grave they will erect a stone that all may know where your bones are crumbling into dust. But listen, upon that stone the imprint of my feet will appear, and for all time, long after you and you accursed race have perished from the earth, will the people from far and wide know that you murdered a woman. Remember well, Jonathan Buck, remember well."
…or something like that.
You may be asking yourself, why her feet? Well, there’s another version of the story that is just too creative to not include:
This mystery woman was accused of witchcraft after having Bucks child, and was pregnant again with another of Bucks children. This is what ultimately led to Bucks accusations of her practicing witchcraft. He tied her to her front door and set her aflame. The young boy, took the smoldering leg of his mother and used it as a club to cripple Buck, hence the foot on his grave. Whoever had the imagination for this one….~slow clap~
The monument baring the witch’s foot has been scrubbed and scrubbed and SCRUBBED, only to have the foot reappear. The monument has been replaced twice, and still the foot comes back. So what do you think? Is Jonathan Buck cursed by a witch?
I, myself, don’t know about a curse, but everytime I tried to take a picture of Bucks actual tombstone, not the monument, but the tombstone, my camera battery would die or the settings would act funny and it was near impossible for me to get a decent picture. Call it sleepiness or the exposure, or just an old tombstone. Maybe you would like to call it…..a CURSE. (insert insane organ music here).
For what it's worth, I visited this cemetery fresh from my horrendous night at the Lucerne Inn. So who knows what the heck was going on.
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