'Tis the Halloween season, that time of year when the veil between this world and others is thinnest. 'Tis the time of year when the departed can easily return to former “haunts,” places and to see people that were important to them, particularly on Halloween night.

But, don't kid yourself. Spirits (those who have passed through “the light” and moved on to the afterlife) and ghosts (those who are caught between the physical realm and the afterlife) aren't restricted to Oct. 31.

Just ask Nell Tharpe of East Boothbay.

Tharpe is a certified nurse midwife (CNM), who began caring for women and babies since 1980. She teaches through Midwife Publications, the Midwifery Institute at Philadelphia University, and holds workshops nationwide for others in her field.

The point is, when she had the experience you are about to read, she called on her scientific background to find an explanation. She admits she could not, and cannot, find one.

Green Landing had been purchased by Nell's father, James “Big Jim” Tharpe, in 1967 as the family's summer retreat away from New Jersey. For almost two decades, Nell has been renting the 10-room cottage to summer vacationers.

Big Jim was an electronics engineer, who worked for Dumont and exhibited at the annual National Association of Broadcasters show for 42 consecutive years. He was also, his daughter said, instrumental in developing color TV and setting up TV stations both nationwide and internationally.

June 1, 2014

For Tharpe and her assistant/student midwife, Libby, it was just another Saturday in early June being spent readying Green Landing for another rental season.

Libby was upstairs cleaning and Nell was downstairs. She had just finished in the dining room and had moved on to the kitchen.

“(W)CLZ was blasting on the radio,” Tharpe said. “And then I heard something I hadn't heard on the radio in a very long time; ‘This program was brought to you by the National Association of Broadcasters.’ I remember thinking it was weird to have heard it; I'd never heard it on the radio before.”

Nell then called out loudly, “Hi Big Jim, thanks for coming to visit!”

“And then I got this 'funny' feeling and heard a door slam.”

Libby, hearing a racket, came down to find out what was going on. Nell told her the story. They had a good laugh about it and return to work.

After Libby went back upstairs, Nell walked back into the “pristine” dining room and made a shocking discovery.

“The table is coated. As I'm wondering what it could be, I pick some up and rub it between my fingers — it's ash. The table is coated with ash. As I'm wondering where it came from I look down on the floor and I see piles of ash and clumps of ash footprints going through the doorway from the dining room to the living room, that continue to the wet bar (my father liked his drink), and then up the stairs. The master bedroom is at the top of the stairs and the door was closed.”

Nell went back downstairs where the ash was. She saw piles of ash on the both sides of the threshold, the sliding doors that bring one in from the porch.

She called Libby back downstairs and asked her to check out the ash.

Libby told Nell she thought it was someone was playing a practical joke on her.

“And I tell her, it's so totally Big Jim; absolutely what he would have done,” Nell said. “So I'm cleaning up the dining room and I'm pissed off, and he would have laughed about me being pissed off — it would have been a total gotcha(!) for him.”

While vacuuming up the ash, Nell was thinking, should I be taking pictures first? Where did the ash come from? Naturally, she deduced it must have come from the fireplace.

“Then I think, what kind of a gust is going to come down the chimney, go up the stairs, and go into the dining room and cover the whole dining room table? It’s the clumping that got me.”

She looks over the hearth, the coffee table in front of the fireplace, the rug .... It's all pristine.

No ashes.

Nothing.

None.

“At that point there's no doubt in my mind what was happening; I didn't understand it, but I figured I didn't have to understand it. I said hi to my father again and told him I had to get back to work.”

Later in June, just before he vacationed at Green Landing, her brother, Jim, told Nell their father visited him in a dream — right around the same time Big Jim visited Green Landing.

“What are the chances?” Nell said.

Ironically, her father's “visit” was exactly one week before the date of his death in 2002, June 8.

Nell became thoughtful during our interview. A few moments later she said, “He loved Green Landing. He told me I should always keep it ... even if I had to sell my own house.”