A tiny 18th-century family burial ground set back in a Windham, Maine pasture, where locals report seeing two little girls in old-fashioned dresses playing at dawn among the headstones of the founding Chute family.
Chute Road (corner of Chute Road and Swett Road), Windham, ME 04062
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free. This is a small, fragile historic family cemetery set back from the road; visit respectfully and do not disturb stones.
Access
Limited Access
Small cemetery reached via a dirt track across an open field; uneven turf and a handful of granite markers.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1834 · 18th-century burial ground of the founding Chute family of Windham (New Marblehead) · Resting place of Revolutionary War veteran Josiah Chute · Subject of the Portland Press Herald's 'It Happened in Windham' local-history column
Chute Cemetery — also called the Chute Road Cemetery — is a small family burial ground set back in a pasture on Chute Road in Windham, Maine, near the corner of Chute and Swett roads. It was established by the Chute family, descendants of Captain Thomas Chute, one of the early settlers of New Marblehead (the colonial name for Windham). George Chute farmed at the corner of Chute and Swett roads and, in the tradition of the era, set aside a small area in his pasture as a family cemetery, later marked with granite monuments.
The cemetery is tiny — fewer than 20 marked graves — and is reached by a dirt track across an open field. Among those buried there is Josiah Chute, a Revolutionary War veteran who died in 1834 at age 75. The grounds are documented on Find a Grave and in local Windham historical writing.
The site's reputation beyond Windham comes from a long-running local-history and folklore column. Haley Pal's 'It Happened in Windham' feature in the Portland Press Herald has recounted the cemetery's ghost legend more than once, and it has been picked up by other regional outlets and paranormal sites.
Sources
The Chute Road Cemetery legend centers on two sisters. By the story repeated in Windham, the girls disappeared near the cemetery and were never seen alive again; their bodies were never recovered, but they were each given a grave marker. The most common explanation in the folklore is that the girls fell into an old well or abandoned mine shaft.
Residents living near the cemetery report that at dawn they sometimes see two little girls playing among the stones — chasing each other in a game of tag, giggling, hiding behind headstones, and popping back up. Witnesses describe the girls wearing long, ankle-length dresses, wool stockings, and sunbonnets, and note that they are often not dressed for the current weather and that their clothing seems to vary between sightings.
This legend is carried by the Portland Press Herald's 'It Happened in Windham' column (by Haley Pal), by the local Keep Me Current outlet, and by paranormal sites — local-press and community sources rather than a single anonymous post. Even so, the girls are unnamed in the reliable retellings; one aggregator assigns specific names and ages, but those are not corroborated by the cemetery records or the newspaper coverage, so HauntBound presents the sisters as an undocumented local legend rather than identified historical individuals.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
A short self-guided daytime visit to a small 18th-century Windham family burial ground, where the founding Chute family — including Revolutionary War veteran Josiah Chute — is buried, and where the legend of two ghostly sisters is said to play out at dawn.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Portland, ME
Established 1829 and expanded to 12 acres in 1841, Western Cemetery was Portland's primary municipal burial ground from 1829 to 1852 and remained active until 1910. It contains roughly 6,600 graves, including the parents of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The grounds suffered an extended period of vandalism and grave desecration from July 1, 1988 through August 1, 1989, during which an estimated 1,942 tombs were disturbed. Restoration began in 2003 under the City of Portland with the Stewards of the Western Cemetery.
Bowdoin, ME
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Bucksport, ME
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