On Halloween night 1940, a quiet Rockland neighborhood became the scene of one of Maine’s most disturbing crimes.
Eighty-five years later, the story still chills anyone who hears it.
The Rockland Historical Society, always with a sense of humor, is retelling on its Facebook page the tale of midcoast Maine’s memorable “Headless Halloween.”
The air was cold, the streets quiet. But inside a house at 28 Crescent Street, something far darker than the October wind was stirring.
Sixteen-year-old Pauline Young had argued with her stepfather, John Phelps, on Halloween night, 1940.
What followed would haunt Rockland for generations.
“She cursed me,” Phelps later confessed. “And came at me with a knife.”
He struck her with a hammer – and when she fell silent, panic set in.
Through the night, he dismembered her body, hiding it in five burlap bags beneath the porch and near Witham’s Wharf, where he claimed to have thrown her head into the harbor.
Neighbors recalled screams – four sharp cries, a heavy thud, then silence.
Days later, a foul odor spread through the neighborhood.
On November 9, wracked with guilt, Phelps tried to end his life and instead confessed everything at Knox Hospital.
Police uncovered the grisly evidence under the house, but Pauline’s head was never found.
The town was shaken, and the press named it “The Headless Halloween.”
