The Goldeneagle: FAQ: Why Do People Believe This Car is Haunted, Cursed, or Possessed?

A recent article: "Stolen Car: Religion Crazed Fanatics, Steal Car, Claiming it is Demon Possessed!" resulted in folks who were not familiar with this car, asking the question: Why? What happened? What is so special about this car? Why do people believe this car is haunted, cursed, or possessed? Here is the story behind this bizzar car:

For 30 years, the Goldeneagle has sat in my garden, silent and motionless, sitting on top an ancient Native American grave yard. Originally it was one of many cars that lined this hill. Mechanics have long baffled over our difficulty at keeping a car running. We buy on average a new car every 6 months, a necessity caused by the inexplicable fact that once a car is parked too close the The Goldeneagle, it never runs again. The only answer mechanics have ever been able to come up with was that our driveway must be on top of some sort of "natural electrical fault line" which drains the power out of the cars, thus causing irreprible damage to the battery, alternator, and electrics. Local people with more superstitious beliefs, point to The Goldeneagle, saying that it has an energy sucking demon in it that drains the electricity out of everything that passes it. They point out that it is not just cars, but also watches, radios, cameras, clocks, and other electrical items which also die once in contact with the car. Indeed they have a point. It is a puzzlement, that could possibly explained by the last day of this car's life.

The "electrical sucking" problems are a more recent development however. The car, when brand new, was a problem from the day it left the showroom. Driving it was near impossible, as was controlling it. Every one who ever attempted to drive it, compared it to "Herbie The Love Bug" saying it had a mind of it's own and would not go where they wanted to go. You could sit for hours trying to get it to start, than give up, only to have the engine come on on it's own. There was no way to adjust the speed of it. If it was moving, it was going 80MPH or 35MPH. There was no in between, and it went fast or slow without warning. Mechanics who examined the car, said they could find nothing wrong, but assumed it was a problem with it's control system. You see, this car was an unusual model. A limited edition. A prototype, less than 5,000 of them were built, today this car is one of less than a thousand presumed to exist, though some estimate there may be fewer than a hundred of them left.

This model, a 1964 Limited Edition Version of a 330 Coronet, was made from September 1963 - January 1964. Technically it is a 1963 Dodge, that was built using parts from both the left over parts of a 1963 Coronet and the later 1964 330, thus the difference from a Limited Edition 330 and a regular edition 330. There in lays the problem. The 1964 330 is a push button car, while the 1963 Coronet is just a regular key operated car. In other words, they combined push button technology on a none push button car. The regular edition 330's did not have this problem, because they were push button cars, made to be push button cars. Because of this unique combo feature of the Limited Edition versions of the 330's, mechanics assumed that The Goldeneagle's problems stemmed from that. Somewhere in the system, when connecting the push button wiring in, something must be faulty they said. However, while mechanics had a logical and rational answer for our car's inexplicable activity, several locals, preferred the superstitious answer, of saying the car was possessed and had a demon controlling it.

Than there was, however, the doors. While driving down the road, switching from 35 to 80 to 35 again, the doors would suddenly fly open, the seat belt unbuckle, and it was, hang on for your life or going flying out on the pavement head first. Because the car is so huge and can move 8 people, we often carpooled locals to church on Sunday. However, this event was short lived, as after a few times of this door flinging habit, they began to swear the car had "pushed them out". While church members kept their distance saying a demon in the car had tried to kill them, mechanics said the problem was three fold - caused by faulty locks, damaged seat belts, and cracked rocker panels.

The car was originally intended to be one of the town police cars. Old Orchard Beach had bought a whole fleet of Dodge's that year. The Goldeneagle, however, did not see duty with the rest of the fleet, because it's problems were there from the very beginning, straight from the factory. An elderly man bought the silver still unmarked police car, and with a paint brush, painted the entire car in gold leaf, named it The Goldeneagle, and it became his rarely used family car. The Goldeneagle stood out, a sight for sore eyes, it's thick, cracked, dripping, brush streaked paint job, made it a sight from hell. It's mad dash habit of unexpectedly speeding than flinging it's doors open, caused people to run from the streets when they saw it coming. With it's gold streaked paint resembling fire, it's brazen lipstick red interior, a white jagged grill that looked like teeth, and big round head lights that looked like eyes, the car was dubbed demon possessed, and quickly became a local legend. Unable to control his car, the elderly man put it in storage, and it sat unused for years, no one dared go near the thing, and locked away, it was quickly forgotten.

Than in 1975, the car was discovered locked away, nearly new, and with almost no mileage on it at all. Because people were terrified of it, believing it to be haunted or possessed; it was going to be crushed. But my father not believing in local superstition around the car, and seeing it silly to crush a nearly brand new, though badly painted, police car brought it home. My dad, an antique car collector at the time, offered $100 to buy it from the crusher and brought it home. My father was convinced that the superstition behind the car being demon possessed were nothing but people's imagination, and he set out to a total rebuild from the ground up, to put an end once and for all to the unexplained activities of this bizarre car. My father's theory was it had serious factory built mechanical problems, thus why the massive rebuilding of it. The car spent a year in pieces and finally it reemerged, a metal-flaked orange, with thick neon red hippie shag interior. It went from demon terror to flashy pimp-mobile. However, rebuilding it, did nothing to stop it's habit of driving off, opening doors and "throwing" people out of itself.

Over the next 7 years, the car would go to more than 40 different mechanics for an evaluation. Oddly, of all the places we took it, there was only one mechanic, who would continually work on this car, again and again, and again. It became a monthly habit to take the car to him. What was odd about this was that in the past three day, my car was stolen, chopped up, nearly crushed, stripped down, passed from person to person, and eventually landed back where it had originally started out: in the yard of the only man to be able to work on it all those many years ago. The guy who has it right this moment was only one of over 40 mechanics that worked on this car, trying to find out what was wrong with it. I was quite surprised actually, when an anonymous tip came to me, yesterday, telling me that they had seen my car earlier that morning being hauled towards his business and they suspected it was on it's way to him. Well, having had most of my cars there at one point or another, and knowing this man and his business, I called him, and indeed, my car was in fact there, and I had called him just in time to stop it from being scraped. He has set it aside and it is now awaiting it's ride back home. This fact no doubt, will cause these superstitious people to claim the car possessed the truck driver to take it to that particular place, knowing it would be saved from the crusher if it could only get to the one man who had a past history with this very car. But in any case, all these years, no mechanic has ever been able to cure the car of it's odd little habits.

When my father first brought it home it was assumed that the car was in near perfect condition. This assumption was based on the fact that it had seen almost no road time as a police car and had seen very little road time while owned by the elderly man. Upon bringing it home, a new discovery was made, one that no one had before been aware of - this car, before being put into storage, had been submerged in salt water, a fact that was revealed, when my father stripped it down to try to find out what was wrong with it. The discovery of the car's connection to the ocean, had only just begun. In the few short years we drove it, it would take several flying leaps off roads, piers, and bridges, and do a nose dive straight into the ocean, as if being dragging in by a magnet. It is unknown how many times this car went underwater, but it is suspected now that this alarming habit was what caused the elderly man to lock it up all those years prior.

We had the car four years, when it began to "attract death" and locals began pointing a finger at the car claiming it's demon was now killing people. In 1979, a ten year old girl on a bike, was hit by a car and killed instantly. She died in our driveway, under the front bumper of The Goldeneagle. Though not the car to hit her, it's presence on the scene of the crime, caused an out cry, to crush the car and kill it's demon.

An alarming discovery was made years later, when it was discovered that this was not the first young girl to see such a fate. Many years before we had acquired the car, my Aunt B, when just 2 years old, had likewise been hit by a car, though again not the Goldeneagle that hit her, it was there at the scene of the crime, and it had been blamed for causing her near death. This scene of young girls dieing or nearly dieing inches from The Goldeneagle, would repeat itself many times, and became the thing that would make this car a legend.

Dead dogs, cats, and birds, began to show up, around the car with no explanation as to how they got there, and than, the thing that terrified many - one day at church, the car lept off by itself, "chased after" two small white terrier dogs and crushed them. This event was witnessed by nearly every member of the church. It would be the last time we would take The Goldeneagle to church on Sundays, instead using the blue station wagon after that, because of the outcried of hate and terror from members whenever they saw the Goldeneagle.

While the other habits this car had, were scaring people, it was it's connection to death, that had caused the outright terror, that would result in the many years of vandalism. For over 30 years The Goldeneagle has been consistently vandalized. We had had it only 2 years, before the first attack on it by locals, who filled the gas tank with beach sand, and the entire fuel line had to be rebuilt as a result. From the mid 1970's - 1980's, we weekly found the car egged, marshmallowed, t-papered, and keyed along with messages to crush it to stop the curse. It has in it, it's third windshield, a result of rocks having been thrown at it on multiple occasions - once while we were driving in it: the rock came threw the windshield and missed my forehead by millimeters. While we knew who a few of the vandals were, we never found out who was behind most of this long years of attacks on the car.

The Last Ride of The Goldeneagle and Why the Woman Who Stole It, Hates It So Much
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When I was 9 years old, an event would happen to terrify every one, and cause the car to never be used ever again. A hurricane lashed wildly up the coast, not unusual, seeing how we live on a beach. My self-proclaimed "prophet" cult leader grandfather had phoned from Utah to say that a fire would kill us all. He than phoned my grandmother in Biddeford and told her the same thing. This was not an unusual happening, as he was a raving lunatic and had made hundreds of such wild "prophecies" every week for years. The difference was, around midnight my grandmother called us in terror to say that her house was in flames. Without a thought we all piled into the Goldeneagle, it being the fastest car we had, and sped the way to Biddeford We arrived on Graeme Street to see the giant Victorian mansion nothing but towering flames and my grandmother running down the road hugging her cat. She lept into the car and we drove around Biddeford waiting for the fire to stop and trying to calm her down. It was one of Biddeford's biggest fires, spreading out to neighboring houses and the town was in a panic trying to keep the fire from spreading to the 1700's Congregational/Temp Saco ward Mormon Church next door. The giant ancient church with it's towering stain glass windows is unique around here, the goal was to save the church at all costs. All costs, cost my grandmother and five other families their homes, as the fire swept up the block burning everything in it's path. With the Goldeneagle cruising on the scene of Biddeford's giant fire, rumors started up, that the car's demon had started the fire.

Two days later, with the hurricane still raging down on us, half the town evacuated, and flood waters now nearing the town hall, a woman on East Grand Ave, doubled over, coughing up pools of blood, with 4 feet of water and rising fast, power lines down, and brilliant blue flashes of electricity coming from the power lines and sparking across the water, no ambulance could get to her. It was our Goldeneagle that would suddenly take an 80MPH nose dive down Maine Street, and into the raging hurricane tossed Atlantic Ocean with it's 20 foot waves, water flashing with wild electrical power lines, and water well over the roof. The drive went on underwater for nearly a mile to East Grand Ave. With the woman in the car, the entire car filled to the dash with ocean water fast turning red with blood, we were speeding back up Main Street and reached the Town Hall Hill, to be meet by 3 police cars, two fire trucks, and an ambulance, all of which followed us on the fastest car ride I have ever been in as we drove the dieing woman at speeds far in excess of 100MPH all the way to the Webber Hospital some 15 miles away.

The combination of the off the chart speeds (the hand marking our speed had gone all the way around and broke off), and the long drive under salt water, fighting against a raging hurricane, put too much stress on every fiber of the car. When we finally stopped, opened the doors, let the water drain out and got the woman into the hospital, the car would never move again. The trans was shot, the engine waterlogged, the frame cracked, axles twisted, both back wheels hanging side ways, and the leaf springs left who knows where behind somewhere under the ocean. A friend who saw the high speed chase, and had joined in behind the police, drove up behind us in a light blue VW. The giant 19 foot long Goldeneagle was tied to the bumper of the tiny VW and towed home, parked in my rose garden, and would never move again until May 5, 2010, when it was stolen. Alarmingly, it was this very same woman whose life had been saved by this car, who was the woman to steal this car and sell it to be crushed, claiming it had a demon in it. Since the day of the high speed cash that saved her life and killed my car, she has maintained the theory that it was the car that had caused her health problems to begin with, claiming the car's demon had cursed her.

The Rise of The Rose Garden: On Being Homeless and Living In a Dead Car
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When I was 9 years old, I did not yet have a garden. I did however have a car, which I bought for $1 from my father. The car was turned into an office and I would set out to writing the Twighlight Manor series, while using the Goldeneagle as a writing desk. If I was outside of the house, I was inside of the car. I pretty much lived in the car, and it was not unusual for me to take my meals outside to eat in the car and often, stay out at night and sleep in the car. As a general rule, I spent only one or two hours a day, for the next 20 years, NOT inside of this car. I grew up on a cult compound. While I could not escape the cult, I found I could escape having to listen to their constant preaching, by locking myself inside of The Goldeneagle and reading or writing and ignoring their delusions about all the evil that existed in the world outside of their cult.

My constantly in the car all day and all night for years on end, resulted in my getting to see people's fascination with it. It seemed, my car was some sort of tourist attraction for visitors from Quebec, who for some odd reason, flocked to my car every summer and stood around chattering in French. Nearly every one of them would attempt to buy it, with offers going higher and higher. The highest offer I have yet received, for the car I paid only $1 for, was $50,000, an offer that came long after the car had collapsed to the ground and had to be lifted up on cinder blocks to protect it.

The problem here, is I have Autism and I can not deal with even just one or two people around me with my having a panic attack. So these daily visits from dozens and dozens of French Canadians was driving my batty and I had to do something to stop them from flocking to my car. On the other hand, than there were the local religion crazies, who were daily dropping by to throw eggs at my car. I had to stop that at well.

To protect it from the vandals who thought it was cursed, and Canadians who seemed desperate to buy it, a garden was built around it, thus hiding it from the sight of the world. By the time I was 11, the car could no longer be seen, as pine trees, blackberries, lilacs, and roses, grew up over and around my car. I never did a thing to trim them, letting them grow wild, and by my late 20's they had become a huge jungle, and local vandals seemed to have forgotten my car existed seeing how not even NASA Satellites or Google Maps, had been able to see. People have stood only inches from the car and not known it was there, not until March 18, 2010 that is, when the vandal woman who would steal and sell it on May 5, 2010, came in and tore up all my bushes, uncovered the long buried and forgotten to the world car, and smashed the living hell out of it (see photos above).

While I had always planned on restoring The Goldeneagle, it's last drive through the ocean, had cause serious damage and massive rust problems, which prevented me from doing anything loud or harsh around the car for fear of it crumbling. Yes, the rust had gotten that bad. It was the fact that the rust had gotten so bad, that was the reason the vandals were able to do so much damage so fast, with so little effort. For years my comings and going in and out of this car had been delicate and gentle. I knew what to touch and what not to touch. I knew where it's weak spots were and how to avoid them. The vandals in their brutish ox in a china closet manner had ripped off the doors, and jumped in. The result was the instant disintegration of the entire floor. Once the floor had crumbled it was a simple matter of pulling off every thing else and throwing it.

Oh yes, I knew years ago, what would happen if any one touched this car in even the slightest manner. You have to remember, that I am homeless. I have been homeless for many, many years. This car IS my home, my house. I lived in this car. I knew how to keep it from falling apart, and I knew that under no circumstances could any one ever be allowed to touch it in it's frail delicate condition.

The problem with having Autism, is you have a server disability that prevents you from doing pretty much almost everything, and bars you from getting hired at places that would rather not hire you, but than, you have to deal with laws with also say Autism is not considered enough of a disability for you to get disability help from the State, either. It's all I can do, just to find enough food to feed me and my cats. Finding a place to live or a way to restore my car, is near impossible unless I can find someone who will hire an Autistic woman who only knows how to read, write, work on 1964 Dodges, grow roses, and embroider. I don't know how to do anything else. I can't count, I can't do math, I can't do money, I can't tell time, and most stuff that people seem to think is easy, I can not understand at all.

In fact, guarding this car is the only real thing I have ever done with my life. It is a vigil I took very seriously thus why the fight to get it back. Guarding this car and protecting it from vandals, IS my job, my purpose, my duty, my life. To protect this car at all costs - that is what I have done since I was 9 years old. Only this, and nothing more. There were no adults in my life to teach me how to do anything else, and so for 30 years, it's the only thing I have done, because it's the only thing I know how to do. Had I the money to rebuild it and drive it, I would in a heart beat. That would not be hard at all. I know every inch of this car. It's like a giant jig saw puzzle. I'm good with puzzles. Give me a puzzle that takes the average person weeks to finish and I'll have it done in less than an hour. Give me the parts to rebuild my car, and it'll be on the road in days. Putting it back together is not the problem, it's lacking the pieces needed to put it together that is the problem. But guarding, protecting, and working on this car, it really is the only thing I know how to do. For the last 30 years, I have done nothing else, for the simple fact, I was never allowed to do anything else, today, I don't know how to do anything else.

This car was much more than just my car, it was also my house. I lived in this car - you will remember that I am technically homeless - this car IS my home. Without it, I have nothing. Absolutely nothing. Everything I owned was inside of that car. When they took the car, they left me, quite literally, with absolutely nothing. Like Jesus and Gandhi I own nothing. All I had was this car to live in and now I don't have that any more. Well, I'll have it back in a few days, but I won't be able to live in it any more, because the people who stole it, also cut it up. It's now in pieces. So in essence, they not only stole my car, but they also stole my house. The "tent" thing was next to the car, I used the tent in the winter when it snowed, and the rest of the year, I used the car. Now I have no roof over my head at all. And with no way to put the Goldeneagle back into one peice again, it may be a very long time before I have a roof over my head again.