My secretary came in this morning saying her sister woke up to banging on the front door around midnight last night.

Her husband is an over the road long haul trucker and gone so her sister with two kids alone at home was frightened. She hoped the banging was a dream and did not get up...just hoping the knocker went away. The persistent back door greeter trotted around to the front door of her Littleton ME country home. Her sister picked up the phone to call the police. The line was dead. All of us have watched enough chiller Stephen King type shows to think "oh oh" if that happened to us in real life. This is not good. Not good at all and thoughts of the line being cut, protecting your kids all swirl around your head at this point. The banging on the front door continues with a determined beat.

     A quick check of the dooryard with a motion sensor mercury light that did not activate. It showed no illumination to help her make sense of it all. To prepare for whatever was about to happen. Her heart was in her throat. 

She rubbed her eyes, reached for a cell that was not in the bedroom...that was parked on the kitchen table. Where she did not want to take a stroll at this hour, with these conditions to get.

Peeking around the bedroom curtain, the shadow of a car shape in the back yard showed dimly. It looked like a Maine State Police cruiser. She looked from her room toward the front door and could tell the early trick or treater had on a hat...a trooper's hat. Now instead of fearing an intruder, the sick anxious feeling shifts from defending her home to why is there a trooper on my front doorstep at this hour? Thoughts of something has happened to her husband, there's been a fatal accident, etc. Something is wrong with the father of the kids still sleeping in the two bedrooms start churning, whirling. A Maine state trooper in your yard could be along the same lines of a serviceman's parents getting a front door visit from someone else in military fatigues, delivered in person.

    Answering the door with her mind racing, the state trooper apologized for the late night stop, but that the 911 emergency dispatcher had said there were repeated calls on that hot line from this address coming in. And as a trooper serving the public, he had to be determined and knock, try to raise someone inside to find out why. Evidently, water from recent rain had gotten into her outside phone terminal box or line and caused the 911 short circuit. Troop F is the Maine State Police Barracks in Houlton ME.

     The kids missed the whole ordeal. Kept sawing logs, counting sheep. The trooper says weather causes this situation to happen more than you would think. Can you imagine a knock "knock knock" at a late hour, your phone line not working and thinking it had been cut..that the worse was about to happen like all those Halloween horror movie releases being previewed like Saw 6, etc on the tube these days?

Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers - Maine, Simple, Down To Earth, Easy Rural Community Living Here.