The Sisks left the third floor virtually untouched. The cells remained, as well as various “instruments of torture,” and the scarred wood on the wood casings where doors once hung. One window remained intact . . . and barred.
Even if they do not believe in ghosts, most visitors are understandably uneasy after visiting the attic. Sisk himself did not believe in ghosts, but respected them, he said.
Over the years, many psychic investigators tried to establish the presence of supernatural elements there.
An exorcist by the name of Hickman Whittington went there to write a story about what he might find. There is a legend that Whittington was in splendid health when he climbed the stairs into the attic, yet he was dead a few hours later. Sisk believed that he was literally scared to death.
Perhaps it was the same thing that terrified two Marines decades later. In their report, the men said that close to one o’clock in the morning a kerosene lantern—their only source of light—began to flicker. A terrible moan shook the walls and then swirling masses of vaguely human forms enveloped the frightened men. A hideous moan seemed to come all at once from nowhere and yet everywhere. Suddenly the kerosene lamp sniffed out and a final, bloodcurdling scream sent the pair bounding down the stairs.
Janice Sisk, George’s wife, understood their panic. She would not stay alone in the house. She was so frightened of the place in the early years of her marriage to George that she temporarily left him. She had to quit taking baths alone in the evening because she would hear a voice whispering her name. The rooms were always cold, even on the hottest, most humid day of summer.
And both she and her husband, George, always thought they were being watched.
The Sisks retired in the 1990s and closed the museum. The State of Illinois bought the house and ten adjacent acres for a half-million dollars in 2000 with the goal of restoring the house and grounds and opening the property as a museum. However, only minimal progress has been made toward that goal during the ensuing twenty years. The estimated $7 million-plus it would take has been the stumbling block in the cash-strapped state budget.
Working with temporary grants, however, archaeologists and historians from Southern Illinois University and elsewhere have worked to separate the factual record of Crenshaw House from the legends that grew up around it. They are looking for the future day when the property can be reopened to the public with a full and accurate account of its place in Illinois’s pre–Civil War history.
Despite the dubious likelihood for many of the supernatural legends, there is little doubt that they will not go away anytime soon. And that is understandable. John Hart Crenshaw visited unimaginable evil upon hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent human beings in his quest for wealth. If there is anyone deserving to be haunted for all eternity, it is this man.
The Hickory Hill Historic Site is closed to the public.
Cave Dwellers
Burton
About five and a half miles east of Quincy, Illinois, is the beautiful Burton Cave Nature Preserve, an eighty-five-acre tract of public land with the water-carved limestone cave as its centerpiece. Dedicated in 1987, the preserve, including the cave and its environs, has been a popular destination for picnickers and hikers alike for well over a century.
But what every visitor does not know is that the cave is the subject of a most curious ghost story.
Back many years ago on a late Sunday morning, a group of young people from Quincy, intent on a leisurely picnic and then an afternoon’s exploration of Burton Cave, found themselves lounging in a shaded meadow not far from the cave entrance. A thunderstorm cut short their outdoor plans and their cave exploration began earlier than expected.
The suddenly blackened sky made the soggy trail toward the cave difficult. A few of the teenagers had candles cupped in their hands, using the light to avoid becoming entangled in the exposed tree roots.
As they neared the entrance, the group was startled to see a hooded, dark-robed figure spring from the cave and scurry away. The quick glimpse gave little clue as to the person’s identity except that the robe had a hem that dragged along the ground.
Nevertheless, not to be thwarted in their adventure, the group made its way into the cave. None had ever been in Burton Cave. Oddly, there was a faint glow from a ledge several yards away. They walked toward it. The corpse of a woman garbed in white was laid out on the ledge as if prepared for a funeral. Candles burned near her head and slippered feet.
The suddenly silent band of picnickers quickly streamed out of the cave and ran for their horses and wagons.
Later the skeptical Adams County sheriff and several deputies, led by a couple of the braver picnickers, returned to the cave. There was no trace of the body. Indeed, it seemed as if no one, save the frightened young people, had been in Burton Cave for a very, very long time.
Today Burton Cave is still a popular warm-weather destination (it is closed during the winter months) for those interested in its 330 million-year-old Burlington limestone and the many fossils, fauna, and invertebrate animals found inside, including five species of bats, some endangered. Some of the invertebrates remain hidden away inside the cave all their lives, blind and colorless.
To Do Good
Kingston
Ezra and Betsey Hawkins drove their farm wagon filled with their meager possessions along a dusty trail in north-central Illinois. Betsey held their infant son, Samuel, on her lap. The family needed rest; their two mules needed water.
“We’ll stay here for a time,” Ezra said, nodding toward an abandoned cabin in the near distance. It looked sturdy enough to protect them from the elements. Betsey readily agreed. It had been a long trek so far.
“Maybe I can find some work at that farm back down the road,” Ezra added.
He unhitched the team while his wife carried their sleeping infant inside. The place needed a thorough cleaning, a few broken windows boarded, and the door put back on its hinges, but at least there was a solid roof over their heads. After they unloaded what they would need overnight, Ezra took two pails and went in search of the freshwater spring they had passed earlier.
A few minutes later Ezra heard a scream come from the direction of the cabin. He dropped the buckets and ran back.
Betsey was in the yard, clutching little Samuel.
“This house is haunted!” she blurted out. “Soon as we got inside, a skinny old man with a cane was suddenly there. He walked around us then went out the front door.”
“You just imagined it,” Ezra sighed. He took her back inside.
“You see, nothing in here at all,” Ezra said with a sweeping gesture.
With that he went on to the spring for water.
After lunch he told his wife he was going to the farm up the road to see about work.
“That’s part of my property,” the farmer who lived there told him. “If you need work and want to stay I’ll let you. But let me warn you. No one stays there more than one night. You stay there tonight and come back in the morning if you still want work.”
Ezra was puzzled but accepted the offer.
Meanwhile, the young man’s wife had another visit from the old man. As before, he seemed to materialize out of nothing and walked around. Betsey and the baby started crying. That seemed to distress the ghost greatly.
He stopped his pacing.
“Don’t be afraid, I’ll not harm you,” he whispered. With that he vanished.
Betsey insisted to her husband that they must leave.
“I’m scared, Ezra. I don’t know why he’s here or what he wants.”
Her husband was resolute despite the farmer’s words. He did not tell her of the farmer’s odd warning.
“Let’s stay the night at least and see what happens. I promise I’ll stay awake to look after you and the boy.”
Early the next morning after an uneventful night, Ezra left to work on the farm. Betsey was packing away dishes. The old ghost returned.
“I will not hurt you,” he said, rai
sing a hand in a calming motion. “I’m here for a reason.”
Betsey shrank back, her child clutched to her breast.
“I have come to do you good. My wife and I were murdered here, murdered for our money. But him what killed us did not find it. I want you and your husband to do something for me. We are buried out yonder in a small cave. You will find us where the earth has been disturbed. I want you to find our bones then give us a proper burial in that graveyard up on the hill.”
With those words he opened the cellar door and beckoned her to follow. Terrified yet curious, she picked up a lantern and followed him down the ladder.
In the dank cellar he hovered in a corner and scuffed a mark in the packed earth.
“Dig here and you will find some money.”
He climbed back up the ladder and beckoned her to follow him outside.
At a corner of the house he pointed downward.
“And here below the surface you will find even more money and the deed to this property. It is yours if you do what I tell you. Now, do you see that cave over there?”
She followed his gaze to see a small opening in the hill behind the cabin.
“That is where we are.” He pointed and vanished.
Betsey quickly found a shovel and took it back down into the cellar. She began to dig. Within a few minutes she hit something solid. She carefully unearthed an old pitcher stuffed with currency—more money than she had ever seen before. She set about to count it.
Late that afternoon when her husband returned from his farm work, she merrily danced out to greet him.
“I’ve made more money than you have today,” she said gaily.
She told him the tale of her mysterious visitor. Ezra grabbed a shovel and dug where the ghost had pointed at the corner of the house. Buried a foot below the surface was a metal trunk filled with gold coins and the deed.
The next morning the couple made their way into the cave. It did not take long for them to find the buried bones.
Ezra built a plain coffin out of scrap wood. The couple bore the remains to the small graveyard, where they laid their nameless benefactor and his wife to rest, a simple wooden cross to mark their passing.
Ezra and Betsey were able to claim title to the house and lived there with their family. As for the ghost, he was never heard from again.
The Devil’s Bake Oven
Grand Tower
A few miles north of Grand Tower on the Mississippi River, a rocky promontory has been used for centuries as a landmark for travelers. The oddly named Devil’s Bake Oven is a rock outcropping marking the eastern terminus of a stone ledge, termed the Devil’s Backbone, which runs beneath the Mississippi River. Before the river was dammed, boatmen on their way upstream had to leave their crafts and walk along the shore, pulling their vessels behind them with long towlines. Going downstream, they repeated the same procedure, only they had to hold their boats back lest they break loose and swamp.
Dangerous river pirates infested the region in the nineteenth century, launching surprise attacks on keelboats with camouflaged canoe-like craft called pirogues. They would take what merchandise could be sold and dumped the rest in the muddy waters. Passengers and crewmen were murdered or left stranded on the desolate shore.
In time civil authorities and increased population made the piratical attacks too perilous for the lawbreakers. An iron foundry was built on a hill at Devil’s Bake Oven. Several large homes went up to house the foundry managers.
The superintendent’s home was especially striking, towering above the tree line, and commanding wide vistas of the river. Traces of the house could be found well into the twentieth century on the eastern side of the stony hill near its summit.
But that house sheltered more than families. The ghost of a foundry superintendent’s beautiful daughter haunted it.
The child is said to have been somewhere in her teens and protected by her doting parents from the roughness around her. Yet in time, she had many suitors longing for her hand in marriage, but her father turned away the rougher men who wanted to pay a call on her.
But as so often happens, the girl had her own mind and soon fell in love with a man her father strongly disapproved of—a dashing young fellow who was, unfortunately, quite a ne’er-do-well. He enjoyed gathering about him the finer things in life even if he might not always have the funds available to pay for them.
The girl’s father strongly objected to the romance, yet she persisted in loving him. He forbade her from seeing the young man, even confined her to the house for long periods of time in the vain hope that absence would make her heart grow less fonder, at least toward this particular suitor.
Whether from grief over her lost love, or some other equally serious malady, according to the legend, the young lady fell ill and soon died.
It was not long before her ghost—a misty presence in the pale moonlight—was seen floating along the narrow trail that led up the mound. On storm-swept nights when black clouds swirled overhead and streaks of lightning split the sky, pitiful wails erupted into screams that shook even the bravest man’s spirit. Long after the superintendent’s house was razed and the timbers used to build a railway station, the girl’s ghost continued her mournful ways.
There is little to remind the modern visitor of the tapestry of history that unfolded below the Oven’s stony summit. A bridge carries natural gas lines across the river not far away while a bridge tower is near the Oven’s south side. And there is certainly nothing to note the passing of a bereaved young maiden who returned in death to find her roguish beau.
Old Man Lakey
McLeansboro
Old Man Lakey was an early settler in McLeansboro. That is about all anyone knew about him, except that his name got attached to a small creek that meanders through the countryside near the city and that the old man’s restless ghost haunted his former neighborhood for many years.
It all started one spring day when he decided to build a more permanent cabin for himself on the west side of the creek. The cabin may have been where a roadway now passes over the stream, though no one is quite sure. But there was no bridge at that time, only a muddy ford that animals, wagons, and people had to wade across.
After many weeks of labor, Lakey completed his new house save for the clapboard siding he was fashioning from an oak tree that he had taken down. On the evening before Lakey hoped to finish his work, he warmly greeted several travelers who had stopped to admire his handiwork. Tragically, his corpse was found early the next morning propped up against a tree stump; his roughly severed head lay on the ground a few feet away.
It looked as if Lakey’s own broadax, now driven into a stump, was used as the murder weapon.
Who would want to kill old man Lakey? That was the question rippling through the community as soon as the crime was discovered. Those who had seen him the night before denied any knowledge of the murder and said Lakey seemed happy and excited about finishing his project.
As far as anyone could tell, he had no known enemies—his reputation was that of a kind, simple, if not reclusive, man not known for his extravagant ways. He possessed no hidden wealth that anyone knew of. Local authorities investigated but without apparent success.
The townspeople took up a collection to bury Lakey, for he had no kin, in a grave adjacent to his never-finished cabin.
He did not rest well.
On the night following the burial, two fishermen returning home on horseback near the Lakey cabin nearly fell out of their saddles when the horrible specter of a headless horseman joined them not far from Lakey’s Creek crossing.
The men spurred their horses to a gallop, but the ghost easily kept abreast. As the anglers reached the stream, the phantom horseman disappeared into the mist downriver. The pair eventually made it safely home, but the men were reluctant to tell their story. A few nights later, however, two other horsemen returning from the east encountered the same ghost.
Word spread quickly that the ghost of old man Lakey
would not stay in its grave, though without a head it is a wonder anyone knew who it was.
Witnesses claimed the thing appeared immediately after sundown and usually to eastbound riders crossing the stream. Mounted on a tall, black stallion, the ghost rode along the downstream side of the unlucky witnesses. The specter invariably vanished halfway across the creek. The ghost never communicated and, so far as is known, did no one any harm.
The stories of old Lakey and his ghost were told for decades, but they have faded away with time. A concrete bridge crosses Lakey’s Creek at about where the old crossing used to be.
The Reincarnation of Mary Roff
Watseka
On the afternoon of July 5, 1865, eighteen-year-old Mary Roff from Watseka, Illinois, died in a Peoria insane asylum. She had been committed after she tried to slash her arms with a razor, the last tragic incident in the girl’s long, harrowing descent into madness.
In the first stages of her illness, she heard voices or fell into a sort of hypnotic state during which she took on other identities. Later, she became obsessed with the need to rid her body of blood. She used leeches to suck blood from her veins, giving the creatures names much like family pets.
One day her parents found her on the floor with her arms slashed, the razor still in her hand. Days later they took her—still unconscious—to the Peoria asylum.
Unfortunately there was no real effective treatment or even much of an understanding of mental illness in the nineteenth century. Mary Roff was subjected to what passed as scientific “treatment”: the so-called water cure, a practice originating in the Middle Ages that was still used in 1860s America. A naked patient was alternately—and repeatedly—immersed in a tub of icy water then dumped in scalding hot water.
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