Haunted Wisconsin

by Michael Norman

  Mara and Danny’s baby girl—named Bella after her grandmother—was born in the February after they moved into the house. Late one night Mara had gotten up to get a baby bottle in the kitchen when from behind her she heard a woman softly humming. Mara was tired and fixated on feeding her baby so the suddenness of it all surprised her. She said she “kind of blew it off.”

  One evening shortly after that, the family was watching television when Danny went upstairs for a few minutes. He came back down “white as a ghost,” Mara remembered. Her husband is a sturdy, well-built man who is anything but “wimpy,” Mara said with a laugh. He blurted out that he had just watched as a “black shadow” walked down their upstairs hallway, turned to look at him as if wanting to make certain Danny had seen it, and then vanished into a bedroom. Danny said he could pick out the shape of its head and a body below it, both misty and deeply black. It had no other features. What scared him the most is that it had turned around toward him.

  Mara’s son Gage had been listening. “Good, I’m glad someone else saw it!” he exclaimed. He’d also seen a shadowlike object moving around in the house.

  Mara eventually made friends with the Fenskes next door because she knew the houses had been in the same family at one time, and because she wanted to know if they had ever experienced “oddities” in their house as well.

  One bit of information Deb shared with her new neighbor might have helped solve the problem of the humming woman. When they had moved in a decade earlier, one of the first people they met was Shirley, who lived at that time with her husband in the house that Mara and Danny now occupied. What Deb remembered most about her was that she loved little children—she had twin granddaughters—and that she was always humming while doing housework and while tending her spacious gardens.

  Mara wasn’t too surprised. When they moved in there was still a small plaque on a wall that read “Oma and Opa’s House.” Oma and Opa are Dutch/German terms of endearment for grandmother and grandfather.

  Shirley passed away while living there.

  Other incidents had Mara and her family on edge for a time, not certain what might happen next. Their pug dog Chloe acted peculiarly at times—not unlike the Fenskes’ Dalmatians—suddenly growling at something that seemed to be at the far end of the upstairs hallway, or quickly popping her head up as she lay on Mara and Danny’s bed, growling and jumping to her feet, fixated, it seemed to Mara, on something invisible moving between the door and the bed.

  Once Mara tried to melt a bowl of chocolate in the microwave but over-heated it and ended up throwing it away. A few minutes later, she found a gob of the gooey chocolate on the kitchen floor. She assumed it had dropped off the bowl, wiped it up, and threw the paper towel in the garbage. Twenty minutes later she found another lump of melted chocolate in the same place.

  “That was the first time I thought something definitely was going on here. I know I wiped it up because it was all in the garbage can. I don’t know where [the second chunk] came from, but it was in the same place and I was the only one home.”

  Today, Mara, Danny, and the children all feel very “comfortable” in the house and haven’t wanted to make a “big deal” out of the mischievous nature of most of what has transpired. Other than the passing shadows Danny and Gage witnessed, no one has actually seen an apparition.

  “If I ever did see anything,” Mara acknowledged, “I think that would change my tune. I’m still kind of light about it. It’s not scary to me.”

  Across West Fulton Street and half a block down is a tall, attractive, light blue Victorian with white trim and blue shutters, surrounded by a pretty white picket fence. At one side a second floor room covers an unusual open carport. Steve and LaDonna Nieland live there . . . and appear to be residing in another of this trio of haunted Waupaca homes, all within shouting distance of one another.

  The Nielands describe their home as “Victorian transition” similar to Mara and Danny’s home, but with many American Craftsmen features, and built by noted commercial designer Hans Knutson between 1896 and 1902 for the commandant of the nearby Wisconsin Veteran’s Home. It was a gift for one of his two adult daughters. The other daughter lived in a “mirror” house right next door that Knutson also built.

  The Nielands give the impression of being a couple comfortable with paranormal encounters . . . even when such occurrences take place a long way from home. Two years after the couple moved into the house, they were vacationing in Maine when their most “profound” paranormal experience unfolded at the elegant Captain Lord Mansion Inn, in Kennebunkport. After a day of sightseeing, the couple returned to their room in the late afternoon. Steve laid down on the bed for a quick nap; LaDonna curled up in a chair to read. But not long after he shut his eyes, Steve suddenly awoke to the pressure of LaDonna’s hand holding his own. He thought that was nice and turned to give her a hug. But she was still sitting in the chair across the room. Whatever held his hand in its warm grasp gradually lessened the grip and finally let go. Later that night, someone tromping across the room awakened both Steve and LaDonna. Whoever it was seemed to sit down for a short time in a rocking chair that then began to squeak. The visitor then walked over to a closet and opened the door. Neither of the couple saw anybody connected to the footfalls, but they both heard the soft skreek of the rocker and the squeaky closet door swing open.

  After breakfast the next morning, the Nielands quietly told a front desk clerk that “really weird things happened” in their room the previous night. Discretely and cautiously they related their experience to the clerk, who then revealed that the ghost of a woman—possibly one of the elderly women who roomed at the inn prior to 1978—had been seen in their room by others too. She was an earthbound spirit, the clerk explained, and not mean or malicious in the least. The closet door she seemed to open and walk through was formerly a connecting door into the next room.

  Their interesting encounters in Maine were but a prelude to the intermittent mysteries at their charming Fulton Street home, where they have joined the Fenskes, Mara Westerhouse, and Danny Tamburrino in wondering why it is that so many odd phenomena seem to be centered at their three closely situated homes.

  When they bought their house in 1983, the Nielands thought the rough-finished room over the open carport was “novel.” It looked like it had been used for attic storage or perhaps a home studio or office. Later they discovered that the room had been added because an earlier family had a son with tuberculosis who was kept isolated there. At that time in the early twentieth century, it was thought TB patients could be cured with “fresh air,” so keeping open the room’s numerous windows had been part of the treatment. When LaDonna, a former elementary school teacher, worked as curator at the historic Hutchinson House Museum, she met a woman in her eighties who told her that as a young woman she often noticed the sickly boy staring out of his isolated bedroom window. The Nielands surmise that he may have died young there because a grandson of the builder Hans Knutson told them he had seen his first “dead body” during a visit to the home many years earlier. At that time it wasn’t unusual to have viewings of the deceased take place in the family home.

  That boy may be one of the house ghosts. Deb Fenske thought she saw him looking out of a window in that room when the Nielands were away on vacation and she was taking care of their outdoor plantings. She didn’t have a key to get inside, but did check to make sure the doors and windows were locked, which they were.

  The house had fallen into disrepair when Steve and LaDonna bought it. They refinished the room over the garage and transformed it into their daughter’s playroom. LaDonna said that by doing that they turned a sad room into a happy one. Their daughter never said anything about any unusual encounters there.

  The grounds also had been poorly maintained; the family spent their first couple of years rebuilding and replanting the yard and gardens, which led to Steve’s disconcerting encounter with their first ghostly visitor.

  It happened during the second year aft
er they moved in on an afternoon when he was mowing the lawn. He had spent months restoring the once-extensive gardens, including a spacious herb garden. He passed about ten feet away from it with the mower when suddenly standing within its boundary was a slightly built woman wearing a long-sleeved brown “work dress,” her hair pinned up in a bun. She looked over at him with a warm, welcoming smile and then was gone.

  “That was it,” Steve said of the brief encounter. “Was it the commandant’s daughter showing that she liked what we were doing? I don’t know. She was solid, perfectly clear, and about medium height.”

  He ran back into the house and told his wife what he had just seen.

  “It scared the crap out of me,” he admitted.

  For Steve Nieland, who is in the research and development department at the same company where Deb Fenske works, the most astonishing episodes took place on two consecutive Christmases in a family room addition he built onto the back of the house. Below that and reached by a staircase was a basement room used as their family’s media room. He designed the airy addition so the existing kitchen would merge with the new space. A large dining table was a favorite place for the family to gather or to do things like frost freshly baked cookies—which is precisely what Steve was doing that Christmas eve.

  His wife and daughter had gone off to do something else so he was alone finishing up. “Andy Williams [Christmas music] was on the radio. It was nice. Now, we had a black-and-white tomcat. So when I saw . . . a black shape walk up to me I looked down to say hi . . . but it wasn’t him.”

  Instead, a small black dog that he’d never seen before was standing at his feet, looking up and panting.

  “I’m wondering, how did this dog get in here?”

  Then—SNAP!—the dog was gone, just like the woman in the garden.

  A year went by and Steve found himself again at the table frosting Christmas cookies. He saw what he thought was their cat saunter up, but again it was the same dog, happy and panting and gone within a few seconds.

  “Apparently he liked Christmas cookies because he was back. It became a running joke in the family. I said I didn’t want to be in the room alone making . . . cookies because I’m going to start seeing things,” Steve said with a laugh, while at the same time knowing full well that there was no way he could mistake their cat for a dog, or “create” this four-legged phantom with his imagination.

  “I kept asking, how could that dog have gotten into the house? Where did he come from? I saw him, he’s sitting there panting, looking up at me and then . . .” He finishes the sentence with a snap of his fingers.

  The little dog made itself known once more several years later. Again it was at Christmas, but this time it came in the form of a sharp YIP!—a small bark from the doorway leading to the basement media room. Steve looked over in that direction, as did their cat, who had been curled up in a chair. He later told LaDonna, “Well, I didn’t see my dog this year, but I heard him bark.”

  Steve noted that the house addition he built would have covered part of the backyard in earlier years, so he speculates the ghost dog may have belonged to some earlier homeowners who kept him in the backyard. Or perhaps he had been buried there after he died.

  The Nielands haven’t done enough research into their home’s history to pin names on any of their household apparitions, or to know whether the young boy died of his tuberculosis. They’re also perplexed that their house seems to be a center of some paranormal activity. In that, they are in good company with their neighbors—the Fenskes, Mara Westerhouse, and Danny Tamburrino—all of whom find it rather extraordinary to be living in a haunted neighborhood in this small Wisconsin city.

  Another Voice

  The frantic call came into the police dispatcher at about six thirty on an April evening. A couple was making the call. The man quickly explained that a violent argument had broken out in an apartment on the floor directly above their own; a female voice on the same line described a loud, obscenity-strewn quarrel punctuated with blood-curdling screams. It appeared to be between two people, and one of them involved—perhaps a woman—was in imminent danger of being injured or worse.

  Within minutes, the first patrol officer arrived on the scene. He was Charles “Chuck” Golden, a relatively new member of the River Falls Police Department. The address was an older, foursquare-style house that had been painted a garish pink and subdivided into apartments. The couple making the emergency call lived in a first-floor apartment. They went over what they had told the dispatcher and added that someone sounded like they were being gagged or choked.

  At first Golden didn’t hear anything. But then all three of them were jarred by “a violent, horrific scream,” as Golden described it, from the apartment above them. He was certain someone was in a potentially life-threatening situation.

  All cops know a domestic disturbance call can be one of the most dangerous they face. In the heat of the moment, the people involved could turn on each other or on the officers, or the latter might have to use their weapons to stop a violent assailant.

  Golden’s backup arrived and together the two officers rapidly climbed a rear, outside staircase to an inside hallway by the apartment in which the brutal argument was taking place. As they turned a corner, the officers heard a man’s hysterical screams punctuated with coarse expletives.

  Interlaced with the man’s tirade, Golden heard a woman suddenly cry out from inside the apartment: “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!”

  “She was in distress,” Golden explained.

  That was enough for the rookie cop. A woman inside was being injured or, worse, at risk of death.

  “The door was open, but I would have kicked it in if it wasn’t,” he later admitted.

  With his gun drawn, Golden barged in, his partner close behind, and announced they were police officers, scanning the untidy room to confront what they had every reason to believe would be a horrific scene.

  A blast of pungent smoke told them heavy marijuana use had been going on not long before. A naked man staggered from the bathroom. Golden ordered him to raise his hands, still quickly looking around for the woman whose cries he had heard moments before.

  “Were you yelling in here?” Golden demanded.

  Yes, the suspect admitted, but only at the bathtub because he couldn’t get hot water out of the faucet. The cops were incredulous.

  “Where’s the woman?” Golden yelled.

  The young man said there wasn’t any woman in the apartment. He was the only one there. Golden figured that’s what anyone would say.

  Again Golden demanded to know what he had done with the other person, the woman, and again he was met with a denial that anyone else was in the apartment.

  By this time, other officers had arrived. The cops eventually let the man get dressed but at the same time launched a search. While Golden continued to question the man, the other officers fanned out.

  “I told him I’d heard a second voice that I thought was female, but he denied there was anyone in the apartment with him,” Golden said. As improbable as the story seemed to the officers, it seemed to be confirmed by what the police search turned up over the next few minutes—absolutely nothing.

  The officers looked under beds, opened closet doors, and checked the windows. They even searched inside a distinctive cupola that perched on the center roofline. Not only was there no other person in the apartment, but there was no indication that any sort of physical confrontation had taken place: no blood, no overturned furniture, no sign of a struggle anywhere. Nothing, Golden said, that would indicate someone had been harmed.

  Golden asked the man if he had a girlfriend. Sounding puzzled by both the police presence and the questions, he confirmed that he had a girlfriend and that she was at work. He agreed to have her call the department when she got home.

  “I know that I heard what I believed to be a woman in distress,” Golden said. He reacted as he had been trained, to take necessary action to prevent an innocent person from being
harmed or killed. Although that training turned out not to have been needed that evening, the episode left him with perplexing questions.

  The officers took down the man’s identifying information and again asked that he have his girlfriend call the department when she got home. They did not issue any drug citations against the man.

  Back downstairs, they updated the couple that had reported the disturbance and instructed them that if they heard any more disturbances to call the police. And that’s where they left it.

  “All I know is that after we searched [no woman] was there. We cleared and left . . . scratching our heads.”

  Officer Chuck Golden didn’t know what to think.

  “Afterward,” he recalled, “I was thinking maybe I did hear things, maybe it was the guy altering his voice. Certainly you’re going to question yourself, rationalize it. But I know what I heard.”

  A few days later, Golden’s partner showed him an earlier edition of Haunted Wisconsin, which prominently featured the same house where they’d taken the “weird” call—locals know it as the Parker mansion—and a haunting there described by earlier owners.

  Golden knew nothing of the house’s history or its earlier tenants, but upon learning the house’s reputation, he wondered if perhaps the woman’s cries might have been somehow connected to the mansion’s supernatural past.

  “I probably shrugged it off until I saw the book . . . I was shocked,” he added.

  That century-old Parker house—now painted grey—stands prominently a few blocks off Main Street on the east side of River Falls. Although today rather unkempt, the once gracious appearance of this mansion can still be seen in its grandiose, classic foursquare-type design and in the open cupola (known as a “widow’s walk”) sitting like a steamboat lookout atop its roofline.

  Charles D. Parker, Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor from 1874 to 1878, built the home for his family. Through the decades the house has undergone numerous renovations and several additions—a small, open, side porch and enclosed front entryway were added on years ago. It’s been variously a single-family home, a duplex, and, more recently, small apartments and sleeping rooms carved out of its high-ceilinged rooms. When the police were called to answer the disturbance, it was serving as a rooming house.