Haunted Wisconsin

by Michael Norman

  Meanwhile, Elizabeth Lynch had begun binding Georgie’s hands and feet and tying him into a chair or to a cradle, still believing that he was somehow partly to blame. Even that didn’t work. One day while Mrs. Lynch was washing clothes, Georgie sat tied to his cradle. His sister Mary watched him. Their mother turned from the washboard to put some wood into the stove. Turning back to the tub, she found her bowl of soft soap gone. She went after more, and, upon her return, Georgie told her that the soap could be found under his head. Sure enough, when Elizabeth raised the child’s head she found the soap. Georgie and Mary denied any responsibility.

  It didn’t seem to matter whether Georgie was bound or not. Often, while the child was confined, a teacup might fly to the floor and shatter, or a saucer would leap from the sideboard and land undamaged on the floor.

  “There, Mother! You see I didn’t do that!” Georgie would shout.

  On another day, Mrs. Lynch cooked a kettle of fresh squirrels for the family’s hot midday meal. After cautioning Mary to watch the boiling pot, she took a pan to the milk house to get flour to make bread. She got the flour, sprinkled salt over it, and then returned to the house. As she stepped through the doorway, she saw that the pot of squirrel stew had disappeared from the stove. Mary professed her innocence. Mrs. Lynch put the pan of flour on the table; then she, Mary, and Georgie searched for the missing kettle.

  After she had rummaged around a bedroom, Mrs. Lynch saw that the flour was gone. In a few moments, it was discovered under the stairway; again it was placed on the table. Mother and children then went up to the garret, where they found the pot of squirrels sitting in the middle of the bed, a corner of a bedspread thrown over it. As Mrs. Lynch took off the spread, the contents steamed and bubbled as if it were being lifted off a hot stove.

  Little Rena’s beautiful hair was at the center of another incident that spread the family’s notoriety to the farthest reaches of North America.

  Elizabeth Lynch had called her children to an early lunch before she fed the hired men. Georgie and Mary showed up, but not Rena. She was sitting in the front yard with her hands in her lap. Her long hair, which had hung in golden ringlets, had been shorn from her head; chopped tufts of hair were all that remained of her waist-length tresses. A pair of scissors lay nearby, but not a strand of her hair was ever found. Understandably, two-year-old Rena could not explain what had happened.

  Dunn County News publishers Flint and E. M. Weber visited the Lynch home in September 1873 and reported on their “investigation” in several articles reprinted in newspapers from coast to coast.

  The men arrived on a Saturday night that apparently passed uneventfully. On Sunday morning after breakfast, Flint and Weber went outside in order to smoke cigars and to give the family a chance to finish up their housework. Several clerks from the nearby Knapp, Stout & Company store joined them in the yard. The morning air was cool and the men built a fire at the edge of the woods, about forty feet from the house.

  Suddenly, they heard a commotion in the house. Someone shouted that teacups were falling to the floor but not breaking.

  Flint said one man “who was near the door, stepped forward and picked up the cup, placed it on the table, took Georgie, who was in the room, by the hand, and started for the door. In a moment another cup sped to the floor and lay on its side, whirling with great rapidity. Thompson started for this one, also, and as he grabbed it, the cup moved away from him and passed under the table. He went around to the other side and caught it while it was whirling. This transpired while we were at the fire, and we relate it substantially as it was told us by several eyewitnesses.”

  Flint and Weber raced to the house hoping to watch this “spirit” at work. They stood in the doorway when, as they wrote,

  with almost lightning swiftness an egg darted across the room, struck the corner of a box, and was smashed. Shortly after, the potato masher, which stood on the dresser, went the same way with incredible speed, and landed in the corner “kerslap.” In a little while a couple of pieces of broken crockery lying on the stove made a sudden movement and landed in the corner.

  These three things we saw distinctly, and others in the room saw them. Perhaps we were fooled by some trick of legerdemain. If so, who did it? The boy seven years old who sat at the table quietly eating his breakfast? The girl, ten years old, who stood nearby, wiping a dish? Mrs. Lynch, who was busy at work? Or Mr. Lynch, who was not in the house? It seems to us improbable, if not impossible.

  Shortly after Flint and Weber’s visit, the Lynches hosted one A. B. Finley, the Barron County school superintendent. Why he decided to “investigate” the mystery is not known. He, too, stayed the night and, as was not uncommon in simple frontier dwellings, family and guest stayed in one large room: Richard, Elizabeth, and Rena in one bed; Finley in a single bed across the room; and Mary and Georgie on a straw mattress laid out on the floor between the other beds.

  Soon after everyone retired for the night, Georgie complained of something pinching and scratching him. Finley took Georgie into his own bed, but still the child complained. He clamped the boy’s hands in one of his own and put his other arm so tightly around him that Georgie could not move a muscle without detection. The night passed uneventfully and Finley left the next morning without issuing a “report” of any kind.

  A skeptical reporter from the St. Paul Dispatch visited the Lynches on November 3–4, 1873, and stayed through the night. When a curious scratching sound began to come from the bed shared by Mary and Georgie, he got up and held the hands of both children. The noises stopped immediately. The reporter spent twenty hours in the house. He went away persuaded that Mrs. Lynch and ten-year-old Mary, whom he called “strange and precocious,” had duped people. He felt that Mrs. Lynch was bored and unhappy in her dreary, backwoods home and that, after her husband’s refusal to sell the farm and move back east, she created her own excitement. And since the remote location of the house meant most visitors had to spend the night, the newsman said the Lynches were paid much more than a commercial hostelry would have been. It was a money-making scheme, he sniffed in print, nothing more, nothing less.

  The majority of observers, however, continued to believe that the Lynches would have relinquished almost anything to be rid of the manifestations, that they were victims rather than perpetrators.

  Certainly there were enough outside observers that it seems unreasonable to assume family members, including a girl not yet in her teens, could have tricked everyone. For instance, a Mr. Knight, who lived near Wilson, recorded more than forty different occurrences during the few hours he was there.

  One Ambrose Evans visited the Lynches. When breakfast was ready, he sat down at the table. Soon, the distinctive odor of kerosene filled the air. It seemed to be coming through an open bedroom door. Evans followed Mrs. Lynch into the room, where, in the middle of the bed, lay an uncorked jug of kerosene. Nearly a gallon of it had spilled onto the bed, saturating the feather mattress and ruining the quilts.

  Meanwhile, newspaper reporters flocked to the isolated farm. When Milwaukee News reporter J. D. Goodrich arrived at the house for his own investigation, David and his father were working in a field while the younger children played in the yard. Goodrich was standing by the outside cellar door talking to Mrs. Lynch when a noise erupted from inside the house.

  “There,” Mrs. Lynch told the reporter, “you hear that, and you also see that none of the family are in the house.”

  Hurrying inside, Goodrich and his hostess found a dining room table tipped over.

  By eight-thirty the next morning, Goodrich was observing some very lively activity:

  One thing peculiar is that you never see a thing start, but the minute you turn your eyes the thing gets up and gets. Another peculiar feature is that where a thing strikes, there it lays, neither rolls nor bounds. We took some of the same things and threw them a number of times, but they would bound or roll every time. We saw a piece of broken cup hit a little two-year-old girl on the back so ha
rd she nearly cried. A raw potato hopped out of a dish near where we were and lit on the floor; and while we were watching a stove handle light in one place, a tin plate whisked by our head in another direction.

  Newspapermen were not the only ones who wanted to discover the causes of the family’s troubles. Ministers, spiritualists, and mediums were also unsuccessful, but they did offer some astonishing ideas.

  The Rev. John Barker, who lived on Cady Creek in Pierce County, said the devil himself was at work in the Lynch household. Intent upon exorcising the demon, he approached the Lynch house, Bible and prayer book in hand. He put the books in a handkerchief, tied its ends together, and placed the little package on the staircase. The Rev. Barker then challenged the demons to remove it.

  They did . . . when Rev. Barker wasn’t looking. Both books were later discovered on a bed with every page torn out. The handkerchief was located in a barrel of feathers.

  The purported psychics and clairvoyants weren’t any more successful than the Rev. Barker.

  One Saturday afternoon a self-described seer named Mellon, from the tiny community of Rock Elm, visited the Lynches. He saw nothing that day of an otherworldly nature. The next day he had better luck. He said the spirit of Richard Lynch’s first wife was in the house . . . with six other spirits! Those were the spirits responsible for all the turmoil.

  When Lynch asked why so many household items had been destroyed, Mellon said that it was to open the minds of the Lynch family and others in the community to “the truth of Spiritualism.”

  Richard Lynch grumbled that it seemed a needlessly disruptive and expensive way to gain converts.

  One man asked Mellon if the spirits could throw things around as they had done previously. Yes, he said. Lynch then asked the spirits to move a cup from a shelf to the floor. The cup didn’t move. The spirit, speaking through Mellon, apologized by saying it was alone and could not perform without the assistance of the other spirits.

  And where were the other spirits? someone asked.

  Gone to Knapp Station, the solitary spirit said, to attend a camp meeting. He could not predict when they’d return; he grudgingly agreed to go after them.

  Mellon then announced that the “spirit” had departed, presumably for Knapp Station.

  “Humbug,” muttered some in the crowd, disappointed at not seeing an example of unearthly tomfoolery.

  A few weeks later, another visiting clairvoyant, a Mrs. Carlton from River Falls, said she, too, saw seven spirits. However, she told the family to bar any more visitors and to hold séances among themselves, during which the mystery would be solved through the mediumship of someone in the family.

  Though skeptical, Richard Lynch gave it a try. It was reported that during several family circles the table around which they sat moved about, but all attempts at questioning the circling “spirits” were fruitless. The family gave up spiritualism in disgust.

  The personal recollections of Jim Snodie include two quite astonishing episodes that, if they are to be believed, make the Lynch affair far more sinister than the relatively innocuous tricks perpetrated by a frustrated housewife in complicity with one or more of her children.

  The Lynches almost lost their house in a deadly roof fire. The incident began one midday shortly after Snodie had seated himself at the Lynch’s table for dinner.

  “We heard an eerie, high-pitched noise, similar to a pig’s squeal, coming from somewhere upstairs,” Snodie recalled in a 1937 interview. “Mr. Lynch left the table in a hurry and ran for the stairs. We could hear him walking around from room to room, asking in a loud voice, ‘Who is there?’ The house was otherwise quiet. He returned to the table, shaking his head but saying nothing.”

  Lynch and the hired men resumed eating. The squeal again came from upstairs.

  “Naturally, we all looked upward. It was then we saw a piece of white paper floating down from the ceiling. The boss made a grab for it and caught it before it could hit the floor. He read it out loud to all of us.”

  Snodie remembered the words Lynch read aloud:

  Everybody leave the house at once. All the women line up on the west side of the house and all the men line up on the east side. Hurry, for if you don’t, the house will burn down.

  Richard Lynch told the group to settle down, finish their meals, and get back to work. Just then there was a loud noise from the roof.

  “The smell of wood smoke drifted into the room from a partly opened window,” Snodie said. Mr. Lynch “rushed outside and then hollered that there was a fire on the roof. We all jumped up and ran out. Sure enough, the shake roof was blazing away, the flames at least two or three feet high. Mr. Lynch lined all of us men up on the east side of the house and the women folk on the west side. He was trembling with fear when he joined us on the east side. At that time, the whole roof was covered with flames.”

  The fire quickly went out. A few wisps of smoke drifted skyward, but they soon dissipated.

  “The boss got a ladder from somewhere. He climbed onto the roof, examining the shakes as he went along. He said there wasn’t one shake that was charred. No evidence of a fire was found anywhere on the roof. We were all pretty well spooked by then, I’ll tell you.”

  The news accounts of the Lynch haunting brought strangers from as far away as Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, and England; all were attracted by the prospect of seeing “spirits” at work. But many of them were far from welcome, as may be seen in a shocking incident involving two men from Albany, New York, witnessed by Jim Snodie.

  “We were getting ready to go back to work after lunch,” Snodie recounted. “A loud knocking came at the door. Mr. Lynch jerked the door open. Two men appeared in the doorway. One asked if they could come in. He said he and his friend had come all the way from Albany, New York, to watch the ‘spooks’ at work.”

  Lynch refused because the hired men were going back to work and nobody would be home. But both men crowded into the room and slammed the door shut.

  “Almost simultaneously,” reported Snodie,

  someone shouted, “Here comes a note!” And, sure enough, down from the ceiling fluttered a piece of white paper. Mr. Lynch ignored the note and grabbed the door latch intending to physically eject the men. He tugged and tugged at the door but could not get it to budge. He then stooped and picked up the note. It stated that the men were not welcome, and should state their business immediately.

  One of the men, referred to by Snodie as “Mr. Loudmouth” because he did all the talking, said they’d come to identify the culprit behind the “foolishness” and report that person to the “authorities.” He boasted that neither of them was afraid of any unseen force and that whatever was responsible should show itself.

  At that moment, another note floated down from the ceiling. This one said the men should go up to the bedroom at the top of the stairs at one fifteen that afternoon. Everyone else was to remain downstairs.

  At the appointed time, the visitor who’d been doing all the boasting headed for the steps. His friend declined to accompany him. With a nervous laugh, Mr. Loudmouth headed for the bedroom. The men downstairs heard him slam the door.

  Minutes passed. Finally, Richard Lynch said he would see what was going on. He didn’t appear to be in any hurry as he climbed the steps to investigate the problem.

  Lynch opened the door. He didn’t go in.

  “He’s dead,” Lynch called down to the men.

  Just inside the bedroom door was the body of the boastful visitor.

  “I think he died of pure fright,” Snodie said.

  The hired men filed out to their jobs. The Albany man’s body was loaded onto the light livery wagon in which the visitors had arrived, and was taken to Menomonie.

  Richard Lynch came to regret his decision to leave Indiana. Whether it was the death of the visitor from Albany, the roof fire, a survey of his property losses—smashed furniture, broken dishes, mangled silverware, shattered mirrors and clocks, shredded clothing—or the continual disruption of
strangers and nosy newsmen banging on his door that motivated Lynch to make a bold decision, we will never know, but he decided to split up his family.

  Young Georgie and Mary were bundled off to live with neighbors a mile away, though it is unclear why Elizabeth Lynch would have agreed to let two of her stepchildren be sent to a neighbor’s house. Peace apparently then settled upon the Lynch household and all of Cady Township.

  What are we to make of all this?

  According to Jim Snodie, Richard Lynch was a stern and formal employer who insisted upon being called “Mr. Lynch.”

  “He commanded respect and since he was a big man, nobody argued with him about his request,” Snodie said. “He seemed to lack a sense of humor.”

  If that is the case, perhaps reporters were right when they speculated that Elizabeth Lynch was retaliating against her strong-willed and much older husband for his refusal to sell the farm and move back to Indiana. She could easily have enlisted Mary’s help in performing some of the “mysterious” feats. Much of what was reported was simply missing household items or petty mischief. She could have encouraged the children to hide the utensils, pots, and pans, to throw objects when adults weren’t looking, or to cut up clothing material.

  Yet, there are the other, far more disturbing events—the cruel shearing of little Rena’s beautiful hair, the roof fire, the near fatal ax attacks, and the death of the visitor from Albany. Unless we are to dismiss Jim Snodie’s recollections of those years or question his honesty or memory in reporting this episode, or to assume that Elizabeth Lynch conspired with her children to brutalize her own daughter, to commit arson, and to murder, the Lynch affair leaves many unanswered questions.

  The fact that all disturbances ceased after the two youngest children were removed doesn’t necessarily prove they had anything to do with it, at least not on a conscious level. Parapsychologists say that moving objects are often associated with the presence of young children and, more frequently, teenagers. The only teenager, seventeen-year-old David Lynch, is rarely mentioned in contemporary accounts; he had possibly been “hired out” to nearby farmers. Eventually, the Lynch family left the region, presumably headed back to Indiana and a quieter lifestyle.