Haunted Wisconsin

by Michael Norman

  Roy called his unseen tormentor a “billy goat” for some reason. And he was determined to catch him—or it—in the act.

  He persuaded a few nearby farmers to take turns hiding in his woodpile and watch from the windows of his modest farmhouse. Meanwhile, Roy would carry out his own surveillance. He ran a wire from his house to his barn and bought a German shepherd dog whose leash he looped around the wire. The dog was free to run back and forth in hot pursuit of any trespasser, seen or unseen.

  Next, Roy borrowed a .38-caliber revolver from his brother-in-law and stood guard on the front porch. Whenever he heard a strange noise, he fired in the air, a sound that reportedly echoed three-quarters of a mile away in that quiet countryside.

  Meanwhile, watchers inside the house usually congregated in the kitchen. If they heard pounding on the walls at the opposite side of the house they ran to that side. Then the thumping would jump back to the kitchen walls. But with men stationed at both ends of the house, the irritating noise would cease.

  Even neighborhood children took their turns on the “ghost watch.” A good friend of Roy’s volunteered his son’s services for a forty-eight-hour shift. Pete was a little boy of twelve years at the time.

  “I shook from my belly button both ways,” Pete recalled, “but I didn’t dare say no.”

  He was given a chamber pot and instructed to go upstairs and remain there at all times. Roy carried food and water up to him. A horse blanket with a peephole cut through it had been tacked up over a window. On the first day, while the boy squinted through the hole watching Roy at work in a nearby field, he heard what sounded like someone moving an object around on the floor downstairs.

  “That’s when I quit growin’,” claimed Pete.

  Later that evening when Roy returned from the field, he discovered that the mail, which he had picked up at noon, was strewn all over the kitchen. Long after dark and still huddled upstairs, little Pete heard swats from a rolled-up newspaper. Roy was yelling at his “billy goat” to get away.

  “After two days of Depression coffee, I went home,” Pete recalled.

  A day or so later the boy was helping Roy with the haying. As it happened, Elmer was haying at the same time.

  As Pete recollected, “At one time we were all within fifteen feet of one another. The look they exchanged wasn’t one of love, hope, or charity.”

  The ghostly disturbances ceased when Elmer died unexpectedly . . . of natural causes.

  Now that could have been coincidence, or perhaps Elmer himself really was the “spook.” Pete isn’t sure today if anyone really wanted to catch the culprit. He said chasing after the ghost did cause a good deal of levity in that grim Depression-era year.

  Pete doesn’t really know who the ghost was.

  It did turn out to be a good story, so maybe it never really mattered.

  A Dream So Real

  The Scots may not be the most superstitious people in the world, but some beliefs they hold to tenaciously. One such conviction is that the seventh son of a seventh son has precognitive powers, that is, the ability to foretell future events.

  When Robert Laurie was born in Scotland the seventh son of a seventh son, news of his birth spread far and wide. His family learned when he was still a small boy that Robert had the gift, as many characterized precognition. Eventually, the Lauries immigrated to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. As young Robert grew to manhood, his extraordinary, almost supernatural, powers flourished. His fame spread far and wide.

  The problem with precognition is that one can “see” both good and evil. For Robert, his honesty dictated that he disclose whatever the future held.

  He told a neighboring family with seven daughters that their eighth child would be a boy. It was and they were joyful.

  On another occasion, Robert assured a woman that her fisherman husband would survive the roiling Lake Michigan waters after his boat capsized in a storm. Laurie had “seen” the man clinging to the cabin’s hatch torn loose from the boat. Some time later, the hatch, bearing its human cargo, was indeed washed up on shore. The sailor was alive but barely conscious.

  Not all of Robert’s uncanny predictions were so welcome. Alex Laurie, Robert’s older brother, along with another man set forth by boat for Green Bay to buy supplies. Robert said they would never return. The boat must have capsized for neither it nor the two men were ever heard from again.

  One night when he was in his sixties, Robert had a dream so vivid that in the morning he recounted it in precise detail to his wife, Catherine. He told her there would soon be a large funeral in Door County. People would attend from great distances, traveling by land and water to get to the service. He described the glistening horses pulling magnificent carriages, he named the minister, and he named the precise number of mourners.

  The only thing he could not “see” was the name of the deceased. In his dream he saw only that the casket held a man’s body.

  A month later, a funeral was held, one of the largest in the history of Door County. People did travel from far and wide. Beautiful horses pulled the mourner’s carriages. All of the details were unerringly like those Robert Laurie revealed to his wife. But among the mourners was one whose heart was the heaviest with sorrow—Catherine Laurie, now the widow of this seventh son of a seventh son.

  The Summoning

  The second-floor apartment of the private home in Manitowoc met the needs of the young couple Randolph and Esther Johnson*. Their elderly landlord lived downstairs.

  The Johnsons’ bedroom had two doors diagonally across from one another, leaving barely enough room for their double bed. A door near the foot of the bed led into a hallway, but that door was kept locked. An old-fashioned wardrobe blocked the way. A second door near the head of the bed opened into a rear room from which the tenants could reach the stairway leading to an outside door.

  One night after they had lived there for some time and the couple had gone to bed, Esther was having trouble falling asleep. As she stared off into the inky darkness of the room, the startling apparition of a tall woman wearing a long gray dress and matching sweater floated out of the wardrobe. She moved with folded arms and bowed head around the bed and toward the door leading to the stairwell.

  Esther nudged her husband awake. He looked over toward the ghost, grunted, and whispered to his wife, “Can’t Mrs. Anderson walk around in her own house if she wants to?”

  In the morning Esther and Randolph discovered that their landlord, Mason Anderson, had died in his sleep some hours before. His wife had come to get him by way of the Johnsons’ apartment. She had been dead for nearly twenty years.

  House of Chimes

  When the George Websters moved into an old Green Bay house, everything went well—at first.

  Until the kitchen screen door, equipped with a tight spring, began opening and then slamming shut for no apparent reason.

  Until on one occasion the slamming was preceded by “a loud scraping, swirling noise,” with George less than twenty feet away.

  Until he rushed outside to investigate but found nothing that could account for the noise or the movement of the door.

  On a late July afternoon, George was home alone doing paperwork for his job as district supervisor for a Chicago-based corporation. He had just started for the back bedroom when he heard the now-familiar slam. But this time, looking toward the door, he saw the apparition of a man attired in black who seemed to float rather than walk. It came straight toward him. George flattened himself against a wall. The ghost, as if sensing a head-on collision, veered to the right and edged by. It glanced toward him, glided into a bedroom, and vanished. The entire episode lasted about ten seconds.

  Five days later the family left on a vacation. The house was locked up and empty—or so they thought. At about nine in the evening the neighbors, who were taking in the Websters’ mail, saw the kitchen lights go on and through the windows dark apparitions move back and forth.

  One day in August, Mrs. Webster watched two white-clad ghos
ts disappear into the master bedroom just off the kitchen.

  Some time later, the family began hearing “scraping and screeching noises in between the walls.” Playful mice? Hardly, according to George. The noises turned into chimes and bell-like sounds.

  Lights also were being turned on and off by unseen forces both day and night, and neighbors often called the Websters to find out why they had left their basement lights on all night.

  The family finally had enough and moved away. Although the electricity was shut off, neighbors reported that the lights continued to go on intermittently while the house stood vacant.

  George Webster had the last word on the bizarre manifestations, a grand understatement to be certain. It was, he said, “most unusual.”

  The Girl in White

  In the early days of the nineteenth century, few people in rural Wisconsin traveled by car or even by buggy. Those who owned horses rode them; those less fortunate walked. Young John Groat of Menomonie was among the latter. One hot summer evening, Groat and his neighbor Ed Forness* walked a mile and a half to town. On the way back they decided to visit their girlfriends, Carrie and Anna Chapman*, two sisters who lived with their parents in a farmhouse not far from the road on which the men traveled and quite near a small stream.

  But as the men reached the wooden bridge that carried the roadway over the shallow stream, they stopped to reconsider their visit with the girls. After all, it was quite late and they weren’t expected.

  “Look, John!” Ed Forness suddenly called out, as he pointed off down the gloomy path. “Looks like there’s a girl all in white coming down the road.”

  A girl about the age of Carrie and Anna walked directly toward them but then veered abruptly just before reaching the bridge, walked down into the stream—and vanished.

  The two men dashed to where the girl had gone into the water. They waded back and forth, but found no trace of the girl.

  John Groat feared that she must have been either Carrie or Anna, and he knew, too, without asking, that Ed shared the same trepidation. But why would either girl be out alone at night? And how could anyone simply disappear in such a shallow body of water?

  “Ed, we’ve got to get to the Chapman place right away,” Groat said, starting off at a fast pace. “I don’t know how it could’ve been Anna or my Carrie, but we’ve gotta find out. And if it ain’t one of them, well . . .” His voice trailed off.

  At the farmhouse, the girls’ parents were still on the porch, taking in the night air. Mrs. Chapman explained that they had had company earlier and that the girls were in the kitchen washing dishes.

  “Carrie! Anna!” their father called into the house.

  The girls came out. Vastly relieved, the boys told their amazing story. Both girls were as puzzled as their beaus. The description didn’t sound like any girl they knew, and besides they had waded the stream many times and there were no deep holes anywhere in it.

  More than a century has passed, yet no one ever offered a satisfactory explanation of who or what those two young men said they encountered. John Groat claimed he would never, ever have told the story if Ed Forness had not also witnessed the events on that remarkable summer night.

  Spirits on the Land

  In ancient days, when Native Americans roamed Wisconsin, game was plentiful in the dense forests, and hunters provided well for their families. One winter evening, a young Ojibwe wife, awaiting the return of her husband, became uneasy. He was always home earlier, tired but eager to sit by the fire and spin stories of the day’s adventures for her and the child. But not on this day.

  Suddenly someone approaching broke the evening’s silence. The wife hurried to the doorway of the lodge. Two strange women stood before her, their thin figures wrapped in hooded garments that nearly concealed their long, sallow faces. The hunter’s wife did not recognize them. These women were not of her tribe and she had no idea where they might have come from. Not wishing to appear inhospitable, she invited them in to warm up by the fire. They accepted her invitation, but instead of going to the fire, they huddled in a dark corner.

  Suddenly a voice cried out, “Merciful spirit, there are two corpses clothed in garments!” The wife wheeled around. There was no one there, no one except the silent guests. Had she been dreaming? Hearing only the sound of a rising wind?

  Then through the doorway her husband appeared, dragging the carcass of a large, fat deer. At that instant, the strangers rushed to the animal and began pulling off the choicest bits of white fat. The couple, although astonished by such impropriety, decided that their guests must be famished and so they said nothing.

  On the next day when the hunter returned from the chase, the same thing occurred.

  On the third day, the young man, deciding to cater to the whims of his peculiar visitors, tied a bundle of fat on the top of the carcass he brought home. The women seized it eagerly, and then ate the portion of fat that had been set aside for the wife. The hunter, although tempted to rebuke them, remained silent. For some mysterious reason he had had unaccountable good luck in felling game since the ghostly visitors had come into his home; he thought that perhaps somehow his good fortune had something to do with their presence. Besides, the women didn’t cause any trouble; on the contrary, they were helpful. Each evening they gathered wood, stacked it by the fire, and returned all implements to the place where they had found them. During the daytime, they huddled unobtrusively in a corner. They never joined a family conversation, nor laughed or joked.

  Finally, after many days of this, the hunter stayed out later than usual. When he did appear with a carcass, the visitors tore off the fat so rudely that the wife, who had become increasingly perturbed at their presence, nearly lashed out at them. Although she managed to hold her tongue, she was certain this time that the guests sensed her resentment.

  After the family had gone to bed, the husband heard the women weeping. Recalling the looks exchanged between his wife and the guests, he worried that his mate had offended them. Had she spoken too sharply? Said something that he perhaps hadn’t heard? He got up, went over to the women, and asked what was wrong. After assuring him that he had treated them kindly, they spoke further.

  “We come from the land of the dead to test the sincerity of the living,” one of them began. The living, bereaved by death in a family, say that if only the dead might be restored to life they would devote the rest of their lives to making them happy. The Master of Life had given them “three moons” in which to test the sincerity of those who, like the hunter and his wife, had lost a close relative.

  “We have been here more than half that time,” they said, “but now your wife is so angered by our presence that we have decided we must leave.”

  The hunter’s wife, awakened by the voices, arose and stood at her husband’s side. The ghosts went on to explain why they purposely had eaten the choicest parts of the hunter’s kills.

  The spirit went on: “That was the particular trial selected for you. We know, by your customs, that the white fat is reserved for the wife. In usurping that privilege we have put you both to a severe test of your tempers and feelings. But that is what we were sent to do.”

  Before the astonished hunter and his wife could respond, the ghosts blessed them, said good-bye, and vanished into the darkness. But their blessings were made manifest in the years to come. The hunter excelled in the chase, fathered many splendid children, and enjoyed health, happiness, and a long life. Such were the rewards of befriending two lonely ghosts who had come to test this family on a winter’s night long ago.

  In the time of the ancients there was a land called Moningwunakaunig, “place of the golden-breasted woodpecker.” We call it Madeline, largest of the Apostle Islands scattered off Lake Superior’s shore near Bayfield.

  Madeline Island is a fourteen-thousand-acre refuge with white sand beaches hugging impenetrable forests of fir, spruce, pine, poplar, and birch, contrasting sharply with the rugged red granite cliffs on the island’s windward side. It is
an ancient place. For three thousand years Madeline has known human footsteps. The original peoples camped in the woods, taking from the waters and forest their diet of fish, meat, and berries at the time when Roman armies were conquering Europe.

  Later, when the Ojibwe were forced from their ancestral home along the St. Lawrence River, they settled on the Apostle Islands. A great village was built on Madeline with a population, archaeologists say, of nearly twelve thousand. But the area became overpopulated and a terrible famine struck the community.

  The men of the tribe could not kill enough fish and game to feed a population so large. In desperation, tribal elders and the medicine men resorted to cannibalism. Young maidens and children were chosen and offered as sacrifices on a primitive altar, their flesh consumed as food. But the population rebelled after a time and the old leadership was executed.

  Tales began spreading of the victims’ vengeful spirits haunting the island. They would rise from the earth near the sacrificial altar and wander over the island.

  Legend has it that a great exodus took place and the entire village was evacuated to the mainland until eventually no Ojibwe remained. Various families migrated to locations in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota. Some accounts insist it was several centuries before native people would again camp on Madeline.

  Now there are few Native Americans on the island, and few physical traces remain of the island’s original inhabitants. Earlier in the twentieth century, it is said, some sacrificial tobacco was found scattered at the site of the ancient altar.

  A modern yacht harbor and marina occupy the lagoon near which the sacrificial altar was located. Not far away, there is a lavish resort and a golf course created by the world-famous designer Robert Trent Jones. If the lagoon once harbored the ghosts of those butchered centuries ago, no one has reported any recent apparitions. Yet on a cool, foggy night in early fall, if you sit near enough to that lagoon along the edge of the old Indian burial ground, if you listen intently enough, you just might hear their plaintive cries.