Haunted Wisconsin

by Michael Norman

  The haunted house of legend is usually a stately old mansion perched atop a windswept knoll. One enters the grounds through a sagging iron gate attached by a single hinge to the decrepit fence winding around the property. The building is in a desperate state of disrepair—floorboards are missing from the veranda, windows boarded up or broken—and, for good measure, a few bats ought to flutter from one of the many gable windows. Of course, one visits the mansion on a cold and windy night where terror seems to wait just beyond that heavy and forbidding front door.

  In fact, one of Wisconsin’s more famous haunted houses fits only part of this description. In earlier days this house and property seemed to be cursed with evil. No fewer than ten people associated with it met unusual deaths. If any house can be haunted with grief and sorrow, it is the T. B. Scott mansion in Merrill.

  In the early part of the nineteenth century, a Native American village occupied the west bank of the Wisconsin River in what is now the town of Merrill. French fur traders had often stopped at the village to barter for goods. The peaceful tribe had little fear from the white men. When lumbermen began traveling the river during the big timber drives in northern Wisconsin, they were welcomed as brothers by the Native inhabitants.

  According to one legend, the village chief brought visitors to his dwelling where his only daughter would serve them meals. The beautiful, shy maiden, who soon became known as Jenny to her white guests, entranced the men. But the blissful life of the settlement soon turned to tragedy. A young lumberjack who was particularly fond of Jenny made love to her. The accounts differ as to what happened next. One version asserts that Jenny, ashamed of her actions, killed herself. Another tale holds that Jenny simply died soon thereafter, probably of the flu, which had been introduced among the Indian peoples by the white men.

  Whatever the cause of the girl’s tragic death, her father was grief-stricken. He ordered that she be buried upon a high hill across the river from the settlement. At her burial the old man stood at his daughter’s grave, gazed out over the river, and prayed, “Oh, great Father, grant me this place for my child. Let this ground be sacred to her memory.” Then he placed a curse upon that earth: “Let it never do any white man any good.”

  The years passed, the Indians abandoned the settlement, and Jenny and her final resting place were all but forgotten. The settlement that had grown beside the Indian camp—named Jenny Bull Falls, or Jenny for short—was renamed to honor S. S. Merrill, the manager of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad.

  But in 1884 there began a series of events so strange that the old chief’s grim incantation seemed to echo down through the ages. T. B. Scott, a wealthy Merrill mill owner and lumberman, purchased “Jenny’s hill” from the government and planned to build a mansion fit for a timber baron. He knew nothing of Jenny or the curse. Only two years after he bought the land in 1886, Scott died with the house only partially built. He was fifty-seven. Scott’s widow, Ann, tried to complete construction on the mansion. But within a year she too was dead. It was now left to their son, Walter, to finish his parents’ work. Although his mother had urged him to complete the house, Walter apparently abandoned the project. Some years later, however, Walter did visit Chicago to consult an architect about the project. During their meeting, Walter and the architect, a Mr. Sheldon, got into an argument for some reason. Young Scott was stabbed to death with a letter opener. Sheldon proved in court that he had acted in self-defense, implying that Walter Scott instigated the struggle.

  The executors of the estate sold the still-incomplete mansion to a Chicago millionaire, a man named Kuechle. He wanted the house as a summer retreat and made plans to install lavish additions to it. Later he visited the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and bought a number of decorations for the house, including heavy, hand-carved doors, plate glass windows, embossed mirrors, and a carved mantel. He hired workmen to install the furnishings and complete construction. Kuechle apparently spent little if any time in the mansion. Within a short time, a series of bad investments forced him to mortgage the house to a Chicago tavern owner named Barsanti. Kuechle, however, was able to avoid foreclosure on the mansion when he inherited a large sum of money. Determined to recoup his loses, Kuechle invested the fortune in a contract to build a section of the Northern Pacific Railroad, but he knew nothing of railroads or engineering, soon went bankrupt, and later died in a mental institution.

  Barsanti, the tavernkeeper, took possession of the mansion, but never lived to see it. Somehow he had antagonized the notorious gang known as the Black Hand, and as he waited in Chicago’s Union Station to board a train for Merrill, he was stabbed to death by one of the “Hands.”

  Barsanti’s survivors, in turn, sold the still-vacant and only half-completed mansion to a real estate speculator, George Gibson. His intention was to build a home for elderly lawyers. An office was organized in Merrill to collect donations, and work on the mansion once again resumed.

  But he vanished late one afternoon after leaving the office to go home for supper. Search parties were organized to scour the countryside. The Wisconsin River was dredged without success. Riverbanks and boom sites (sections of the river where freshly cut timber jam up) were carefully watched. There was no apparent motive for Gibson’s sudden disappearance. He was never seen again after that day.

  The mansion reverted once again to the Barsanti family since all payments on the house had not been made. The family retained possession for several years during which the mansion remained unoccupied. The old place now had a solid reputation for bad luck, if not evil itself. Caretakers looked after the house and grounds, mainly to protect it from vandals. One old groundsman was an Englishman known as Popcorn Dan, since he also operated a popcorn stand in Merrill. In 1911 he sailed to England for a visit to his childhood home. Returning to America in April 1912, however, he made a fatal mistake: Popcorn Dan booked his passage on the S.S. Titanic.

  The Lloydsen family assumed the role of caretaker after Popcorn Dan’s death. Mr. Lloydsen died of alcoholism.

  Finally, Mrs. Mary Fehlhaber, a Merrill area midwife, bought the mansion for a small sum and took in boarders. One day, while out riding, she became ill, made her way to a nearby farm, but died before a doctor could reach her side.

  In 1919 Herman Fehlhaber, Mary’s husband, gave the house and adjoining property to the city of Merrill. Four years later the city offered the property to the Holy Cross Sisters, an order of Roman Catholic nuns, if they would build a hospital, which they opened a few years later and is now known as Good Samaritan Hospital. The sisters used the mansion as a residence. They also operated a small junior college and other related facilities nearby. The nuns sold the hospital some years ago and now devote their ministry to elder care.

  Is it only a macabre coincidence that so many people associated with the house met with tragedy? Or did that curse pronounced so very long ago linger on through the decades to torment those who tried to build on “Jenny’s hill”? Although it’s impossible to parse legend from fact more than a century later, perhaps once the mansion and the grounds were used for humanitarian purposes peace was restored to that high knoll.

  Should you ever see the T. B. Scott mansion at the south end of Merrill, think of Jenny and ask yourself whether the curse is over.

  The Coulee Road Ghost

  Hudson, Wisconsin, is a small, bustling city clinging to the bluffs of the St. Croix River, directly across the river from the sprawling Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area in Minnesota. The town is a popular suburb for commuters. Its scenic beauty, river-connected recreational opportunities, lively cultural scene, and pleasant small-town living make legendary visits by the ghost of Paschal Aldrich seem quite out of place.

  The story of the hauntings on what is now called Coulee Road begins nearly 140 years ago with the arrival in Hudson of one of its first residents, Dr. Philip Aldrich.

  Aldrich, who was born in Ohio in 1792, could justifiably be called a pioneer entrepreneur. He
became over the years a businessman, mail carrier and postmaster, county commissioner, circuit judge, and landowner. No doubt the ease with which he accomplished these tasks, many of them simultaneously, was due in some measure to the small population of St. Croix County in 1845—just 1,419 inhabitants. Dr. Aldrich was also the census taker.

  In those days, the county included most of northwestern Wisconsin and that part of Minnesota extending from the St. Croix River to the Mississippi, which now separates Minneapolis and St. Paul.

  Shortly after Aldrich arrived in the county in 1840, the federal government awarded him a contract to carry twice-monthly mail dispatches from Point Douglas, across the St. Croix River from present-day Prescott, Wisconsin, to St. Croix Falls. During the summer he piloted a bateau, or flat-bottomed river-boat, and in the winter he trod the ice-covered river by foot.

  Two years after his appointment, Dr. Aldrich was elected county commissioner and continued to be closely associated with the political growth of western Wisconsin for many years. According to newspaper accounts, the first meeting of the St. Croix County Board was held September 9, 1848, at Dr. Aldrich’s home, which stood at the northeast corner of Second and Elm Street in Hudson. The house was a center of many gala social events in the town’s early days.

  Dr. Aldrich had moved into Hudson during the previous year. He bought a large tract of land, now called the Aldrich Addition. Aldrich abandoned his mail route via the St. Croix River and took up an overland route from Hudson to St. Croix Falls. The mail was delivered on foot once a week, a round trip of some eighty miles.

  In 1849 Aldrich became Hudson’s first postmaster, a position he held until 1851. In that same year, he was also granted a license to operate a ferry across the St. Croix River.

  A son of Dr. Aldrich, Paschal, owned a home on Buckeye Street that became the first post office. Paschal’s wife, Martha, often clerked in the post office and since she could neither read nor write, the patrons picked out their own letters.

  Following Dr. Philip Aldrich’s death, the large holdings were passed on to Paschal. But the father’s luck was not inherited by the son. Paschal Aldrich and his family moved into a small house at the head of Coulee Road, near present Interstate Highway 94. He farmed a large area for many years, but when a serious illness sunk his fortunes, he was forced to sell much of the property. There is some dispute as to the reason for the sale. One account has it that an unidentified man somehow caused the family to lose its vast holdings during Paschal’s illness.

  Paschal Aldrich died on October 13, 1860, in that house on Coulee Road. For years afterward, the place was known as the “haunted house.” Members of his family and some neighbors said they saw Paschal’s ghost wandering the premises at night, reportedly keeping watch over his family. Paschal’s solicitude in death was attributed to his near financial ruin during his fatal illness.

  Mrs. Paschal Aldrich also vowed to come back as a ghost. But her granddaughter, the late Mrs. Wallace Smith, said she didn’t know if there was a second ghost in the house or not. Perhaps one was enough.

  A Quartet of Wisps

  Will-o’-the-wisp: n.A phosphorescent light that hovers over swampy ground at night, possibly caused by rotting organic matter.

  This is what a dictionary says, but Wisconsin pioneers often placed the will-o’-the-wisp in the same category as ghosts. Within the vast, dark forests, along riverbanks and lowlands, the eerie dancing lights would move and jump as if they were living, breathing creatures. No theory about “possible rotting organic matter” could shake from those hardy settlers the conviction that nothing short of Lucifer himself could be the culprit.

  Mrs. Adele Cline of Eau Pleine recalls that the lights had the appearance of a man walking along in the dark, swinging a lantern, not an uncommon method of travel in the early days. Mrs. Cline’s father first saw the phenomenon on a homestead near the Big Eau Pleine River in the 1880s. The first encounter took place one night on his way home from a visit to his parents’ farm about a mile from his own cabin. The will-o’-the-wisp suddenly appeared beside him and shadowed him nearly to his doorstep.

  Mrs. Cline’s parents eventually built a barn on the land and surrounded the yard with a timber fence. The will-o’-the-wisp never entered the yard once the fence was erected.

  The family homestead was quite near a widening of the Big Eau Pleine River. Between the barn and lake was a large area covered by rock the children used to call “the acre of stone.” All around this section the land was cleared and under cultivation. Mrs. Cline said the light would come up from the river and cross over this stony expanse usually at twilight, although her mother once watched as two lights chased each other until the early morning hours.

  The light would sometimes travel very fast, “as though it was really in a hurry,” while at other times it might hover and slowly fade. A few minutes later it might reappear hundreds of feet away and continue its strange, nocturnal gyrations.

  On one occasion Mrs. Cline’s young aunt, twelve years old, and an uncle, who was only nine, came to visit the family. The children had been assigned the job of bringing in the livestock. Twilight descended and the youngsters had yet to complete their tasks. As they walked across a pasture, the will-o’-the-wisp appeared floating beside them. Their dog took one look at it and bolted for home. He hid for several days under the front porch. The cows wasted little time in returning to the comforts of the barn.

  A few days later Mrs. Cline’s grandfather was returning home at dusk when he saw the glowing will-o’-the-wisp bobbing along. At the same instant a thunderous roar bellowed from deep within the earth. The old man had been a soldier in the German Kaiser’s East Prussian Army. He was familiar with the roar of cannon fire, yet the sound on that night was more frightening than anything he had ever heard.

  Could there have been an underground landslide? Perhaps a minor earthquake? A neighbor boy returning along the same path heard something similar several years later. From that night on he carried a gun whenever he was out after dark.

  Mrs. Cline’s family eventually moved to an adjoining farm, and their original homestead was rented out. The new tenants periodically reported a man walking along with a lantern in the acre of stone.

  The last sighting occurred after a bulldozer operator who was clearing stone from the farm told Mrs. Cline’s father that he was surprised to see the old man out walking all alone the previous evening with only a lantern. “You could have seen the field by riding with me on the bulldozer,” he offered. Mrs. Cline’s father looked at him and smiled. He knew the will-o’-the-wisp had been abroad in the land once again.

  The stereotypical ghost of legend may arise in the dark, brooding silences of cemeteries. But it wasn’t exactly this ghost that appeared to Buffalo County pioneers but rather a fireball that hovered above a grave of an old lakeshore Indian burial ground. The size of a large orange, it swayed, like an eerie pendulum, thirty feet above the ground. As whispered word spread among the curious, residents of the area gathered nightly on the lakeshore to watch the swinging light. Occasionally, a brave man reached out to catch the light, but it always vanished before his eyes.

  A will-o’-the-wisp? Old-timers had a different explanation. They said that a man named Belknap once had recurring dreams in which he saw a crock filled with immense treasures buried in the old cemetery. He was convinced that if he went there late at night and dug it up, the treasure would be his.

  So vivid were these dreams that finally, one night, Belknap was impelled to action. He set forth with pick and shovels and dug until he found it. Alas, he had failed to turn around three times as he had been directed in the dream. The minute he bent down to pick up the crock he was stunned by a flash of lighting and the crock vanished.

  And since that night the spot has been haunted by the glowing beacon . . . the sign of one man’s folly.

  The will-o’-the-wisp would often form itself into a bluish-colored fireball and then hop and skip across the fields. Some say that if a person
interfered with the wisp he would become lost. Luckily that didn’t happen to Alfred Ulrick Sr., who had several chilling encounters with the will-o’-the-wisp.

  Ulrick was a young man a century ago when he first encountered the wisp. The mysterious ball of fire was common in his part of rural Wisconsin in those days. It would appear in an open field near his parents’ farm in all manner of weather and light conditions—during rain or drought, on the darkest nights or in the brightness of a full moon. Farm animals, ironically, seemed unafraid of the object. They would continue to graze even when the wisp was close by in the pasture. But, Ulrick claimed, no one ever tried to interfere with the will-o’-the-wisp.

  The closest Ulrick came to a direct encounter with the will-o’-the wisp was an incident on a late July evening. Ulrick and his father had taken the buggy and Dick, their favorite horse, into town for a supply of oats, their own grain not yet having been harvested.

  Ulrick describes his father as a courageous man: “He did not seem to know the meaning of fear, regardless of what the situation was.”

  On their way home, the Ulricks had to travel near an area where the will-o’-the-wisp was known to frolic. Twilight descended on the pair as Dick trotted through the gathering gloom. The night air was cool; a full moon cast a glow across the nightscape. The road stretched out before them like a white ribbon laid out in the darkness.

  Soon, father and son were near the wisp’s playground.