Haunted Wisconsin

by Michael Norman

  On the next day, Carl was again placed upon the altar before the picture of the Holy Virgin, and the priests resumed the long ritual. Three more demons were cast out.

  And on the third, and final, day, the last demon agreed to leave if all the persons assembled would leave with him. All but three acquiesced, and, to the great joy and relief of Carl, the churchmen, and the congregation, the devil departed. The miracle was complete.

  A subdued and grateful Carl, along with his family, joined the Catholic Church. They hung a crucifix on the wall and bought prayer books and rosaries. And Carl attended Mass each morning.

  One month later, however, another devil appeared. This one was successfully cast out, but not before shouting, with glee, that four more demons remained.

  Here the story of Carl Seige fades from the newspapers. Perhaps the demon was wrong and its four brethren decided to leave on their own. It was 1870 and the press had more important stories to write about. Wisconsin communities were astir with the issuance of railway bonds, and with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in Europe.

  No one will ever know the true nature and dimensions of Carl’s illness. Was he mentally ill? Or was he really possessed by supernatural, earthbound entities that invaded his body to torment him with their evil thoughts and fears? Today’s physician may have diagnosed Carl as an epileptic. The many films, books, and television programs about the rite of exorcism, however, illustrate the continuing fascination we have with this ancient evil. The Catholic Church revised its Rite of Exorcism as recently as 1999. Today, doctors must examine a candidate to determine if the person has a mental or physical ailment before an exorcism will be considered.

  There is one postscript to the story of the Seige family. The minister who fathered Carl’s nephew was arrested on a charge of seduction and committed to the county jail. After being confined for a month, he tore his blankets into strips and hanged himself in his cell. It is said that the child and his young mother continued to live happily in her parents’ home.

  Murder on the Boardwalk

  Back when Oshkosh was a bustling frontier town that spilled across the plain, sawmills on both banks of the Fox River hummed incessantly, turning out pine lumber and shingles, while factories produced finished wood products. Lumberjacks roared into town on payday and their heavy drinking in Main Street saloons often ended in brawls.

  One night, a rural man who had been shopping in town started homeward carrying a rocking chair. His young son accompanied him. The sidewalks at that time were high boardwalks, and as the pair passed a large grove of gnarled oak trees, the father decided to rest for a moment. He put down the chair and, elated over the splendid bargain he had struck with the shopkeeper, sat down to rock.

  Suddenly from out of the darkness beyond the trees two drunks appeared. Resentful of the man’s obvious delight in his new chair, and spoiling for a fight, they taunted the stranger. The quarrel soon got out of hand and the drunks killed the man and ran off.

  The boy, meanwhile, had dived under the boardwalk. When the assailants left, the child raced across the street for help. By the time help arrived, his father was dead in his chair.

  For years afterward, travelers claimed that they heard the creaks of the rocker and the groans of the dying man in the grove where he had been slain. And those who are keen of ear say that the eerie sounds can still be heard, carried by the wild wind of a stormy night.

  Footsteps in the Dark

  The house at the crest of High Street in Pewaukee projects the solidity of a medieval fortress. Built in the nineteenth century when the octagon craze swept the Midwest, the three-story, eight-sided cement home, with walls eighteen inches thick, has permanence about it that modern houses lack. Yet the dark hardwood trim, the lofty windows, the carpenter’s lace that embellishes a second floor porch, and the towering ash and maple trees that surround it soften the severity of its lines. To the casual observer, the house appears an intriguing architectural folly; to those familiar with its history, it is remembered as the house of haunting footsteps—the abode of some unseen, unknown, ghostly nightwalker.

  The site originally held a log house. But after this structure burned to the ground, Deacon West, a blacksmith, bought the property and had a house put up in the late 1850s. Several years later, West too lost his home in a devastating fire. Only the massive walls remained.

  The next owner, Ira Rowe, sold the place to Col. N. P. Iglehart from Kentucky. Iglehart, who spent his summers in Pewaukee, rebuilt the house into its present form in about 1873. He also discovered springs on the expansive property and soon established a small home business, bottling the water and selling it under the label Oakton Springs Water.

  In the early 1900s, Audrey D. Hyle, a Milwaukee attorney, owned the house. And it was during his proprietorship that the unearthly footsteps were first heard. Someone or something seemed to wander through the vast rooms and corridors at precisely ten forty-five each evening. Whatever “it” was never bothered anyone nor showed itself. Sleeping residents were sometimes half awakened by the footfalls but drifted back to sleep as they faded.

  In the 1930s, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Zupet lived in the haunted house, and by this time the nocturnal visitor had varied its wanderings slightly. It now ascended the staircase from the front hall to the second floor five minutes later, at precisely 10:50 p.m., and descended by another staircase into the garden at 1:20 a.m. Sometimes it paused outside a closed bedroom door, then moved on down the wide hallway. Whatever it was searching for could never be determined. Nothing was ever disturbed or taken.

  Nevertheless, the Zupets became apprehensive about what they believed to be their resident ghost and invited a mystic by the name of Koran to visit their home. He was performing at the Milwaukee Theater at the time and welcomed the opportunity to make the twenty-mile trip to Pewaukee. Koran made a thorough investigation and, although he did not identify the phantom, he did assure the homeowners that it was a friendly one. The Zupets put the house up for sale about three years later, but tales of their “haunted house” had already spread; consequently no one wanted to live there.

  The octagon house remained vacant for a number of years, but then the housing shortage following World War II brought a succession of renters. Finally, in 1948, Mr. and Mrs. John T. Oswald of Milwaukee bought the house and lived in it until 1966. Today the home remains in private hands.

  A possible explanation of sorts for the “mysterious” footsteps came to light when it was discovered that old speaking tubes had been installed throughout the house when it was built so that family members could communicate with each other and with household staff. Over the years the wall openings were covered over, but the tubes were still in place and could transmit sound from one part of the house to another. Yet that doesn’t explain the ghost’s “punctuality” or the fact that the footfalls seemed to be loud enough to wake sleeping family members.

  There have been no reports of ghosts in the Pewaukee octagon house for many decades.

  The Hille Curse

  Mrs. Dorothy Ransome had a very clear idea of who the phantom was that approached her farmhouse near Waukesha and then vanished at the kitchen door. The ghost was John Hille, the man who built the house over a century ago.

  What the ghost of John Hille may not have known is that those appearances were just another chapter in a saga of bizarre, and often tragic, events, including the untimely deaths of a half dozen or more people associated with the farm, that led many to believe the farm known as Ravensholme was cursed.

  Dorothy Ransome and her husband, Ralph, purchased the property in 1948. The ghost of John Hille made regular trips to their back door starting in the early 1970s. It was after the ghost’s first appearance that Mrs. Ransome began delving into the history of the farm. What she found was chilling.

  The history of the farmstead began in 1848, the year Wisconsin was admitted to the Union. John Hille, thirty-seven years old at the time, brought his young wife, Magdelena, and their several childr
en to settle the 146 acres of virgin wilderness bordering the Fox River, six miles southwest of Waukesha. Hille had been born in Hanover, Germany, and immigrated to America in 1837 following the death of both of his parents. He had been apprenticed to a cabinet-maker in Hanover and utilized his skill in New York, where he worked until his move to the Wisconsin frontier. Magdelena Jaquiltard Hille was also an immigrant. She married John in 1837, five years after her own family reached the East Coast from France.

  The Hilles began their new life in a log cabin near Waukesha. Gradually they built their holdings into a prosperous 215-acre farm with several granaries, barns, sheds, and a spacious stone farmhouse erected from the granite boulders Hille had cleared from nearby fields.

  The curse claimed its first victim in 1898 when the Hille family numbered eight. Magdelena Hille became ill and a doctor was summoned. No one knows precisely what happened, but somehow the family physician mistakenly gave Mrs. Hille a fatal dose of poison. A short time later John Hille, the immigrant who had turned a Wisconsin forest into thriving farmland, died at nearly ninety years of age. His death was attributed to natural causes. Shortly thereafter a son, who had been an invalid for some time, followed his parents in death. Two of his brothers had died many years before.

  The family, which had been eight, was now five.

  Two Hille sons, Oscar and William, and their sister Hulda inherited the large estate. Several other children had moved away and showed no interest in farming. By all accounts, the trio that remained on the farm was well respected by their neighbors and thrifty in their financial affairs, making the farm one of the most profitable in the county.

  Nearly a decade passed before tragedy again struck the Hille family.

  Oscar Hille died unexpectedly in 1916. He had taken a bull to a water trough early one morning. The animal had been led back to its stall and tethered to a post when it suddenly bolted and crushed Oscar against a wall. He died of internal injuries two days later.

  The strangest of all deaths attributed to the “curse” was the macabre scenario played out at the Hille farm two years after Oscar’s death.

  The war in Europe had reached into America’s heartland as young men marched off to battle the armies of Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm. At home, sewing circles formed to make warm woolen clothing for the forces overseas, the Red Cross and YMCA asked for donations, and the purchase of Liberty Bonds and War Stamps were seen as marks of patriotism.

  William and Hulda were particularly touched by the war. Both their parents had been born in the land now being torn asunder by battle. They still had many Old World customs; as with other German-heritage families, their hearts must have ached at the suffering and loss on both sides. William didn’t like to discuss the war. “It’s useless to argue,” he often said. That hesitancy to engage his neighbors in talk about the war because of his Germanic background may have led some of his neighbors to suspect him of disloyalty, although members of his family later convincingly rebutted such speculation. The suspicions stalked William and Hulda with tragic consequences.

  The morning of July 11, 1918, broke gently over the lazily moving Fox River a hundred yards behind the Hille house. The couple went about their chores as they did each day, but there was tension about them, almost as if their world was about to crumble.

  Several weeks earlier, a man named Elder Krause had ingratiated himself with the Hilles and persuaded them to take him on as a hired man. Krause told his new employers that he was from South Milwaukee. But after several days his behavior changed abruptly. Apparently Krause said he was actually an “agent” of the U.S. Secret Service and was there because of reports that the couple were disloyal. It soon became clear that the story was false and Krause’s actual purpose was to extort money from William and Hulda, perhaps preying upon the couple’s uneasiness. He enlisted the aid of a neighbor boy, Ernest Fentz, who performed odd jobs for William Hille. Newspaper accounts of the day say Krause and Fentz threatened the Hilles with “exposure” as disloyal Americans unless they acquiesced to their demands.

  There is little, if any, evidence that either William or Hulda were disloyal; on the contrary, they gave generously to the war effort. But a packet of letters found later in the Hille farmhouse indicated something mysterious and sinister in Krause’s ways. One note from Hulda alluded to some past misdeed that was so bad that she had torn up the letter Krause sent threatening her with its exposure. There is no proof that either brother or sister gave in immediately to Krause’s extortion attempt.

  Fentz’s role in the blackmail is unclear. William Hille had always liked the boy, buying him gifts and often allowing him to ride in a car the Hilles had recently purchased. But he turned against the boy when he teamed up with Krause in the blackmail scheme. Fentz was fired from his job at the Hille farm in late June and told never to return.

  The climax to this peculiar chain of events took place shortly before noon on July 11. Krause stopped by young Fentz’s home, saying he wanted him to come along to the Hille farm because he “had a good position for him.” The lad’s stepfather tried to persuade him not to go, but Fentz wouldn’t listen and left with Krause.

  At the farm, William apparently relented and gave Krause and Fentz thirty dollars for “protection against exposure.” Fentz handed Hille a crudely written receipt for the money. It is not known what information would be “exposed” or from whom the Hilles would be safe. The money may have been given to them as much to get them off the property as to buy their silence. Krause, Fentz, and William then fell to arguing. Hulda Hille, who was deeply fearful that the pair were “after them,” telephoned a neighbor, Mrs. William Dingeldine, and asked her to hurry over. She had just stepped through the kitchen door when a sharp gunshot blast came from the direction of the living room. Seconds later William walked into the kitchen holding a shotgun. When he saw Mrs. Dingeldine he offered to shake hands, but instead she tried to grab the gun. Hulda stopped her neighbor. “Let him go,” she said. “It is for the best. They’re after us anyway, and you cannot prevent this. We will be dead before anyone can get here.”

  In the living room, Ernest Fentz was dead, his body slumped in a rocking chair, the left side of his face torn away by William’s shotgun.

  William hurriedly pushed past Mrs. Dingeldine and started for the barn. She tried to reason with him, but he brushed her aside, echoing his sister’s grim prediction: “They are after me,” he said.

  Hulda then handed a small wooden box to her neighbor and told her to leave. Hulda said there were valuable papers in the container and she feared that Krause, who was still somewhere on the farm, might find them if he searched the house. Mrs. Dingeldine ran toward home to telephone other neighbors for help. But when she reached the gate, more shotgun blasts came from the direction of a barn. At about the same time Mrs. Dingeldine heard Hulda yelling at Krause to “stay away from here.” Krause had apparently heard Hille shoot Fentz and came out to investigate. After Hulda’s unexpected warning he fled across a nearby field.

  At the Hille farm a slaughter was underway. William methodically killed five horses with shots fired into their heads. Back in the kitchen, he shot and killed a pet dog. Hulda had retreated to her upstairs bedroom, where she lay in bed, an empty bottle of arsenic and a razor blade next to her on a table. The poison acted swiftly, as life drained from her body. The last sound she may have heard was her brother climbing the stairs and going into his bedroom. He sat down in his favorite chair and balanced the shotgun against his legs, its barrel pointing directly at his midsection. Against the trigger was the end of a long, thin strip of wood. He looked for one last time out the window to his beloved farm and remembered that it was the land his father and mother had wrestled from the wilderness and made prosperous. Now he was an old man, and “they” were after him. The crashing roar of his shotgun shattered the stillness. The buckshot tore a gaping wound in his chest. Down the hall, his sister lay dying.

  One person murdered, two others dead by their own hands, six farm
animals slaughtered. Why? What motivated this orgy of violence? A coroner’s inquest and the recollections of the three surviving Hille sisters shed some light on the tragedy.

  The sisters claimed that their late brother and sister had been “loyal American citizens.” They said Krause’s only object in coming to work for William and Hulda had been to get money from them on one pretext or another, and when he could not persuade them in any way he made threats by posing as a secret serviceman. William gave Krause the money, hoping to be rid of him. When Krause and Fentz didn’t seem satisfied and William threatened to call the authorities, an argument took place that led to the deaths.

  The coroner’s inquest left many questions unanswered. Krause was finally located in St. Paul, Minnesota, trying to enlist in the army. The Waukesha authorities were said to have attempted to bring Krause back for the inquest, but his testimony was not included in the coroner’s report, according to contemporary newspaper accounts.

  The most mysterious aspect of the investigation dealt with a letter found in the box given to Mrs. Dingeldine by Hulda, in which the latter predicted her own death.

  It read: “Say girls, the other night there was a slapping noise on the wall. I knew what that meant, so good-bye. All be good with Eliza. There are only these three left. We will try our best to get our rights. Don’t take it hard because Bill would have to be in prison for life; he [Krause] was telling Bill about the Japs [sic] coming over and how they will come. And then Bill—we would go in the house and shoot them. Give the machine to H. and A. That is W’s wish.”

  Hulda then listed the pallbearers she wanted at her funeral.

  What crime had William committed that would be punishable by life imprisonment? How did Hulda know in advance that their deaths were imminent? Was the slapping noise an omen? The questions cannot satisfactorily be answered. We can only surmise that the harassment of the elderly couple by Krause and Fentz had caused some initial anxiety that soon became fear and paranoia. William and Hulda were convinced that some unspoken past deed or utterance would cause their arrest and imprisonment. Sadly, there is little evidence to support their fears. They seemed to be trapped by the malevolent accusations of Krause and Fentz … and the Hille curse.