His life revolved around his work, his family, and that moment of glory in 1955 when he came close to playing with the vaunted Packers. It’s a part of his life he disclosed early on in a conversation. But ironically it was his lack of a college education that was his downfall in professional football.
“That was a big deal. The Packers wanted college boys. A sports announcer in Milwaukee by the name of Earl Gillespie helped me get my tryout. I was very lucky. Actually, my dad was kind of against me trying out. He was afraid I was going to get hurt. At that time, football was very different that it is now. I played two positions on offense and defense, guard and tackle. That’s not like it is now.”
He did go on to play semi-professional football for a few years until turning his full attention to the trucking company.
Jerry’s encounter with the woman on National Avenue occurred a few years before his retirement.
“The date was September 20. I was watching a bowling team my wife and I [sponsored]. They bowled a 9:00 p.m. shift, at what was called LinMor Lanes, over at the corner of Eighteenth and Greenfield. So after they got done bowling I left, probably around midnight. I went to an all-night restaurant between National and Mineral on Sixteenth Street.”
He left the restaurant sometime between one and two in the morning and headed home. He climbed into his van, which was parked across the street, and drove down to National Avenue. The traffic was still considerable even at that time of night.
The young woman was standing in the street directly in front of the house Ranieri and Hicks had remodeled, frantically waving her hands, like she was in trouble. Nobody slowed down until Jerry pulled over. She appeared to be in her early twenties with dark, reddish hair falling to her shoulders. She wore a light jacket over a blouse and slacks. Oddly, she did not carry a purse or handbag of any sort.
Jerry stopped and asked her if she was all right. She nodded.
“I asked her if she needed a ride someplace. She got in the van and I asked her where she wanted to go,” Jerry remembered. Strangely, the woman merely grunted and pointed down National Avenue in a westerly direction, the same way he was headed. Jerry couldn’t understand the point she was trying to make and gave her a pencil and paper. He carefully asked her to write down her name and where she wanted to be taken.
“All she wrote was that her name was ‘Mary,’” Jerry said. She seemed confused at other questions and somewhat agitated. “I felt sorry for her because I had no idea what was wrong.”
He drove down National Avenue toward Twenty-Sixth Street. She frenetically waved for him to turn at that corner. A block later she again motioned for him to turn and then indicated she wanted him to stop in the middle of the block, on Mineral Street. There was no sign of life on the primarily residential street, although there are two churches at either end of the block. A large, older three-story house and garage were opposite where he pulled over. The lights were off in that house, and indeed in every other building on the block. Street-lamps from the Mineral Street and National Avenue intersections threw scant illumination on a handful of cars parked in that block.
She murmured something; he thought she said, “You nice man.” Then she opened the door and climbed out. She pushed the car door but it didn’t close all the way. The dome light stayed on so he waited for her to push the door shut. He peered through the passenger-side window but he couldn’t see her. He feared she had fallen. He quickly got out and walked around to the passenger side.
“She was nowhere around. No place. No sign of her whatsoever. I don’t know how she could have gotten away… . It was only a matter of ten or fifteen seconds between the time she got out and the time I got out.”
Jerry didn’t see any place she could have gone to in such a brief time. He looked up and down the street and listened for footsteps, but there was absolutely no sign of life on the entire block. The few houses were not close enough for her to run into, and it didn’t make any sense to him that she would have been hiding.
He drove around the block still looking for her. After he gave up, he headed home to tell his wife about his peculiar experience. The color was drained out of his face. He told her the story—that he was certain he had picked up a ghost.
Jerry allowed the incident to recede from his mind until the following year, when his wife, Audrey, gave him a copy of the first edition of this book as a gift. She inscribed in it: “To My Own Ghost Hunter.”
“I read [the book] and pointed out the story [of Marie] to my wife and I showed her the picture of the window of the house. She said ‘For goodness’ sake that says the house is on National Avenue.’ I thought that had to be it,” he recalled. Coincidentally, Audrey worked at an insurance company in the same block of the same street.
An old photograph of a young woman that Paul Ranieri and Jeff Hicks found in the house was included with the original story of Marie. The men thought it might have been Marie. It showed a young woman, probably in her late teens or twenties with bare shoulders above a low-cut gown and a bobbed hairstyle fashionable in the early twentieth century.
Jerry saw some similarity between the girl he met who called herself Mary and the one in the photograph. “The girl I picked up had longer hair, darker, to her shoulders, kind of red from what I could make out when the light went on in the van. I looked at the picture [in the book] a few times to see if it could have been her. I can’t say for sure.”
So what happened to Jerry Cummings on that late Friday night in September?
The simple truth is he doesn’t know to this day if the woman was a real woman in some sort of crisis, or Marie of National Avenue asking this kind man for a ride. The destination the hitchhiker directed him to seemed pointless: no late night businesses to work at, no homes with welcoming porch lights, no parked automobile in which to drive away.
“The strange thing was that she disappeared so fast. I wasn’t frightened, but I couldn’t imagine what had happened to her,” he said.
As one can imagine, too, Jerry took some good-natured ribbing when he told people the story. “For a while everyone thought it was a joke.”
But it was never a joke to Jerry Cummings. He knows what happened. And though it remains a mystery, the possibility that he gave a lift to a ghost ranks right with his Packers’ tryout as one of the more exciting milestones in his life.
Muffled Screams
There’s something about an old house that invites rumors of ghosts. For instance, take that unpainted, rundown house in Milwaukee’s Sixth Ward. The neighbors knew it was haunted. The place was said to be one of the oldest in the city. It stood high on the west bank of the river, southeast of the old reservoir. Its second-story windows offered a splendid view of the city—for anyone brave enough to live there—and the house itself, if not elegant, was spacious enough, with a full basement, four rooms on the first floor, two large rooms and two closets on the second, and a garret.
Yet for all the house’s attractions, no one ever lived there for very long. Year after year, tenants moved in and just as promptly moved out. As a last resort after a Polish family moved out, Herman Hegner, who lived next door and had been put in charge of renting out the place, decided to conduct his own investigation. He watched the house closely on the first night it was vacant. Sure enough, shortly after midnight he saw the room in the southwest corner of the first floor fill with light. Fearing the house had caught fire, Hegner raced next door. The light blinked out just before he got up to the window where it shone through. He groped in his pocket for the key as the light sprang on again, blindingly bright, and then shut off just as suddenly.
Hegner inserted the key into the lock. The old door groaned on its hinges as he pushed it open. He moved stealthily from room to room, peering into dark corners and musty closets. Nothing—he found nothing at all. Although Hegner was perplexed, he was certain he had seen the light and equally certain that no living being was in the house to explain it.
Later, a newly arrived Czech family of five moved into
the house. On their first night they settled down on the first floor. The parents were jolted awake by heavy footsteps from the floor above. A muffled scream trembled in the air, followed by the resounding crash of a heavy body falling to the floor. Though the very walls seemed to vibrate, the children did not awaken.
On the second night, the sequence of events was repeated but with increased violence. At one in the morning the terror-stricken family fled to Hegner’s house to spend the rest of the night. At first light they gathered their meager possessions and left.
As word of the haunted house spread, two recently arrived Englishmen asked Hegner for permission to spend the night in the house to expose the illusion and, if possible, capture the “ghost.” George Heath and Henry Jordan picked up the key on Sunday evening, August 8, 1875. Armed with nothing more than their own courage and a few warm blankets, the pair said they’d report back in the morning. Both men worked at the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad car shop and were considered responsible and trustworthy men.
But early the next morning when Hegner went next door to check on them, he found the front door standing open. Inside, piles of crumbled plaster lay on the floor; the bare walls were streaked with water stains from a leaky roof. Worse still, the kitchen floor was worn through in several places, exposing the square-cut log floor beams. The ladder leading to the garret was laced with cobwebs.
Hegner found a pile of blankets but no Heath or Jordan.
A newspaper reporter who tracked down Heath and obtained his story pieced together what happened that night.
Heath said that he and Jordan had checked all through the house just after sunset to make certain no one was hiding inside. Satisfied the place was empty, the men went back to work at the railroad shop until after ten o’clock. They walked back up the hill to the house and sat around smoking until they got tired and went to sleep.
“I was awakened by Jordan,” Heath told the newsman. “He had heard some noise upstairs. We sat up for a moment and then heard someone walking across the floor.”
Heath said they heard a scuffle, a smothered cry, and then a body hitting the floor.
“I proposed to go upstairs,” Heath recalled. He was just about to relight their candle when a brilliant white light enveloped them.
“For a moment my eyes were dazzled so that I could distinguish nothing. Then Jordan pointed toward the stairway … through the open door. I looked but saw nothing.”
Heath said the light lasted for no more than a minute before going out. He managed to light the candle and glanced at his pocket watch. It was twenty-five minutes past midnight.
“I was not frightened in the least and insisted upon going upstairs,” Heath bragged. “At first Jordan hesitated but when I moved he followed. We searched rooms and closets, but found no trace of anything living or dead.”
The men decided to stay awake. They blew out their candle and sat silently, waiting. Their patience was rewarded. In about fifteen minutes the stealthy footsteps could again be heard from upstairs. Then a brief pause, a muffled cry, a struggle, a fall—and silence. Within what seemed like only seconds, the brilliant light again filled the downstairs room in which the men huddled.
Heath wanted to make another search, but Jordan refused to spend another minute in the house. Heath reluctantly agreed and both men left.
The newsman asked Heath for an explanation. He could give none, but he insisted ghosts had nothing to do with it. But if not ghosts, then what was it?
Mrs. G’s Boardinghouse
Nobody ran a Milwaukee boardinghouse with so much aplomb as Mrs. William Giddings. She filled her south-side home with workers from the local tannery and catered to them with calm efficiency. The two-story frame house, at the corner of Allis and Whitcomb streets in what the city called Allen’s Addition, soon earned a reputation as a haven of solitude where nothing more disturbing than an occasional raised voice occurred.
But that was before one Saturday in August long ago. At nine in the morning, Mr. Giddings was at work at the tannery; his wife and their young housemaid were alone in the kitchen. Mary Spiegel, the daughter of a neighboring Polish family, was a slow-witted child of fourteen whose father brutalized her so severely that she welcomed the opportunity to be “hired out.” Although Mary lived in a constant state of nervous apprehension, Mrs. Giddings treated her with compassion and dignity.
The women were making pies for dinner when suddenly spoons began leaping from their holder and flying in all directions around the room. Only momentarily startled, the older woman continued to work—until a trap door in the kitchen floor began to rise and fall. Mrs. Giddings asked Mary to stand on it. When the youngster was unable to hold down the heaving door, the woman knew some prankster had gotten into the cellar. She lifted the door and descended, but saw no one.
Climbing back into the kitchen, she found everything in commotion. Dishes flew from the china closet and smashed on the floor. An oil lamp soared from its shelf and shattered. Chairs rose to the ceiling, and one broke upon hitting the floor. The stove danced. One of the pies fell from the table, a dish of beans spilled, and eggs whirled out of the pantry that was open to the kitchen. One egg turned a corner to hit Mrs. Giddings where she sat.
Mary, greatly frightened, was sent to get the neighbors, Mrs. Mead and Mrs. Rowland, to come sit with them. As the women approached the Giddingses’ house, a pail of flowers at the door leaped over a wooden fence the height of a man and into the next yard. One of the neighbor women brought it back but again the flower pot flew over the fence.
Once inside, the four women sat in a circle. Mary began peeling potatoes for dinner. As she talked, the knife flew out of her hand, along with the potato from the pan in her lap; both hit Mrs. Rowland. A moment later a dish on the table cracked in two. None of the group was near enough to the table to have reached it. One piece fell to the floor; the other remained on the table. Corn, boiling on the stove, leaped out of its pot.
The resolute Mrs. Giddings tried to keep her composure, but Mrs. Mead lost hers. Visibly upset, she announced she was going home. No sooner had she reached her yard than a heavy stick of wood was hurled over the fence at her. Mary was at the far end of the Giddingses’ yard and the stick would have been too heavy for her to lift.
Pails of water also traveled over the fence and back again, and yet no more than one pail in four was spilled.
Curiosity soon brought throngs of neighbor women to the house, where they remained, riveted by fright. Finally, the bewildered Mrs. Giddings sent Mary to fetch George W. Allen and his brother, Rufus, owners of a nearby tannery, the Wisconsin Leather Company. The men were at their offices and came promptly, bringing with them two doctors, including Nathaniel A. Gray, an eminent Milwaukee obstetrician.
While George Allen tried to calm the women, a stove-lid lifter flew off the wood stove, hurtled ten feet through the air, and struck him on the leg. No one was closer to the stove than he. Then, a pie rose from the table, flew past him, and smashed against the stove. To avoid further bombardments, Allen left the room.
By this time the floor was littered with the debris of broken dishes, splintered wood, shards of glass, and spilled food. Mrs. Giddings asked Mary to sweep, and as she did so, one of the doctors kept a close, scrutinizing eye on her. From where he stood, he had a full view of the pantry and of the servant. As he watched, a small china dish sailed horizontally out of the pantry. He dodged it and it fell to the floor, dumping the playing cards it held but not breaking.
Mary then began to wash the floor, but the pail of soapy water skated to the outer edges of the room into the crowd of frightened onlookers. As Mary got off her knees to chase the pail, she was hit hard on the head by a bowl flying out of the pantry. The men searched the pantry, the kitchen, and the dining room but found no person or thing that might have propelled the objects.
The strange events continued until late afternoon. By that time, reporters from the local press had arrived to interview the men and the women still present.
They questioned each eyewitness independently and were completely satisfied that there had been no collusion. Since the phenomena occurred only in Mary’s presence, there was some speculation that she might have thrown some of the objects. But the careful observations made by the witnesses and the unnatural ballistics of the moving objects exonerated the girl. That the phenomena had indeed occurred without human agency was vouched for by scores of well-regarded eyewitnesses whose testimony was considered unimpeachable.
One reporter also had a talk with Mary. He found her a pitiable creature fearful of staying in the house or of doing most anything. She could not explain the events, but denied all responsibility for them. The reporter also learned that the child would sometimes get up in the night to fight imaginary enemies. Mrs. Spiegel, who was present during the interview and who spoke no English, thought that the note-taking newsman was a law enforcement officer gathering evidence to support a charge of witchcraft against her daughter. She scolded Mary repeatedly, and the girl huddled deep in her chair, trembling and in tears.
By Saturday evening, the Giddingses decided that they could not keep the girl in their boarding house and told her to go home. She begged to stay, and when her pleadings were of no avail she hid herself in the woodshed. Her father found her there, and beat her severely.
Sadly, the next anyone heard of Mary Spiegel was her attempted suicide in the river. An unnamed gentleman rescued her, soaked and shivering, and took her back to the Giddingses’ house. When asked why she had tried to kill herself, she said she was so hounded by everybody that she could no longer endure her life.
Again her former employers sent her back to her parents, and the charitable Mrs. Giddings sent along a dish of food. The next day Mary returned the empty dish. No sooner had she put it on the kitchen table than the teakettle leaped off the stove, hit the floor, and was damaged beyond repair. Giddings, hearing the commotion and fearing further destruction of his property, drove Mary out of the house.
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