Mr. and Mrs. Carlson hurried away from the ghastly site. They chose not to walk past that house again.
Furthermore, a neighbor living across the street was taken aback by the brilliant lights that shone from within the home almost every night.
“It’s not natural,” he told his wife. “There’s something evil inside that house.”
As if to confirm his suspicions, terrible, disheartening cries began to emanate from within the Holmbo residence.
“That does it,” declared the neighbor. “I’m going to fetch the police.”
When officers arrived on the scene, the screams grew louder. The policemen rushed toward the empty house. However, the instant they stepped foot onto the yard, the lights went out and the cries stopped.
A thorough search of the place turned up empty. No one was found inside.
Not surprisingly, the old Holmbo residence remained vacant for several decades. However, in recent years, it has once again become a private residence.
Night Frights
Karen Anderson had a choice to make. She’d earned enough high school credits to graduate a semester early. So now she could either stay home and bring in a little extra income, or she could move to Wausau to live with her father.
It wasn’t a difficult decision.
“You guys got divorced a long time ago,” Karen told her mother. “And that was right for you. But this is a chance for me to get to know my dad. I don’t think I can pass it up.”
Thus, craving an opportunity to bond with a man who was little more than a stranger, Karen moved to the central Wisconsin city in 1982, leaving her mom and her younger sister, Sheryl, behind.
Almost immediately, Karen had second thoughts. Upon entering her father’s house, she felt uneasy, uncomfortable. But she wasn’t certain whether the home itself or her father’s new wife, Stephanie, caused the eerie sensation.
This wasn’t the stereotypical stepmother-stepdaughter resentment, though. As Karen told her sister in a telephone conversation, “She’s into all sorts of weird stuff. I think she’s a witch, Sheryl.”
True enough, the woman openly dabbled in the occult and in dark magic. Conversely, Stephanie was obsessed with religion and with the Bible. She fanatically read the Good Book, maintaining stacks of scribbled notes and messages about it.
Stephanie’s cats also acted in a bizarre fashion. When-ever Karen stood to leave a room, the felines darted out before her, ran directly to the place she was headed and waited, staring at her with their piercing eyes. It was as if the cats somehow knew where Karen was going—as if they could read her mind.
The teenaged girl was overwhelmed with relief when, three weeks into her stay, Sheryl came to visit. The sisters chose to share a double bed in the extra bedroom.
“Is it just me, or do you get a bad vibe in here?” Sheryl asked, as she unpacked her suitcase.
Karen gestured toward the alcove beyond Sheryl’s side of the bed. “There’s a cold spot over there. It’s the only place inside the entire house where Stephanie’s dogs ever go to the bathroom.”
Sheryl frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means I like to stay on this side of the room.”
Later that night, at just before midnight, Karen was shaken awake by her younger sister.
“What’s wrong?” Karen asked, her voice groggy.
“I can’t sleep,” whispered Sheryl. “I keep thinking there’s something behind me in that alcove.”
“It’s just your imagination. Now try to get some rest.”
“If it’s just my imagination, can we switch sides?”
Karen thought for a moment and then decided, “No.” She rolled onto her side, away from her sister, signaling the end of the conversation.
A few hours later, Karen was awakened again. However, this time, it wasn’t her sister that stirred her. She bolted upright in bed, surprised to see Sheryl doing the same.
“What happened?” asked Karen.
“I don’t know,” said Sheryl. “I just woke up.”
“Me too, but why? Did you hear anything?”
“No, it was more like a feeling. A really bad feeling.”
Karen understood exactly what her sister meant. The room seemed clouded by a thick sense of foreboding.
Sleep did not come easily after that.
Unfortunately, the daylight hours brought little comfort for the teens. Sheryl confessed to her older sister that the adults—their father and their stepmother—did not seem to be on their side.
Karen felt the same way.
Each girl was the other’s only ally in the house. They could not discuss their fears with their parents, and the nightly task of sleeping in that room was an even more frightful ordeal.
Three nights later, Karen was again awakened. And again, she sat upright in bed at the same instant Sheryl did. However, this time, the reason was apparent.
As Karen stared into the alcove, horrified, she heard an audible gasp from her sister, followed by a soft whimper. Karen wanted to scream, but she could not find her voice. Instead, she stared silently at the ghastly specter of a man hanging from the ceiling by his necktie!
Almost a week later, Karen received a phone call from Sheryl, who was safely back home with her mother.
“Karen, I need to tell you about the dream I had last night,” Sheryl whispered, almost afraid to speak the words aloud. “I was in that bedroom again, and I walked over to the alcove. I pulled up the carpeting on the floor, and I found a puddle of dried blood.”
Karen paused, and then she said, “It was just a dream,” although it was more for her own sake than for her sister’s.
“Are you going to check?” Sheryl asked. “Under the carpet, I mean.”
“No. I’m never going in that room again.”
Years later, Karen’s father and Stephanie divorced. The house still belongs to Stephanie’s family, but neither Karen nor Sheryl has visited it in more than twenty years.
Something Scary on TV
The Evenson family’s first television was a black and white machine, and it was small—its screen a mere thirteen inches. However, it must have weighed seventy pounds. It picked up exactly three channels, although the reception wasn’t great on any of them. Furthermore, there was no remote control for this ancient electronic device. In order to activate it, one had to stand, walk to it and pull the knob.
The family’s oldest son, Scott, loved that television. For him, Friday night was the best part of every week. That was when his family gathered inside the living room of their small home near Madison, ate pizza and watched whichever channel came in the clearest.
The following years brought new technologies. Soon Scott’s family had a color console TV, and the black and white box was moved into the kitchen. Then, in 1983, when Scott was twelve years old, the television was relegated to the upstairs bedroom he shared with his brother, Max.
Most children Scott’s age would have been thrilled with a TV, and at first Scott was no different. However, all of that changed just a few days after the machine was moved to the second floor. That’s when the haunting began.
It was a typically steamy July night, so Scott had been granted permission to leave a fan running in the bedroom window. It didn’t help; he fell asleep sweating. But strangely, when Scott awoke at 1 a.m., he was chilled to the bone.
The boy crawled out of bed and scurried toward the fan in order to shut it off. But he only made it halfway to the window.
Click!
Scott heard the TV’s knob being pulled. He swung around to scold his brother, but Max was still in bed—asleep. Scott could only watch in terror as the screen came to life, illuminating the room. The TV was on, but no one had touched the controls!
The screen’s black and white static reminded Scott of Pol
tergeist, one of his family’s favorite horror films. The mental connection served only to heighten his fright.
Forgetting his younger brother, Scott darted into the hall and down the stairs. He burst into his parents’ room and dove onto their bed. “Mom, Dad, wake up!”
“What is it, honey?” his mother asked sleepily, as she rolled onto her side.
Scott tried to speak, but all he could do was mutter, “Upstairs... ghost.”
The boy’s parents calmed Scott and waited as he explained what had happened. They led him back to his room, where the fan was still running but the TV was off (and Max was sound asleep).
“See? It was just a bad dream,” his mother whispered. “Everything is as normal as can be.”
His father walked over to the fan and unplugged it. “There you go, buddy. Now hop into bed. You’ll be asleep in a snap.”
By the time his parents left the bedroom, Scott was convinced that nothing extraordinary had happened. And if that had been the end of the tale, he probably would have lived the remainder of his life believing it. However...
Click!
The TV was on again.
It was the fourth night this week that the knob had been pulled by an invisible force. But this time was no less scary than the first.
Scott and Max screamed. Then, once again, they raced to their parents’ bed.
Mom and Dad were not pleased to see them.
“That’s it!” exclaimed Mr. Evenson. “I’ve had enough of this ghost business. Tomorrow, I’m taking that TV to the secondhand store.”
True to his word, Scott’s father removed the television from the house early the next morning. And with the machine gone, the Evenson brothers’ ghostly encounters came to an abrupt end.
The Woman in White
Anna Hurley knew the history of her family’s house. The fifteen-year-old girl had watched it being built on an old hay field outside the central Wisconsin town of Stratford. So why, then, did she see what she had seen?
It was the spring of 2000, and her brothers were gone to college. The house was empty except for her mother and herself, but one of the vacant bedrooms troubled the girl. Located at the base of an open stairway, the room often drew the attention of Anna’s dog. The tiny pooch could be seen sitting before the door, barking into the room. Plus, the walls made strange noises, as if they were bending.
Anna could not walk past the mysterious bedroom without getting a paranoid feeling, so she made a habit of keeping the door to the room closed.
It did little good. Every day, when she returned home from school, Anna would find the door open again.
After one particularly grueling day of learning, the teenager took a nap on the living room couch.
Thump!
The noise awakened Anna. She lifted her head.
“Mom?”
The girl’s mother was not the source of the sound. Instead, Anna’s eyes widened as she spied the figure of a young woman in a flowing, white, misty dress. She was hovering before the bedroom door!
The specter turned and looked at the girl, and then suddenly disappeared. As Anna later described the moment, it was as if the spirit had been sucked into the bedroom.
Petrified, Anna refused to believe what she had seen. She chose not to tell a soul.
Within months, for unrelated reasons, Anna’s mother decided to move the two of them into town. However, as they packed and made preparations to sell the house, the teenaged girl’s unease grew. She sensed that the ghost was irritated, even annoyed, that they were leaving.
Nothing came of those feelings, though, until Anna’s final night in that house. It was October, and the place was empty. Anna had been granted permission to have two friends spend the night, camping in sleeping bags on the living room floor.
As far as Anna knew, the night was otherwise un-remarkable. But the next morning, one of her friends told quite a tale.
“Anna, something weird happened last night.”
The girl gave her friend a puzzled look. “Really? What do you mean?”
“I don’t know how to say this without sounding crazy,” the friend explained. “But, well, never mind.”
“Tell me,” pleaded Anna, suspecting that she knew what her friend was unwilling to share.
“Well, something woke me up last night. A noise. And I think I saw a ghost: a woman dressed in white.”
Anna’s friend also went on to say that the specter had walked upstairs and disappeared in a fashion similar to what Anna witnessed seven months earlier.
The identical report was enough to convince Anna that she had seen an apparition. So at last she revealed her own experience to her two friends.
In the years since the Hurleys moved out, no ghostly encounters have been reported. But for Anna, the spirit that visited her old house opened the girl’s mind to a belief in the paranormal.
The Sickly Specter
Being married to the president of Saint John’s Military Academy certainly has its privileges, thought Mrs. Sidney Thomas Smythe, as she strolled down a long corridor on her way to the large entrance hall. After all, look at this glorious house.
She was referring to the mansion in which she lived, Rosslynne Manse. Built by her husband on the academy grounds near the town of Delafield, the place had been modeled after the Scottish home of Dr. Smythe’s uncle. Thus, it was given a Scottish name. The incomparable structure was distinguished by its towering stone fireplace and its spacious porches.
The year was 1905. Mrs. Smythe was alone in the house—or so she thought. Daydreaming about her beloved Rosslynne Manse, she stepped into the vast entrance hall and saw a frightful sight: Sitting in a rocking chair beside a large window was a pale—albeit well-dressed—man.
Fearing that an intruder had broken into her home, Mrs. Smythe let out a startled scream and called for help. But suddenly, the sickly man disappeared before her eyes!
Later she told her husband, “It must have been a ghost, but he appeared to be in the final stages of some horrible, fatal disease.”
Never one to doubt his wife’s judgment, Dr. Smythe nodded. “Rosslynne Manse wasn’t the first home built on this property. We’ll find an explanation about this strange phenomenon.”
Their quest for knowledge led them to interview one of the property’s old gardeners.
“The Ashby family used to live here,” said the gardener. “They had a son-in-law who died of tuberculosis. He was a fine young gentleman and a snappy dresser. But by the end, when the disease took him, he looked pretty bad off.”
Mrs. Smythe gasped. “That’s exactly whom I saw!”
More than a decade later, the Smythes’ twenty-year-old son, Charles, had his own run-in with the apparition. It was in the same room, in nearly the same place. This time, the ghost was standing, his hands clasped behind his back. The family dog, who had been walking beside Charles, cowered in terror. But within moments, the spirit had vanished.
Rosslynne Manse burned to the ground in a 1981 fire-training exercise, and the land has since become open grounds for the military academy. However, some believe that, while the building is gone, the spirit remains.
A Spirit Scorned
Katelyn Moe was as excited as any freshman, living away from her Eau Claire family for the first time in her life.
“I can’t believe I’m here,” she whispered to herself as she wandered the grounds of Northland College.
Renowned for its environmental liberal arts program, the school had a small-town appeal to it. Plus, its setting, as much as anything else, had drawn Katelyn there. Located in Ashland, in northwestern Wisconsin, the college was within view of Lake Superior. Its dormitories, halls and other buildings were spread out among winding trails and stands of trees that provided a unique “north woods” flair.
Strolling past
Dexter Library, Katelyn encountered a familiar face: Sarah Dehan, an old softball teammate who was two years her senior.
“Where are you living?” Sarah asked, following a few minutes of small talk.
“Over in Memorial Hall,” said Katelyn.
“Whoa,” whistled Sarah. “Have you heard any of the ghost stories?”
Katelyn’s mouth dropped open. “No, and I don’t really think I want to.”
Sarah laughed. “They’re just stories. Apparently, some girl killed herself a while back by jumping down the elevator shaft. Now she haunts the building.”
“Yeah, right,” said Katelyn sarcastically, although she already wished her former teammate hadn’t told her.
Sarah wasn’t finished. “Don’t bring any guys inside either,” the college junior warned. “The ghost doesn’t like them. In fact, some people think she didn’t even kill herself. They think her old boyfriend pushed her.”
Having already heard too much, Katelyn ended the conversation as politely as she could, and then she hurried away. She entered her three-story dormitory, desperately trying to control her overactive imagination.
Late that night, Katelyn was awakened by the chime of her computer starting up. She shot out of bed and turned on the lights, but no one else was there. The computer had turned on all by itself!
In case that weren’t enough, the printer also roared to life, duplicating a text document Katelyn had saved onto her desktop.
Much to the dismay of Katelyn (and to her roommate, who arrived a couple of days later) the ghostly incidents began happening on a regular basis. In fact, they occurred so often that Katelyn kept her computer and her printer unplugged whenever she wasn’t using them.
It was a simple solution to the problem, but there was little Katelyn could do when mysterious handprints began appearing in her room.
Thoroughly frightened and unable to switch residence halls, Katelyn did the only thing she could, heeding Sarah’s sage advice not to bring any young men into the building. Eventually, the appearance of handprints subsided.
Ghostly Tales of Wisconsin Page 2