Ghostly Tales of Wisconsin

by Ryan Jacobson

  His flashlight illuminated a sign that read “Pioneers Rest Cemetery,” but Eric Little knew the place by another name: Bantley Graveyard. Local legend had it that the place got its nickname because a certain Mr. Bantley killed his wife, his daughter and himself in a nearby barn. As a result, the old cemetery was said to be haunted. Eric had come to this site, near the town of Canton in western Wisconsin, to see for himself.

  “Did you hear about the boy who died here?” he asked his brown-eyed friend Tamara, who was walking rather closely behind him.

  “No” she replied, a slight quiver in her voice.

  Eric smiled. “Two boys were playing tag one night. One of them was running, and a mysterious hand grabbed his ankle, tripping him. The boy died of fright, instantly.”

  “Is that true?” Tamara asked.

  The twenty-five-year-old man stopped, causing his scared companion to bump into him. “I doubt it,” he said with a low chuckle.

  Through the darkness, Eric scanned the cemetery’s headstones, looking for its infamous birdbath. He had been told that the birdbath was used by a demonic cult for satanic sacrifices and that, if he looked closely at it, he would still be able to see some of the bloodstains. However, the only object he found that even resembled a birdbath was a large flower planter.

  “Bummer,” he said at last. “I think this might have been a wasted trip.” But as he turned toward Tamara, he noticed a terrified expression on her face.

  Slowly, the woman lifted her arm and pointed. “Do—do—do you see that?” she stammered.

  Eric followed her gaze and was instantly taken aback.

  Less than twenty yards away, sitting in a tree, was the ghostly specter of a smiling little girl.

  Dancing Shadows

  “This place gives me the creeps,” admitted Brad Zilliox.

  An hour north of Madison, Portage’s Church Road Cemetery was perhaps the scariest looking graveyard he had ever visited. A cluster of headstones, tucked away at the end of a dead-end road, this graveyard was—to use the cliché—in the middle of nowhere.

  “No kidding,” Jenny agreed. “If I were going to make a horror film, this is where I’d set it.”

  “Yeah, this place has a great back story too,” added Brad. “It used to be a graveyard for babies, but those headstones were removed about two hundred years ago. That’s why the ghost of a girl haunts the place. Supposedly, she’s been spotted hanging from one of the trees.”

  Jenny grimaced. “If I see a little girl’s ghost, I am so out of here!”

  Brad nodded toward a few nearby headstones. “Would you settle for dancing shadows?”

  Three black, ghostly shapes bounded gracefully from grave marker to grave marker.

  Together, Brad and Jenny turned and ran.

  Haunted Mausoleum

  Joleen Alleckson gestured toward the large, stone mausoleum, which was flanked on both sides by headstones. “There it is,” she whispered. “That’s the place.”

  She led her best friends, Matt and Lisa, toward the worn, gray structure built within Green Lake’s Dartford Cemetery. Situated in the limits of the eastern Wisconsin town, the graveyard was rumored to be inhabited by at least a few different spirits.

  “This is where that old Indian chief is supposed to haunt, right Joleen?” said Matt, nearly tripping on a grave marker as he maneuvered through darkness.

  His friend nodded. “The story is that Chief Hanageh bet another man he could swim across the Fox River. He didn’t make it.”

  “What about the Civil War soldiers you mentioned?” asked Lisa.

  “A few of them supposedly haunt this graveyard too. If you hear any noises or get the feeling that you’re being followed, it’s probably them.” Joleen paused, then added, “But they aren’t why we’re here.” She stopped about ten yards in front of the mausoleum. “Who wants to go first?”

  “That depends on what we’re doing,” Matt answered.

  Joleen’s eyes brightened. “It’s simple, really. Just go sit on the roof for one minute.”

  “The roof of the mausoleum?” asked Matt. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Joleen echoed.

  Matt confidently swaggered to the mausoleum, pulled himself upward and climbed onto the arched roof. He raised his arms into the air in mock victory, and then he shrugged his shoulders. “Here I am, Jo. What’s the big—”

  Suddenly, Matt tumbled sideways, rolling down the roof and falling harmlessly onto the thick grass beside the cold, stone structure.

  Lisa hurried to her brother’s side. “Are you okay?” She knelt beside him. “What happened?”

  The seventeen-year-old boy, who was six minutes older than his sister, looked at her, bewildered. “I was pushed,” he said, biting his lower lip.

  Behind them, Joleen started to laugh. Lisa and Matt turned in unison to look at her.

  “You knew this was going to happen?” said Matt.

  “What can I say?” admitted Joleen, sheepishly. “The ghost doesn’t like people on top of its tomb.”

  Cries in the Dark

  For the five sixteen- and seventeen-year-old friends, none of the usual hangouts seemed exciting enough on that cold October night, just before Halloween. The town of Strum, which was a half-hour’s drive south of Eau Claire, wasn’t exactly the mecca of night life to begin with, so the teenagers decided to make their own fun.

  “Let’s sneak into Saint Paul’s Cemetery,” one of the youths suggested, and just like that the decision was made.

  They each had hopes of scaring the others with spooky stories and loud noises. However, none of them was ready for what they actually encountered.

  The night started harmlessly enough, as the group of students roamed the graveyard well after dark. Shadows danced about, and the friends tried to convince themselves that they were seeing ghosts. But in their heart of hearts, each believed that it was just the moonlight playing tricks on them.

  However, when they suddenly heard the terrifying sounds of children crying, their blood ran cold. They looked at each other in turn, from person to person, their eyes wide with a mixture of horror and bewilderment.

  One of the boys said, “I think we’d better get out here.”

  An instant later, the piercing shriek of a little girl rang in their ears.

  All of them began to run. They raced out of the cemetery and into the safety of their car, where they promised each other that they would never again venture into Saint Paul’s Cemetery at night.

  Cemetery Stranger

  The story was true. Of that much, Rusty Ness was sure. In the 1840s, a boy had accidentally hung himself in the hayloft of a barn near Waukesha’s Tabernacle Cemetery. Now Rusty wanted to see for himself if the old graveyard atop a hill outside town was actually haunted.

  He ventured to the dark cemetery at sunset, but he was surprised to find that he wasn’t alone. A short, stout man stood beside a tree, apparently deep in thought.

  Rusty was disheartened, believing that the only way he would see a specter was if he were by himself.

  He waited for nearly an hour. But the man wouldn’t budge from his spot.

  Finally, impatience got the better of Rusty. He decided to try the direct approach. He lumbered toward the stranger, who looked his way and smiled.

  Suddenly, a bright flash of light filled the air, blinding Rusty for a moment. Bewildered, he rubbed his eyes and scanned the area for a possible cause. None was present.

  “What in the word was—” Rusty began to say. But when he looked back toward where the man had been standing, no one was there.

  Growls and Whispers

  “Brandon” whispered the mysterious voice.

  “Who’s there?” answered the nervous teen.

  His name was spoken again, as if by the wind.

>   The frightened boy turned and began walking in the other direction, toward the exit of Forest Hill Cemetery. He had entered the Wisconsin Rapids graveyard alone on a dare. It hadn’t seemed too scary at the time, given that the old cemetery was located in town. But now, Brandon Schooner regretted his mistake.

  As he neared the safety of Spring Street, the hushed voice that whispered his name faded away. Its sound was replaced by a second, more terrifying noise—one that caused Brandon to sprint away from Forest Hill Cemetery in a frenzied panic: the sound of growling.

  The next day, Brandon returned to the graveyard with his friends. The peace and tranquility the place seemed to offer was in stark contrast to the previous night’s horrors. The visitors found no evidence of the encounters that Brandon had described, but the teen remained convinced of his brush with the paranormal.

  A Bloody Waste of Time

  “What a dumb idea that was,” Chad Benson muttered after dropping off the last of his passengers.

  He had driven three of his friends more than forty-five miles from Madison, northeast to the Evangelical Church Cemetery in Juneau, with hopes of a ghostly encounter. (A lot of other people claimed to have experienced para-normal phenomena there, including spooky figures that wandered at all hours of the night, eerily cold breezes on hot summer evenings and even an apparition of the Virgin Mary.) Unfortunately, their trip had not been fruitful.

  “It’s all a bunch of lies!” Chad exclaimed, slamming his fist against the steering wheel. But, in truth, he probably wouldn’t feel so upset if his friends hadn’t razzed him the entire drive home.

  “Wow, that was the scariest night of my life,” they had said sarcastically. “When can we do it again?”

  He pulled into his assigned parking spot beside the large apartment complex, locked up his beater of a car and stormed inside. Deciding that nothing could salvage this wasted evening, he sat down in front of the television, alone within his dimly lit apartment.

  Brrrring!

  The telephone startled him. Chad calmed his nerves, checked the caller I.D. and decided that his friends must not be finished heckling him.

  Clicking the telephone on, he said, “Hello?”

  For three long minutes, Chad sat in silence, listening in disbelief to his friends’ accounts. Then, finally, he jumped out of his chair and dashed into the bathroom—where he glimpsed his reflection in the mirror and received the jolt of his life.

  Without any cause, without any explanation, traces of blood were spattered all over his hands and arms—ghostly remnants from a trip to a haunted cemetery.

  Selected Bibliography

  American Hauntings. www.prairieghosts.com. Troy Taylor. 2009.

  Beast of Bray Road, The. Linda S. Godfrey. Prairie Oak Press, Madison, WI. 2003.

  Death in a Prairie House. William R. Drennan. Terrace Books, Madison, WI. 2007.

  Haunted Heartland. Beth Scott and Michael Norman. Barnes & Noble Books, New York. 1985.

  Haunted Wisconsin. Michael Norman and Beth Scott. Trails Books, Black Earth, WI. 2001.

  Shadowlands, The. http://theshadowlands.net. Dave Juliano. 2008.

  True Tales of La Crosse. Douglas Connell (editor). La Crosse History Works, La Crosse, WI. 1994.

  Weird Wisconsin. Linda S. Godfrey, Mark Moran and Richard D. Hendricks. Sterling Publishing, New York. 2005.

  Wisconsin Road Guide to Haunted Locations, The. Chad Lewis and Terry Fisk. Unexplained Research Publishing Company, Eau Claire, WI. 2004.

  About the Author

  Nearly twenty years ago, Ryan Jacobson had a brush with the “unexplainable.” Not long after, his older brother, Jason, introduced Ryan to his first horror novel. It was then that his love of reading ghost stories was born.

  Ryan later turned his passion for books into a career as an author, recently focusing on “safe scary books for kids.” He has written eight children’s books, including a picture book, Joe Lee and the Boo: Who’s Afraid of Monsters?, and a choose-your-path book, Lost in the Wild.

  He also has a diverse selection of upcoming projects, including a comic series called Monster Ninjas®, a young adult novel called Dracula and his follow-up to this book, Ghostly Tales of Michigan.

  Ryan resides in Mora, Minnesota, with his wife, Lora, son, Jonah, and dog, Boo. For more about the author or to read his own ghostly tale, visit www.RyanJacobsonOnline.com.

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