Haunted Heartland

by Michael Norman

  Shortly after three o’clock, the rain started coming down heavily. Bob had no choice. He started up the staircase, then stopped.

  “I’m coming up to close the windows,” he shouted, hoping with all his being that nothing answered him back. Farther up the stairs, Bob again paused. “I’m going to shut the kitchen windows first,” he called out.

  If something was around, he did not want to take the chance of surprising it. He hesitated a moment, reflecting on the five years he and Ginny had spent in their Shorewood apartment.

  Up until that afternoon, the Lamberts had lived in relative peace with their upstairs “ghost” as if it was another member of the family. But the noises only occurred when no one was home in the upstairs apartment.

  The tenants had keys to each other’s apartments in case of an emergency. At first, Bob or Ginny would climb the stairs each time the footsteps started in order to check on their source. But the footsteps always stopped before either of them reached the apartment.

  The ghost made but one appearance over the years.

  Dottie Rosmund, the upstairs renter at the time, was taking a bath. Her husband was out on business for the evening. Suddenly, the air chilled. From the bathroom door, a light, gray mist hovered in the air, the vague outline of a man billowing upward from the cloud. He was staring straight toward Dottie. She watched stricken as the mist evaporated. The Rosmunds soon moved away.

  Bob Lambert later discussed the peculiar episodes in the apartment with the woman who owned the building. She told him that one of her sons, who had been raised in that house, was sickly as a child and adult and had been confined for most of his life to a bedroom on the second floor. He died as a young man shortly after his mother moved to a new home. She told Bob that it might be her son’s ghost who was prowling the second-floor apartment.

  Bob flipped on the apartment lights as the storm built outside. But a few seconds later they dimmed and went off. His flashlight was downstairs and he had no idea where the upstairs tenants kept their flashlights or candles. He would have to make do. Although it was only midafternoon, the dark sky had turned the apartment into layers of deep shadows.

  He closed the kitchen windows and started down the long, narrow hallway toward the bathroom. He noticed something palpable in the air, something more than the watery humidity of a typical late, August afternoon. It was a sense of being followed, of knowing that he was not really alone.

  The bathroom door was closed; the window inside was probably open. He hesitated. A little voice inside him—and he was never quite sure where it came from—told him not to open that door. A sense of imminent danger swept over him. The tiny hairs stood up on the back of his neck. He could feel the sweat starting to roll down his chest.

  He took his hand from the door and carefully backed away. Then, as quickly as he could, he closed the bedroom and living room windows and raced for the staircase. As he passed the hallway, he looked toward the bathroom. Now the door stood wide open. It had been firmly closed a minute before. Had the landlady’s son returned?

  Bob Lambert did not wait around to find out. He never wanted to visit that apartment again.

  Spirit of Rosslynne Manse

  Delafield

  On the sprawling campus of St. John’s Military Academy outside of Delafield, Wisconsin, more than a century ago, a silver shovel turned the first piece of earth for the fourteen-room building that would house the school’s president, Dr. Sidney Thomas Smythe, and his family. Rosslynne Manse drew its name from the old Scottish term for a clergyman’s home. The house was planned around a massive stone fireplace that Dr. Smythe had seen as a child in his uncle’s Scottish home.

  After it was built, broad, inviting porches stretched across the front and rear portions of the house, the latter enclosed by pillars wedged atop hand-hewn stone blocks. The Smythe family lived on the first two floors, reserving the large room on the third floor as a sort of clubroom for senior cadets who frequented the house in great numbers. Dr. Smythe insisted on knowing each student personally, and as many as fifteen to thirty cadets dined at the house weekly.

  Dr. Smythe was so devoted to the school and its students that he placed a large, leather armchair in front of the huge picture window overlooking the academy grounds so that he could keep an eye on “his” campus.

  Although the school sought to shape the strong, moral characters of its young men, the house itself was the site of strange episodes that defied even the president’s most rational explanation.

  Mrs. Sidney Smythe was sewing in the upstairs hallway on a November evening in 1905. Her two small children, Betty and Charles, were fast asleep. A grandfather clock near the stairway to the second floor chimed eight o’clock, reminding Mrs. Smythe that her husband would soon be coming home and would expect a light meal. She put down her sewing materials, descended the stairs, and started toward the kitchen.

  The house had a rather broad entrance hall that extended directly into a living room with two large windows, one facing east, the other south. A rocking chair was situated so that it commanded a view out the south window.

  As Mrs. Smythe walked toward the living room, her gaze shifted toward the rocking chair. She was shocked to notice a man, well dressed but quite pale and sickly, sitting in it. Mrs. Smythe backed up a step or two, bumping into the clock. As she reached out to steady herself, she looked back into the living room. The man had vanished.

  The next morning Mrs. Smythe told her family about the incident. Even then she coolly took it all in stride, describing the man’s appearance, and disappearance, as if the specter had been an old family friend stopping off for a visit.

  The Smythes knew that their home was not the first house built on that particular parcel of land. A family named Ashby had owned a house there some time before, but the Smythes did not know anything about the family or what had become of them. Now they wanted to find out, sensing a possible solution to the mystery of the man in the chair.

  An answer came the following summer. An elderly gardener, who worked for the Smythes, had also known the Ashbys. One day while he was planting shrubs near the porch, Mrs. Smythe happened to ask him about the Ashbys. The gardener told her a few stories about the family, including the fact that their son-in-law had died of tuberculosis. Mrs. Smythe pressed the gardener for details of the dead man’s appearance—they matched in precise detail the figure she had seen in the rocking chair.

  Twelve years later, Charles Smythe, by that time twenty years old, also encountered the Ashby’s ghostly son-in-law. The rest of the family was attending a function at the school one evening, leaving Charles alone in the house. When they returned, Mrs. Smythe noticed Charles seated in the living room. He did not look well.

  At his mother’s urging, he recounted what had happened to him earlier that night. He had been upstairs reading when he decided to go downstairs. His dog, Jack, led the way. When he reached the lower landing, he looked toward the window, and there he saw the same man whom his mother had seen. This time he was standing with his feet apart, hands behind his back, facing the window. His face was partially obscured.

  Jack the dog marched to the center of the room and uttered a nasty growl. Charles described it as partly a choked snarl, and partly a moan, as if the animal was in terror. He was crouched down, ears laid back, teeth bared, and was staring at the figure by the window.

  Charles glanced down for a second toward the dog, but when he looked up, the figure was gone. He searched all around, as the dog tried vainly to pick up a scent; there did not seem to be one.

  Betty Smythe, who was upstairs as her brother told their mother about the bizarre event, had noticed the dog sniffing around, going from room to room, whining. He seemed to be searching for something.

  Neither Mrs. Smythe, nor her son Charles, sought an explanation for the phenomena they witnessed. And to this day no one knows why the long-gone Ashby’s son-in-law, if that is indeed who it was, found it necessary to haunt his former home. There were no other ghos
t sightings ever reported there.

  In 1981 Rosslynne Manse was burned to the ground in a training exercise by the local fire department. Uninhabitable after years of neglect, and too costly to renovate, Rosslynne Manse became a mere memory for the thousands of young men who passed through the gates of St. John’s Military Academy. But for others who knew of the peculiar ghost story connected to it, Rosslynne Manse lives on.

  Mrs. Pickman Goes Too Far

  Milwaukee

  On a cold evening at midnight in early December 1913, Max Kubis could not sleep. It was not just the relentless wind slamming against the house, pushing the falling snow into ever deeper drifts, that kept him awake. From somewhere below his second-story bedroom, a faint scraping noise was keeping him awake.

  It seemed at first nothing out of the ordinary—perhaps one of the family’s numerous cats. The house was locked tight against the Milwaukee winter, after all, and animals become bored during the long months indoors just as their masters do. A frolic late at night was not unusual for the Kubis cats—yet the rhythmic sounds of this disturbance puzzled Max. Felines are sporadic creatures, their activity coming in sudden bursts followed by splendid lethargy. The noises that reached Max’s ears seemed human, like someone moving about in the darkness, slippered feet sliding across the oak floors.

  Max carefully lifted the blankets and eased out of bed. His wife, Julia, slumbered peacefully over on her side of the four-poster. His feet found the carpet slippers. He threw a robe around his shoulders as the mantel clock downstairs completed its midnight tolling.

  His stealth was not necessary. At the instant his hand found the bedroom door, a vicious pounding at the front door roused the entire household. Julia sat up in bed, eyes wide and questioning. The couple’s daughters, Helen and Armilla, called out from their bedroom.

  Before Max could answer the midnight commotion, however, the front door crashed open and he heard somebody tromp down the hallway and into the kitchen.

  By this time, the fearful family found themselves huddled in the upstairs hall, staring down the darkened staircase toward the unseen caller.

  “Who’s there? What do you want?” Max cried out, his strong voice betraying only the slightest quiver.

  After a few seconds of silence, the family moved toward the staircase, flipped on the lights, and made their way down the steps. The little troupe fruitlessly searched high and low. The front door was closed and locked as it had been when they all went to bed.

  The Kubis family knew very little about their new house, except that it had been, until her recent death, the lifelong home of Mrs. Alex Pickman. The family had only recently moved back to Wisconsin after a brief residency in Washington State.

  Some weeks after the midnight disturbance, on a night when the thermometer hovered well below the freezing mark, Mrs. Kubis climbed out of bed in the early predawn hours to add wood to a bedroom stove. She was halfway across the floor when the distinct image of an elderly woman materialized a few feet away from her. Her hands were held out toward the warmth of the blaze as if trying to ward off the chill.

  Could this old woman and the nocturnal prowler be one and the same, perhaps old Mrs. Pickman herself? When Mrs. Kubis described the apparition to a neighbor, she said it matched the former owner, even down to the dowdy housedress the vaporous figure had worn. Furthermore, Mrs. Pickman had told her husband and relatives that she intended to return to her Milwaukee home as a ghost. It seems she may have kept her promise.

  Over the following weeks, in the hour between midnight and 1:00 a.m., there were repeat performances of the door opening and closing, footsteps pacing about, and—most disconcerting of all—heavy, labored breathing. That settled it, the neighbors told Mrs. Kubis: Mrs. Pickman had severe asthma.

  One night, Mrs. Pickman went too far with the Kubis family. Helen and Armilla were fast asleep when they were jarred awake by the heavy thud of a falling body hitting their bed and then trying to crawl under the sheets. The girls fled screaming into their parents’ room, quite convinced that the old lady had jumped into bed with them.

  That was enough. The following morning, Max Kubis packed up his family and belongings and moved. In their rush to leave, however, the family left behind their mantel clock. When Julia Kubis returned for it the next day, she found it had stopped—at midnight.

  Mr. Sherman Pays a Visit

  Plover

  Tim and Louise Mulderink always dreamed of owning a restaurant. So it was no surprise when they decided in the early 1980s to buy a historic, 125-year-old house in Plover, Wisconsin, to remodel into a fine dining establishment.

  Their task was made all the more challenging because they discovered that not all the deceased owners and residents of the attractive, two-story clapboard dwelling had moved out. As the conversion got underway, someone they could not see opened the doors for them or knocked glasses off the new bar. It might have been someone else who tromped about the upstairs rooms and turned lights on and off.

  At first, Tim and Louise were so busy remodeling that they did not really notice the peculiarities. They put in new wiring and plumbing, installed a new roof, and insulated the walls. Tim Mulderink’s background in food management and catering was key in the planning, including the conversion of the former garage into a modern, commercial kitchen. Louise, a vivacious, willowy blonde, supervised the interior design of the house-turned-restaurant. The main color scheme of petal pink and burgundy created an elegant ambiance for fine dining.

  The Mulderinks named their restaurant the Sherman House to identify it with the famous Sherman House restaurant in Chicago, the couple’s hometown. They also wanted to honor Eugene A. Sherman, the most historically significant of the home’s previous residents. Eugene Sherman had operated a sawmill and general store in Plover, moving into the house in 1891. Now, nearly a century later, the Sherman House Restaurant was ready for its first guests. The successful grand opening in April pleased Tim and Louise.

  Not long afterward, however, the couple found that a crowded dining room would not be their only challenge in what became a rash of exploding drink glasses.

  In the first incident, Louise Mulderink was standing behind the polished bar facing a glass-shelved cabinet when one of the drink glasses inside exploded.

  “It simply shattered,” said Tim. “Louise never touched it. Shards of glass everywhere.”

  The drink glass had been in the center of a row of glasses. Tim did not think a vibration of some sort had sent it off the shelf, as nothing else moved.

  Shortly afterward, two women in the bar ordered drinks. No sooner had the bartender set the first drink down than that glass exploded as well, showering one of the women with liquid and pieces of glass. Fortunately, she was not hurt.

  Three witnesses said no one had touched it.

  On a Friday night, one of the kitchen helpers experienced a similar incident. A few minutes after he pulled a rack of glasses out of the dishwasher to air dry, there came a loud popping sound.

  Tim Mulderink had been standing nearby. “What are you doing, breaking glasses?” he asked.

  “I didn’t even touch it,” said Paul, the kitchen dishwasher, holding a stack of plates he had just removed from an automatic dishwasher.

  On another day, during the lunch-hour rush, a fourth glass exploded, throwing shards into the liquor and ice bins.

  “The pieces looked like a windshield somebody took a sledge hammer to,” said Louise.

  By this time, Tim was convinced he had gotten a defective supply of glasses, so he called the company representative, who could not explain to Tim why the glasses had shattered. He said the occasional glass breaks because of a defect, but it is highly improbable for several glasses to do so.

  The restaurant opened during its early years at four thirty on Sundays. On one of those Sunday afternoons Louise’s father, Charles Grachan, was alone in the house answering the telephone and taking dinner reservations. Someone unlocked the front door and opened it.

 
“Come in, Mr. Sherman. I’ll buy you a drink,” Grachan jokingly called out from the next room.

  No one came in.

  Grachan found the door open just wide enough for a person to slip through. It had been locked.

  “Only a few people have a key to that door,” he said. “Whoever opened it had to have a key. I heard it click.”

  But that was not the end of his experiences there. Late one evening, Grachan, Tim, and a friend named Rick were deep in conversation after hours in the bar when the mantel clock on the top shelf behind the bar struck the midnight hour. The men looked up. Each one agreed with the other—it had struck thirteen.

  “I’ve had enough for tonight,” said Grachan. He had bought the clock new the previous April and this was the third time it had struck an extra hour. Grachan could find nothing wrong with it.

  It was all a bit too much for him. “I’m not scared of anything except something I can’t see. I have trouble with that.”

  Corinne, the restaurant’s cleaning lady, had the same opinion. A religious woman who always carried her Bible with her, she reported to work early each morning until the day she quit. “Whatever is in there I can’t work there any more,” she told the Mulderinks.

  Tim shook his head.

  “She was scared out of her wits. She would talk about kitchen pots clanging or shadows in the bar; when she was near the entrances she could see shadows going by.”

  Even though other employees besides Corinne were nervous about working in the house, Tim and Louise Mulderink were not inclined to accept a supernatural basis for the incidents. Tim, especially, looked for logical explanations for everything.

  Meanwhile, Louise experienced an episode that changed her mind. For a time it frightened her so badly that she refused to be at the restaurant by herself.

  That particular night while another dishwasher finished up in the kitchen, Louise emptied the cash register and took the money upstairs to the office to count and then put in the safe. She kept the office door open. Suddenly, it slammed shut. She opened it back up and took a look down the dim hallway. Returning to her desk, she heard footsteps cross the hall and looked up. That is when she noticed the door to the banquet room opposite the office had swung open. It was always kept closed when nothing was scheduled.