Haunted Wisconsin

by Michael Norman

  Adam Bobel may have approved of the project, as he was a helpful sort of person, both in life and after. A waitress was once asked to retrieve a bottle of wine from the wine cellar. When she got downstairs she found the very bottle she wanted propped on top of the wine rack. Someone was trying to make her life easier, she thought.

  Though much of the original 1881 exterior remains, the hotel has been closed in recent years. With less overnight traffic through the building, Adam and his lady may now have decided to take up residence elsewhere.

  What was known to old-timers as the Harris House Hotel in the town of Brodhead has been around for a century and a half. Through name changes, neglect, closings, disasters, and rebirths, this landmark has been through it all— including the visits of a certain gentle lady ghost.

  A vaporous woman drops in infrequently and instigates unusual activities, according to reports of former owners and managers. She seems to be a protective spirit, interested mostly in seeing that the business continues in operation. The building is no longer used as a hotel, but has housed a popular restaurant and bar in more recent years.

  A former owner claims to have had two encounters with the ghost: on the first occasion she felt someone’s hand touch her shoulder; on the second she followed someone who walked past her down the hallway and into the dining room. But once she got there, there was no sign of anyone present.

  Some believe the ghost might be the daughter of the hotel’s builder, John Young. The young woman was killed in a 1905 fire there. However, other records indicate that while Young’s daughter did indeed die in a fire, it was at her home and not in the hotel.

  Perhaps because it may be the first owner’s daughter, the ghost seems especially attentive to money matters. Once after tallying up the day’s receipts, a manager had taken them to an upstairs office. But as she reached to turn on the lights she saw a woman in a starched, high-collar dress with her hair tied back. She dropped the money and ran. A few minutes later she was returning cautiously to retrieve the cash when she came upon a stranger passed out on the hall floor. She later learned he had broken in sometime earlier with the intention of stealing the day’s earnings but had collapsed unconscious from the effects of a drug overdose. The manager thought the ghostly woman might have been trying to warn her about the robber’s approach.

  Who among us would not welcome a little help with our personal safety— even if offered by a ghost?

  Undoubtedly the largest commercial lodging in Wisconsin with resident ghost stories is the Pfister Hotel, in Milwaukee, known for decades as the eternal tramping ground of its founder, Charles Pfister. By his nightly strolls he means no more than to wish his many guests a pleasant stay.

  This Victorian “Grand Hotel of the West,” as the hotel was termed when it opened in 1893, was built at a cost of over one million dollars. It was described as one of the finest hotels between New York and San Francisco. Electricity, fireproofing, and thermostatic controls for every room were innovations at the time. An extensive remodeling in 1962 saw the addition of a twenty-three-story tower and refurbishment of its rooms.

  Charles Pfister, according to those who have spotted him standing on the hotel’s grand staircase, is an older, portly gentleman whose ethereal poses seem to mirror his posture in his formal lobby portrait. Pfister has also been seen in the “minstrel’s gallery” of the hotel ballroom and checking out hotel cleaning supplies in a ninth-floor storage room.

  Wayfaring Strangers

  At early Wisconsin inns, the very transience of nameless lodgers invited speculation about their purposes. The weary traveler might have emerged on horseback from the woodland trail to see the welcoming glow of oil lamps through curtained windows. Or perhaps he peered through the stagecoach window as the brace of winded horses pulled up under a weathered signboard rocking in the wind on a gusty night. Just through the heavy oaken door, the tired, dusty stranger would find welcome respite, even if the bed were made of straw and thrown upon the cold floor, and the food a nearly inedible gruel made palatable by liberal shots of cheap liquor.

  Even worse for the unwary visitor who seemed to have money or possessions or both was the threat of sudden, deadly violence by those without a conscience, whose thirst for quick riches meant a swift stiletto between the ribs, a razor-sharp blade across the neck, or a quick bullet in the back of the skull. Those wayside inns provide the stuff of which ghostly legends are made.

  Ethel Van Patten was a child of eight when her parents bought the Evansville House in 1894 and converted it into a boardinghouse. The sixty-year-old former hotel had innumerable rooms, halls, and musty corners where the curious girl reveled in exploring. An old barn, once used as a livery stable, offered a glimpse of pioneer life with its hand-hewn log rafters and windowsills. On the veranda, which stretched halfway around the house, little Ethel would sit for hours listening to the legends and mysteries connected with the aged structure. One particular story came startlingly to life.

  One eccentric boarder, Patrick McGlinn, told Ethel that the Evansville House once served as a stagecoach stop on the road between Madison and Janesville, Beloit, and other points southward. A number of servants were employed to look after the guests, cook their meals, clean their rooms, and generally attend to the numerous chores connected with the bustling hostelry.

  A certain young and willing chambermaid had the misfortune of falling in love with a married salesman who made the Evansville House a frequent stop on his travels. The liaison continued for several months until the salesman, despairing of his inability to marry his lover and not wanting her to marry another, strangled her. The salesman fled the inn in the middle of the night with the intention to jump aboard a passing freight train. Instead, he slipped and was crushed under the train wheels.

  Little Ethel Van Patten was thrilled by the tale. Less enthralled were her parents, who, as good, skeptical Yankees, placed little credence in McGlinn’s narrative and were upset at the man’s earthy language and rough ways. He was not, they thought, the best influence on their daughter. But Ethel didn’t care. Mr. McGlinn told terribly exciting stories filled with history and romance and danger.

  Even Patrick McGlinn may not have known the full impact of his story, for on one cold winter’s night the long-dead salesman seemed to be on the prowl once again.

  Mr. and Mrs. Van Patten heard footfalls descend a staircase near their bedroom. It sounded like a man wearing heavy boots walking down the steps. Night after wintry night the scenario repeated itself—footsteps echoing through the quiet halls at about three o’clock in the morning.

  At first the family suspected McGlinn, figuring he was adding a bit of mischief to his morbid tale. Further, he claimed to be a former sea captain and habitually wore heavy brogans.

  Van Patten confronted McGlinn, but, as might be expected, the merry Scotsman in his rich burr and heady vocabulary steadfastly denied being the culprit.

  On one particular winter’s night, the couple settled down in bed and listened for their mysterious intruder, determined that on this occasion they would catch McGlinn in the act and put an end to this nonsense once and for all. Right on schedule they heard the footfalls … down the staircase … into an office on the first floor … and finally the front door opened and slammed shut.

  Mr. Van Patten raced down the stairs. The outer door was bolted from the inside! He unhitched the latch and looked out. A fresh snowfall revealed no footprints. It was undeniable: no one had passed through the front door, at least physically, despite what the Van Pattens seemed to have heard.

  Undeterred, Mr. Van Patten scurried back upstairs and threw open the door to McGlinn’s room. In the bed near the wall he lay, sleeping quite soundly in his nightshirt and snoring away.

  And what’s more, the mysterious intruder was never heard from again. Future owners of the place were reportedly never troubled by the phantom … or at least never admitted that they were. Was it only Patrick McGlinn adding a bit of playful sound effects to his tale? Perhaps.


  The Evansville House was operated as the East Side Inn for many years before being torn down. Today in its place on East Main Street is a gas and convenience store.

  Much to the chagrin of one Simon Brechler *, a badly weathered, rundown inn was the only available lodging in the small Wisconsin frontier village he rode into that night. He had spent weeks scouting for a farmstead, and now that he had found the site, he decided to spend the night in a nearby settlement. Simon’s family awaited word from him in New York State. All that could be said in favor of the old inn is that it provided a roof over his head, a cheap meal, and a dry room. Perhaps tomorrow he would find something better.

  He went directly to his room. The furnishings were sparse—a bed and washstand—but there was one object that seemed terribly out of place in the rundown hostel: against a wall stood an immense, ancient bookcase, its shelves sagging under the weight of scores of volumes covered in dust.

  Yet Brechler hardly noticed; he fell asleep before the sun had slipped below the horizon. The night was not half gone when he awoke with a start, sensing movement in the corner of the dark room. He lay perfectly still, unsure if his inner alarm had not been triggered by a dream. He rolled over in bed and looked around the room. The moonlight filtering in through the dusty, uncurtained window fell upon a cloaked figure huddled near the bookcase. Silently and methodically she—for the slight figure made him quite sure it was female— lifted books from the case and placed them in piles on the floor. When the last shelf had been emptied, she reversed the process until once again the bookcase was full. With that, the figure faded away.

  To say Simon Brechler was astonished, puzzled, and distressed by his night caller would be quite an understatement. He did not have a clue as to the figure’s identity, nor what she may have been searching for. He was too tired to think much more about it. Perhaps in the morning a few discreet questions asked of the locals might solve the mystery.

  After breakfast, he found an old man willing to talk about the specter. Yes, there was such a thing in the hotel, the codger admitted.

  “But don’t you never speak to it!” he warned. “I say that in earnest, sir. It’s plain awful what’s happened to them who did.”

  Really not wanting to chance another night in the hotel, Brechler looked for other lodgings but could find none. At sundown he reluctantly retreated to his room. Sleep came in fits and starts. Then, as on the previous night, he heard a faint rustling near the bookcase. She was back—hunched over the bookcase, performing the same bizarre ritual as the night before.

  “What in heaven’s name do you want?” Brechler cried out. “Who are you? Why do you so disturb my sleep?”

  The dark-robed figure stopped what she was doing and turned slowly toward the bed. She glided silently across the room toward him. Brechler drew back in horror. He was looking not into the face of a woman but rather the hollow eyes and gaping mouth of a skull. The form bent slowly over the cowering homesteader and raised its bony hands. The wraith’s thumbs came down upon his forehead and pushed him deep into the mattress and into unconsciousness.

  How long he remained senseless he did not know. When at last he was able to look around, it was daylight and the apparition was gone. His head burned and ached as if a flaming log had been dropped on his skull.

  He struggled out of bed and looked into the mirror above the washstand. Two black thumbprints were burned into his forehead. Simon Brechler carried those scars until the day he died.

  The Wisconsin Dells is the most popular vacation destination in Wisconsin. Tens of thousands of tourists flock each year to this spectacular terrain of towering bluffs and deep ravines sculpted over the millennia by the Wisconsin River. The twenty-first-century visitor enjoys water parks and ski shows, boat rides and musical performances, dozens of campgrounds, novelty shops by the score, faux Indian pageants, and other man-made attractions too numerous to mention.

  Little does the modern visitor imagine, however, the eerie entertainment once provided at the Dell House, a riverside inn built in 1837 alongside a sandy beach and near a fresh water spring not far from the Narrows.

  A man named Allen built the inn with an eye toward providing the river men with a bit of entertainment, 1800s style. The temptations were those of the flesh—bad whiskey, crooked gambling, bawdy songs, and frontier ladies more than willing to exchange what was left of their virtue for a few dollars. More often than not, violence capped the evening’s “festivities.” The churning, muddy waters of the Wisconsin River claimed the earthly remains of not a few luckless revelers.

  The days when river traffic was king soon passed and the Dell House lost its reason for being. By the turn of the twentieth century, the hostelry was abandoned, its empty hulk mute testimony to an earlier, vanished—but not mourned—way of life. Only a few adventurous tourists and locals camped in the shaded glen where the hotel once stood.

  By daylight the old place had what an early resident of the Dells described as “an indescribable charm of romantic interest.”

  But nightfall brought stories of unquiet happenings within the decaying hulk. Some campers swore that cursing and drunken laughter and crashing crockery joined the sighting of vague, fleeting figures in the moonlight. The violent and bloody history of the inn replayed in startling, supernatural fashion.

  The legacy of the Dell House ended for good late one night in 1910 when what was left of the place burned to the ground. A towering brick chimney above a fireplace as tall as a man remained for many years. In time the unforgiving forest claimed it as well.

  Peace officers were few and far between on the early Wisconsin frontier. The only law was that which pioneers established among themselves. Justice was usually meted out swiftly to those transgressors unfortunate enough to be captured.

  So it was that the old Ferry House Inn at Merrimac came to be associated with a “galloping ghost” during the nineteenth century. The grim visage raced along the road near the inn astride a coal-black stallion.

  Those who claimed to have seen the mounted, spectral horseman believe he was in some way connected to a bloody murder at the inn, though official records fail to show such an event. Victim or perpetrator—we will never know which.

  Mrs. Courtney’s Return

  Mr. and Mrs. William Courtney had never gotten along. Mrs. Courtney had left her moody Irish-Canadian husband at least once, but she always returned to him and their small farm in Brooks’ Corners, a section of Vinland about seven miles north of Oshkosh.

  The uneasy truce between the bickering pair ended on November 4, 1873, when Mrs. Courtney died of natural causes. Not long after William Courtney discovered his wife’s body in her bedroom, he moved out of the house and into the home of his mother-in-law about a mile away. He returned only to plant and harvest crops and do the farm chores.

  William continued to employ a girl they had hired to keep up with the housework, but she soon decided a new job elsewhere would be better for her health. That’s because several days after Mrs. Courtney’s funeral, the girl heard sharp raps on the windowpanes in a room adjoining the bedroom where her mistress had died. The girl lifted a corner of the window curtain and peered out. Although she could see no one, the girl was badly shaken and fled to a neighbor’s house. She quit that same day.

  Hiram Mericle and his family lived on an adjoining farm only a few hundred feet from the Courtney’s. Shortly after the hired girl quit, Hiram noticed a light burning in the Courtney house. He knew the place was empty, so with two of his older children he walked over to investigate. From the front yard, they could see that the light was in Mrs. Courtney’s old bedroom. As they got closer, the light dimmed and finally went out. Mericle and his children went home quite puzzled. But then before dawn the next morning as Mericle prepared for his morning farm chores, he saw the light again shining from next door as brightly as before.

  Other neighbors soon noticed lights in the Courtney house. When several of the neighbors investigated, they claimed to have seen
a shadowy form pass in front of the light. “Look, it’s Mrs. Courtney!” one of them screamed.

  From then on everyone in Brooks’ Corners said Mrs. Courtney haunted her old house. Lights of varying shapes and forms continued to appear regularly. Sometimes they were circles about six or seven inches in diameter, with smaller lights circling the larger ones. At other times, the lights were ovular in shape. Unnervingly, the light most frequently seen was a flame with clearly defined edges, surrounded by inky darkness.

  The light came from all parts of the main house as well as the one-story rear addition that housed the kitchen.

  On November 20, 1873, the Oshkosh Weekly Times dispatched a reporter to check out the rapidly spreading ghost story.

  The reporter reached the house of one Jacob Whitacre by nightfall, about half a mile from Courtney’s. The newspaperman dined with the Whitacres and listened to their stories; each family member had seen the lights at one time or another. The Whitacres seemed to him to be intelligent, straightforward people who had seen something for which they had no explanation.

  After supper, Jacob Whitacre led his guest down the road to the mysterious house. There a group of about a hundred men and boys had already gathered in the late-autumn snow, stamping their feet to keep warm and comparing notes on what each claimed to have seen. A bright light suddenly blazed in one of the windows and just as quickly vanished, again plunging the house into darkness. Gusts of wind churned the loose snow and finally the reporter grew cold and disappointed at not witnessing further manifestations. He and Whitacre walked over to the Mericles’ farm to warm up. They returned a few hours later, arriving in time to see a series of bright lights in the house exploding like, as the reporter termed it, flashes of lightning.

  On November 21 and 22, large crowds again converged on the haunted house but no lights appeared. The Oshkosh newsman speculated that since a family was planning to move into the house no more lights of a ghostly nature would be seen. He didn’t explain how he had arrived at this conclusion.