The Phantom of the Organ

 Organ music (like Bach's "D-Minor Toccata and Fugue") has been often used for spooky effect in film and on radio. One of the best known examples is the phantom playing the organ in "The Phantom of the Opera."

                  Claude Rains playing the organ in the 1943 version of "The Phantom of the Opera"

Of course, in that story, the phantom is not actually a phantom, but a live person. I've heard, however, of a real organ-playing ghost in an old Minneapolis church.

Joyce Memorial Methodist Church (cum Joyce United Methodist Church) sits on the corner of Fremont Avenue and W. 31st Street in South Minneapolis. Built in 1907, it was named after a Methodist Episcopal bishop who died in 1905. In 2020 the church, no longer used as a place of worship, was designated a local landmark. Designed by architects Harry Downs and Harold Eads, the California Mission Revival style church looks somewhat out of place in this snowy northern city.

                                                        Joyce Memorial Methodist in 1953

Back in the 1980s when the building was still being used as a church, one of my neighbors, a member of the congregation, passed on to me stories that the custodian and members of the church council had told her.

One night as the custodian was alone in the church, working in the basement, he was startled to hear  organ music burst from the sanctuary. He doubted that it could be mischievous kids because the instrument was being played with great skill and confidence.

He couldn't imagine who had gotten into the sanctuary without his knowledge, so he bounded upstairs to find out. The instant his hand touched the door to the sanctuary, the music stopped dead. The empty church was in darkness; all was still. The puzzled custodian flipped on the lights and went to check the organ console. It was closed and locked. No one could have had the time to turn it off, lock it, and leave the sanctuary in the few seconds between when he opened the door and turned on the lights. A few months later, the same thing occurred. The custodian heard similar bold, vigorous organ music pouring from the sanctuary, which was locked, dark, and deserted. 

He wasn't the only one who heard the music. Several parishioners had also reported hearing pipe organ music from the street as they were leaving the church after a meeting at night. The sanctuary was in total darkness at the time.

My neighbor and other older parishioners speculated that the phantom organist was the clergyman the church was named in honor of, Bishop Isaac Wilson Joyce. They said that Joyce was renowned as a superb organist, although music remained an avocation throughout his life. He had the hymn "No, Not One" from the 1896 Methodist hymnal translated into Chinese and Japanese in an apparent evangelical effort.
 

                                                           Isaac Wilson Joyce (1836-1905)

No one knows for sure who the ghost was who played the Joyce Church organ, but the story passed on by the church elders fits as well as any.

Click for the piano version of "No, Not One!":

Piano version, "There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus. No, not one"

Down the Hatch

 Some people are reluctant to tell their personal ghost stories, even upon request. For whatever reason, they will acknowledge that they have a story, but will refuse to tell it. Perhaps they don't want to add to their confusion or fright by trying to articulate what they experienced; perhaps they wish they hadn't experienced it and are trying to block it out of their memory.

In some cases this is probably for the best. One man complained to me about midnight disruptions to his sleep after moving into an 1890's house in my Minneapolis neighborhood. But he refused to give details, explaining that he really didn't want to think about it. Unbeknownst to him, neighbors had told me that several years previous to his moving in, a landlord had settled a rent dispute with a tenant in the house by blasting him with a shotgun, killing him instantly. Eventually, the new owner learned of the incident from the neighbors, who were initially reluctant to spook him with the story. A couple of decades later, I had my own experiences in that house after it was acquired by new owners.

                                            

The reportedly haunted historic Gibbs Farmhouse in St. Paul

Another reluctant storyteller told me his story, even though I never met him in person. One winter afternoon in early 1980s after I had posted a notice in local libraries soliciting ghost stories, my phone rang. The voice on the other end was a man's. He sounded harried and nervous. He gave his name, adding that he was an attorney who worked in downtown Minneapolis. He had seen the notice in the library during a lunchtime visit that day. As it turned out, his main concern was not, he said, telling his story, but getting some relief from the uncanny incidents occurring in the house that he and his family had moved into earlier that year.

 Their house was an old farmhouse in a far western suburb of Minneapolis. The family liked the house and everything about it--with one exception: the hatch covering to the attic kept coming open. It was a standard hatch cover which fitted over an opening just large enough for a person to climb through. During the summer months he and his wife often found the cover slightly off-kilter. They'd put it straight, only to find it askew a day or two later.

When the days grew cooler in the fall, he filled the attic with insulation in preparation for the long Minnesota winter. When the heating season started, he and his wife began to get annoyed, then upset, when they'd repeatedly find the hatch open, allowing heat to escape into the attic. It became routine for them to make sure the hatch cover was shut tight before they went to bed. Despite this precaution, in the morning, they frequently found the cover askew. They never heard a sound; they never actually saw it move. But there it was, partially open, virtually every day.

After going through this futile exercise for several weeks, the man decided to nail the cover shut. That would fix it, once and for all. He attached the cover to the molding with a series of long, sturdy nails and went to bed happily expecting never to have to deal with this cover movement again. Needless to say, he was aghast when he found the hatch in the upper hallway open, just as before.

It was then that he and his wife began to entertain the idea that the cover was being moved by something paranormal. They wondered if their house might be haunted by a ghost that didn't care a tinker's damn about big heating bills.

At this point the man's brother, who lives a great distance from Minnesota and whom he hadn't seen for ten years, phoned. His reason for calling was startling: The brother told them that he felt they had a "presence" in their attic, and that he was going to exorcise it for one year. But despite the brother's assurances, the cover to the attic refused to stay put.

Shortly thereafter, they had an unannounced visitor whose mysterious innuendoes changed their irritation to alarm. One weekend a man appeared at the front door. He appeared to be in his 30s, an unkempt and disheveled character. As they chatted on the front stoop, he told them that he had lived in the house as a child, and as he happened to be in the neighborhood, he decided to stop by. Then, with an insinuating smile, he asked if "it" was still there.

 The sly inquiry upset the attorney, who pretended not to understand. The visitor went on to say that when he lived there, a "thing" inhabiting the attic had caused his family distress. As a child, he was so impressed by this unseen thing's activities that he felt compelled to stop and ask them about it.

The attorney was shaken by the man's story, for it confirmed his suspicions that something paranormal was at work. He resolved that the "thing" had opened the hatch once too often, and that he was going to get rid of it--although he didn't know where to begin.

As if in answer to his need to banish the "thing", he had found my notice in the library. Could I help them? Reluctantly, I told him that I am a story collector, not a ghost buster. Hearing this, the man was crestfallen. He had poured out the story to a stranger who couldn't do anything but listen. He hung up.

I feel bad that I didn't try to help them. If he had called a year later, I would have been able to suggest resources to check out. When people ask me what they can do about their haunting, I tell them that the first thing to try is to talk to the ghost. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. In this case, I suspect it wouldn't because the "thing" had been around for so long and seemed malevolent.

                                                         Who you gonna call?

Firestarter: The Pyromaniac Desk

 One of the most bizarre stories I've heard (although some might deny its ghostly aspects) came from a student while I was teaching at the University of Minnesota, Duluth in the late 'Sixties. This story involving a late Victorian desk is so striking that it was picked up by the Associated Press.

                                                 A late Victorian highboy secretary desk

Adorned with turnings and carvings, the highboy desk had been acquired by the family twenty years before the incidents occurred. The family had bought a house that had originally been built as a church in Cloquet, a town about 20 miles southwest of Duluth, and the desk came with the house.

Seventeen years after the family moved in, this house was gutted by fire. Only the desk and three other pieces of furniture survived the blaze. One of the sons took the desk to his house near Duluth. A year later the son's house went up in flames, but not the desk, which sat unscathed among the ashes.

All was quiet--or should I say "cool"?--for a few years. The man then asked his brother-in-law if he would temporarily take the desk to their house. The brother-in-law agreed, and the desk was moved to the hallway of their house. Six months later, fire broke out in the hallway where the desk stood. As in the other instances, the desk suffered no marks from fire or smoke, even though the room where it stood was completely charred.

That was enough for the man's mother, who pleaded with him to get rid of the desk immediately. She was concerned that three conflagrations around the mysteriously fireproof desk had to be more than mere coincidence.

But the man found it difficult to accept any connection between the fires and the handsome old desk. So when his new house in Duluth was completed (you may recall that his other house had burned to the ground), he decided to take the desk to his new home. Less than a week after he moved in, he was awakened in the dead of night by the smell of smoke. Racing into the kitchen, he encountered a wall of flame engulfing the room only a few feet from the desk. Damage to the kitchen was extensive, but there sat the desk, untouched.

Investigators determined that the fire had been kindled from a short in the wiring. The man and his family, however, thought otherwise. The wiring was brand new, and it had been carefully inspected before they moved in. With growing alarm, they became convinced that the desk, survivor of four major house fires, in some terrible, inscrutable way, had been the incendiary.

They decided to sell the desk, but not surprisingly, no offers were forthcoming. While the idea of a desk starting fires seems preposterous, the track record of this particular piece of furniture did not encourage prospective buyers to test their luck.

At last report, the desk was being stored in a fireproof concrete structure near Duluth. This was over 50 years ago, and I sometimes wonder what eventually happened to the desk. Did it give up its incendiary tendencies? Is it still in storage or was it destroyed? We probably will never know.

This Property For Sale: Ghosts Included

Could you be liable if you publicly say that your house is haunted and have your stories promoted through the media, and then sell your house without telling the buyer about the ghosts? Yes!

                                               The allegedly haunted house in Nyack, NY
                                                   

In the 1991 case of Stambovsky v. Ackley, the New York Supreme Court ruled that a house which the owner had previously publicly advertised as haunted was legally haunted  for the purpose of revoking an agreement with a buyer. Jeffey Stambovsky had put a down payment on the sprawling 1890 house owned by Helen Ackley in Nyack, NY, but wanted to back out when he learned that the seller had repeatedly alleged that the house was haunted. Ackley resisted, the case went to court, and eventually Stambovsky got his money back.

Note that the legal definition of haunted is based on the owner publicly advertising it as such. When the house went up for sale again in 2019, listing agent Nancy Blaker Weber said,“What I’ve heard is that …[Ackley] was drawing attention to the house, trying to create some kind of interesting buzz maybe, and it just backfired.”  In 2019 the residents claimed that they had experienced nothing paranormal, although that hasn't stopped would-be ghost hunters from believing in the haunting.

On the flip side of the coin, some owners don't tell anyone about ghostly goings on--or perhaps aren't sensitive to them--leaving real estate agents wondering why the property doesn't sell. Clark Plummer, sales manager for Calhoun Realty in Uptown Minneapolis during the 1970s, told me about two listings which were obviously priced to sell, yet hadn't attracted an offer, even though many potential buyers had looked at the properties.

The first listing, one half of a 1890's double house in South Minneapolis, had been on the market for months. It was beautifully maintained and had many of the period appointments that make a listing attractive. The owner, who had moved to another city, lowered the price twice, but the house still didn't sell. The listing agent asked Clark to go over and assess the property and pricing.

Clark went over to the listing and entered the vacant house by the front door. Immediately, he noticed a chill in the air. Although it was a sunny spring day, the interior of the house seemed gloomy and uninviting. Clark checked out the downstairs and couldn't see anything that would be a red flag. In fact, it was a very attractive home. However, when he started up the stairs to the second floor, he was overcome by a deep sense of dread. He felt as if some dark energy was at the top, defying him to come up. It was so intense, he turned around, locked up the house, and left. 

When he told the listing agent about his experience, she told him that she had felt the same chill whenever she went into the house. One buyer that she had shown the house to had had the same reaction as Clark: Don't go upstairs! Clark didn't know what to recommend. In those days ghostbusting was not a thing, and the agent was reluctant to say anything to the seller for fear he'd think she was nutty. Eventually, the house sold--for much less than the original listing price--and Clark heard no more about it.

The second listing was not of a house, but of an old rustic resort in Wisconsin. Clark had heard the story from one of the two commercial agents who had listed it. After the resort had sat on the market for nearly a year, the owner invited the agents to the resort to stay overnight and see what might be done to make it more saleable. One late autumn day agents "Smith" and "Jones" did the five-hour drive from Minneapolis to the resort on a lake in north central Wisconsin.

The owner met the agents and showed them around the resort, which was closed for the season. They examined the cabins, lodge, campsites, and docks at the lake. The buildings were over forty years old, but clean and well maintained.  After dinner the owner showed the agents to their rooms that he had prepared for them in the main lodge. Smith and Jones were in adjacent rooms on the hallway that had a shared bathroom at one end and a hallway to the lodge great room at the other. 

It was dark by the time Smith settled down in his room to read by the small heater. All was quiet for a while, but then Smith thought he heard voices and music coming from the great room. He must be imagining it, he thought, and went back to reading. But then, he heard the voices again. Smith put down his book and went to the door and looked out into the hallway. The voices abruptly stopped. He walked down the hall and peered into the great room. Dark, cold, deserted. 

                                             A Wisconsin lodge of similar style and vintage
 As Smith was walking back to his room, Jones came out of his. "So you heard it, too?" asked Jones nervously. Smith replied that no one seemed to be anywhere on the property; the only lights on inside and out were the ones in the hallway and their rooms. Smith invited Jones into his room, and they sat there in their coats, waiting to see if the voices would come back. They did. Again Smith looked into the hallway, and again the voices suddenly went quiet.

Jones grew more and more apprehensive. The resort was in the middle of nowhere, in a deep forest, miles from the nearest town of any size. Outside the window, it was so dark that they couldn't see a thing. On the verge of freaking out, Jones wanted to leave then and there. But it was really too late to do the return trip to Minneapolis, and so the agents sat in Smith's chilly room with the lights on, waiting and listening. It was not long before the sounds of a party in the great room returned. In fact, the noises grew louder and closer. The men began to hear footsteps and muffled voices coming and going in the hallway as well. While the agents stared at the room's door to the hallway where the sounds of partying continued, the hours crawled by.

Finally, at dawn the voices, footsteps and music faded away, and the men settled into their respective rooms to get a few hours' sleep before the drive back to the Cities. Meeting later with the owner for breakfast, the agents said they would send him a report. In the meantime, suggested Smith, the owner might considering spending the night in the closed lodge himself. 

At the time Clark told me this story, the resort hadn't sold, and the owner hadn't slept overnight in the lodge. Perhaps he waited until guests were on site in the summer to have prospective buyers over to look at it.

This is a somewhat unusual story in that it involves the sounds of many people. Some theorize that this type of paranormal phenomenon is not a proper haunting, but a sort of psychic audio tape that replays past events.

As these stories show, a haunting of a property can be a liability. On the other hand, it can be a marketing asset. Want to sleep in a haunted B&B or imbibe at a haunted tavern? An online search will provide plenty of options. Once the story of a ghost on the premises gains traction, it's inevitable that some people will want to jump on the bandwagon, telling of their experiences at the place--whether they've had them or not. 

                  Room 217 in the historic Stanley Hotel (of "The Shining" fame) in Estes Park, CO

I myself would not like to be awakened in the middle of the night by paranormal shenanigans in my hotel room. This in fact happened to me once at a resort in Florida: a bedside light turning off and on, swirling lights by the ceiling. I said--OK, lied--that I was concerned about faulty electrical service, and the hotel staff kindly moved me to another room. I spent the rest of my nights there in peace.

The Old Woman in the Attic

St. Paul's Ramsey Hill consists of hundreds of grand Victorian houses, many of them restored. The house I've heard the most ghost stories about, the Chauncey Griggs House, sits among them on Summit Avenue. Outside the scrutiny of ghostlore fame, other shyer ghosts inhabit Ramsey Hill as well.

The Alexander Ramsey House (1868) in St. Paul of Ramsey Hill fame. Ramsey was the first Territorial Governor. And yes, it allegedly is haunted.

Several blocks from the Griggs house is a large late19th-century house. Its owner, a young professional man, reports that he shares his home with a woman ghost who "lives" on the third floor. When he first moved in, the ghost got his attention by repeatedly turning on the light in the upper stairwell that leads to the attic rooms.

Each evening as dusk came on, John would find the light on. He'd turn it off. The next night, he'd find it on again. He considered this a minor nuisance and thought little of it until he began hearing footsteps on the third floor and occasionally on the stairs after dark. Checks of the third floor revealed no one to be in the house but the owner. The attic remained dusty and vacant.

Far from being frightened, John felt sympathy for his home's unseen resident, whom he deduced by the soft, slow tread to be an elderly woman. He decided that they could share the house amicably, and so it has gone since that time.

Other people haven't been so kindly disposed toward the ghost. Several times when guests were visiting John, her footsteps sounded in the attic. After scaring the wits out of a couple by telling them about his upstairs ghost, John has chosen to edit what he tells visitors with jittery nerves. When someone asks him who is walking around in the attic, John replies, "the old woman upstairs," and no one is the wiser.

John even assists his ghostly housemate. When he comes home after dark, he turns on the stairwell light. Later in the evening, she considerately turns it off.

*             *            *

I know from experience that if you think you have a ghost in your home, it is best to be judicious about telling overnight guests about it. In the 1990's we had an exchange student from Minsk, Belarus, stay at our house for several weeks. Zhenya was staying in the little nursery room at the top of the front staircase.

One day, I remarked casually about our resident ghost, Frank Cartwright. (One of the stories involving Frank: https://ghouliesghosties.blogspot.com/2021/12/ghost-of-winter-solstice-past.html). "A ghost?" replied Zhenya. "What's that?" We tried to explain what a ghost is, but Zhenya remained puzzled. He took out his English-Russian dictionary and looked it up. The blood drained from his face and his eyes grew big. "A Homeless One," he whispered, in complete shock.

Poor Zhenya couldn't sleep for the next week, worrying that Mr. Cartwright was going to appear by his bedside. We tried to reassure him that Frank never went into that room, that his appearances were few and far between, that he was a protective ghost, etc., etc.--all to no avail. 

Eventually, Zhenya got over his fear, and I learned my lesson: Don't mention ghosts to overnight guests. 

    "I ain't afraid of no ghosts!"