Through a Glass Ornament Darkly

 

 Park Avenue, Minneapolis, 1905, lined with mansions. Photo: Hennepin County Historical Society.

One of my former neighbors used to work for a graphic design firm that occupied a South Minneapolis mansion that had been converted to offices. This house was located less than a mile from the house-cum-office building haunted by the girl in the prom dress. A few people who worked on the third floor remarked that they thought the place was haunted. They told my neighbor that every once in a while they had the uncomfortable feeling that someone was watching them, even though no one else was in the room. This was during daylight hours.

Bill, an employee who frequently had to stay after hours to complete projects, complained of disruptions in the third floor work room. Several times when he was working at his desk, he'd been distracted by what looked like movement reflected in the glass and metal of the office equipment in front of him. A quick glance behind reassured him that he was indeed alone, but he was sure that he'd seen something.

 One night during the Christmas holidays Bill again saw movement behind him reflected in the chrome of a machine. Yet again, no one was there when he turned to look. A little later that evening he was standing by the office Christmas tree when he saw the blurred image of someone moving in back of him reflected in the several dozen glass ball ornaments hanging on the tree. A little unnerved and too distracted to continue working, he decided to make a quick exit. After that incident, Bill tried to complete his work during daylight hours.

This Property Protected by a Watch Ghost

 I've mentioned previously that my family and I lived in a haunted Victorian house in Minneapolis for over four decades. It's a long story, with many episodes. In the early days when we were getting the initial clues that the house was haunted, several others told their stories of spooky experiences at the house.

When we left town, we would ask someone to watch the house. During one longer trip, a friend stayed at the house.  A few days before our return, she called to let us know that someone had broken into the house, but little had been taken.

What apparently happened was this: The burglars had busted through the pine door of the summer kitchen in the back, and had gone directly upstairs to the master bedroom. They had pulled out only one drawer of the dresser, when they suddenly ran down the foyer stairs, unlocked the solid ash front door, and fled--this during broad daylight. They had grabbed the jewel box full of costume jewelry off the dresser, spilling some of its contents as they ran down the stairs. As they fled, they left the front door wide open. There was some cash and a few pieces of gold jewelry on the nightstand in the guest room that were left untouched. 

                                               The thick ash front door with brass doorknob.

What had scared the burglars off? The experience of two of our older daughter's high school friends offered a clue. We had asked the boys to care for the animals while we were away. This is how one of them described what happened:

"We went in to feed the dog. We went upstairs to feed the bird. It was really cold out. We heard the front door open. A blast of cold air came in. We thought you guys had come home early from your trip. We shouted down the staircase [that] it was us. We heard someone slowly walk up the stairs. We waited and spoke toward the sound. We crept toward the stop of the stairs. . .There was nothing there.

The door was wide open.

I am agnostic, but this was a huge event in my spiritual formation."

                                                           The front porch and door

Another couple of teenagers who came to tend to the animals heard slow, deliberate footsteps on the second floor. They fed the dog, practically throwing the food in her bowl, and beat a hasty retreat. 

I heard footsteps once when I came home one morning after walking my younger daughter to Jefferson Elementary School a block away. I came in, closed the door, and heard heavy footsteps in the upper hallway. I called out, and then went directly upstairs, but found no one. On another occasion I was in one of the bedrooms on the second floor when I heard the locked front door open and close. I looked down. The door was closed. When I searched the house for an interloper, I again found no one.

All of these incidents happened during the first years we lived in the house. They seemed to suggest that something paranormal was going on. After doing some research into previous owners, we decided that the likely ghost was that of Frank Cartwright, who had lived in the house until his death in 1942.

                                                                    Frank Cartwright
 

The Girl in the Prom Dress

Some people call mediums or psychics to try to explain seemingly paranormal occurrences in a house.  But others, wary of explanations that can't be documented, turn to house history researchers. In the 1980's, prominent architectural historian Jim Sazevich and I (folklorist) were invited to host a ghost storytelling at the Weyerhauser Auditorium in St. Paul. Two dozen people turned up, and after Jim and I warmed up the crowd with several stories, others told theirs. I will relate some of these stories--notably the ones about the Chauncey Griggs House--in other posts. 

But this story comes from researcher June Burd, who passed on to me a number of stories about houses in the Kenwood/Lake of the Isles area of Minneapolis. It concerns a large pre-World-War-One brick house on Franklin Avenue near Blaisdell that had been converted into an office building. Workers reported that a room on the third floor always seemed cold, whatever the weather. But other than that, nothing out of the ordinary happened during daylight office hours.

But one winter evening as she was standing in the lower hallway preparing to leave, a secretary saw a girl in a vintage formal gown coming down the staircase from the second floor. The girl appeared and disappeared in a few seconds.

                                           A prom dress pattern from the 1940s.

The secretary naturally wondered if she had been "seeing things"--that is, until another employee saw the girl again. One evening as this woman was preparing to come out of an office on the second floor, she sensed motion in her peripheral vision. She quickly turned and glimpsed a teenager in a vintage prom dress pass by the doorway only a few feet away. The woman rushed to the door and looked down the hallway. No one was there; all was quiet in the house.

Reports of full-bodied apparitions are rare in ghost stories. Research suggests that this apparition was likely the ghost of the daughter of a former owner, a teenager who met an untimely death in a car crash in the 1940s. Why she appears in a prom dress, we can only speculate.

Looking east from Hennepin Avenue on Franklin Avenue today. The haunted house was a couple of blocks beyond the dip. --Photo, City of Minneapolis