The Most Haunted House in Minnesota

 

                                               A dining area in Forepaugh's before it closed.

We're coming up on October, and it's time to resume telling ghost stories. A couple of weeks ago a story was circulating online naming Forepaugh's Restaurant in St. Paul as the "most haunted" house in Minnesota.  The story was out of date, Forepaugh's having been permanently closed in 2019 after the tragic death of their executive chef from the flu at the age of 32.

                                                  The exterior of the 1870 Forepaugh House

Nevertheless, I will not quibble with the assessment that Forepaugh's is haunted. The architectural researcher who wrote up the history of the house for the owners when it opened in 1976, told me of a weird experience he had in the upper room allegedly haunted by a maid: the smell of perfume, guttering candles. When he gave me a tour of the place, I didn't see anything out of the ordinary, but I admit parts of the place felt uncomfortable to be in.

Plenty of ghost stories have circulated about the restaurant, which was named after the first owner of the 1870 mansion. (You can google them if you like.) However, if we are to judge how haunted a house is by the number of stories told about it, one house immediately stands out: the 1883 Chauncey Griggs House at 476 Summit Avenue in St. Paul. Tenants were telling about ghostly experiences back from the time it was an art school. But one owner, Carl Weschke, publisher of books on the paranormal, put the house on the "most haunted" map.

                      The literally spooky Chauncey Griggs House (Photo: Marriot-Bonvoy Tours)

During the winter of 1969, Weschke invited three skeptics from the St. Paul Pioneer Press to spend a night in the house to investigate the rumors that the place was haunted. They didn't last the night.

The newsmen, two reporters and a cameraman, set up two cameras and a tape recorder at the top of the stairs and fourth floor hall, where a lovelorn maid had hanged herself decades before. When the men each went out into the well-lighted hall, they became inexplicably overcome with fear and quickly retreated to their room. From there, they heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. The bravest of them crept down the hallway and looked down the stairwell. Although he could see nothing, he was overcome with the sense of a strong presence. Even though they had several hours to go with their vigil, the newsmen decided they'd seen (or not seen) enough and beat a hasty retreat down the stairs with their equipment. 

                                The lower part of the infamous staircase in the Griggs House.

As with Forepaugh's, stories about the house are legion. The Chauncey Griggs House (not to be confused with the 1874 Burbank-Livingston-Griggs House further down Summit Avenue) is always included on the haunted house tours of Summit Avenue. Apparently, there were many ghostly shenanigans in the 1950s when it was a art school. Students reported hearing footsteps, doors opening and closing, lights going off and on. 

The stories I heard firsthand were at a gathering at the Weyerhaeuser Theater in St. Paul in the 1990s. People were invited to tell ghost stories to assist playwright Lance Belville, who was writing a play about a haunted old house. Architectural researcher Jim Sazevich and I warmed up the group of 25 or so gathered on the stage by telling some of our stories, and then the audience was invited to tell their tales.

Three people told accounts of incidents at the Chauncey-Griggs House. One person told of what felt like a gloved hand being pressed against her throat in the middle of the night when she lived there as a student. Another said that his uncle, who lived in a basement unit, told of many nocturnal disturbances, such as whispering and the sound of footsteps.

The firsthand account by a man who lived in the neighborhood in the 1960s was the most memorable. One day he and two friends, twelve-year-olds eager for adventure, decided to explore the Griggs House carriage house. Although it was daylight, when the boys entered the barn, they immediately felt gloom surround them. They crept along, peering into the darkness. When he reached the end of the passage, the boy turned around. To his horror, he saw a tall black figure in a cape blocking out the sunlight from the entrance. His friends were behind the figure, and they fled the way they had come in. He, however, was trapped between the apparition and the hay mow door behind him. There was a single-story drop to the ground from the hay mow. Should he try to get by the towering dark figure or jump? He jumped. Fortunately, he was not seriously injured in the fall, but after that, he and his friends stayed well clear of the Chauncey Griggs House.

I've heard other stories about the house besides the ones told at the Weyerhaeuser. One of the most chilling stories I've heard, period, comes secondhand from a former owner of the Griggs House. One night she decided to stay up reading in the library while the rest of family was upstairs in bed. It was a winter night, very still. She was puzzled when her reading was interrupted by what sounded like someone breathing softly. As she sat curled in her chair, the sound of breathing grew louder. She tried to ignore it, but it swelled until within a minute or so, it sounded like the house itself was breathing. Terrified, she threw down her book and ran up the stairs to her bedroom without stopping to turn out the lights.

Haunted

What would you think if you heard a crash in the dining room, immediately looked in and saw that the cast iron heating register had come out of the floor and was now sitting a couple of feet away on the carpet? When this happened to me, I was in the next room and my six-year-old daughter in the adjacent parlor. We were mystified. The grate weighed over three pounds and couldn't have been lifted by the furnace blower. What moved it? My husband and I didn't know what to think.

Then, several months later in the winter, my husband had gone out to the garage for something when it happened again. He came back into the house to find our daughter completely freaked out. She had been watching TV in her room over the dining room when she heard the metallic crash from below and knew exactly what had caused it: the grate crashing onto the floor.  

These incidents occurred six years after I had started collecting ghost stories, so I recognized the possibility that the cause was paranormal. Over the next thirty-some years my daughters and I, plus a number of our friends, witnessed other strange happenings in the house. Nevertheless, when these inexplicable events first occurred, we couldn't help but think that there must be a normal, not paranormal, explanation for them. But as the number of incidents grew, we had to conclude that, yes, there was a ghost afoot in the house.

These experiences and my ever-expanding collection of ghost stories inevitably spurred me to research theories of what is known as a "ghost." If you've watched any of the numerous paranormal TV shows from the past two decades, you've probably found that there is an orthodoxy involving ghosts: They are spirits, entities, or demons that have materialized. You can discern their presence or contact them via mediums, psychics, ghost boxes, EMF meters, REM pods, etc. 

Many ghost hunters say that they want to prove that ghosts are real. I don't. Nor do I care about the theories of what ghosts are. To me, the hundreds of stories from witnesses is enough proof that ghosts are "real" in some way.

In his 2012 book Ghosts: A Natural History: 500 Years of Searching for Proof , Roger Clarke gives a well-researched history of ghost hunting. "Written as grippingly as the best ghost fiction, A Natural History of Ghosts takes us on an unforgettable hunt through the most haunted places of the last five hundred years and our longing to believe."--NY Times Book Review.

This excerpt from my Goodreads review sums up why I like Clarke's approach so much:  

"Clarke covers it all, from poltergeists to séances to ESP to ghost hunters--and more. He examines the hoaxes as well as the unexplained. My personal favorite was the story of a cursed German WW I U-boat--which Clarke calls 'a mobile haunted house.' I was fascinated by the tracing of the story upon which Henry James based 'The Turn of the Screw,' my favorite literary ghost story.

There are quite a few memorable quotes, but the one I like best is by Harry Price, the first ghost hunter: 'People don't want the de-bunk, they want the bunk.' Alas, one need look no further for proof of this statement than the current spate of paranormal TV shows, such as the laughable 'Alaska Monsters'. At least the gullible viewers of these shows are not as dangerous as the 18th century 'flash mobs' of thousands that showed up, ready for action against the alleged ghost--even if it meant tearing down the allegedly haunted house. Now that's scary." 

* * *The Chauncey Griggs House on Summit Avenue in St. Paul, based on the many stories told about it, the most haunted house in Minnesota. * * *

So what can I generalize about ghosts from personal experience and the stories I've collected? Ghosts do not perform on cue. The most commonly reported experiences are physical manifestations, like hearing footsteps or doors closing, or seeing lights go off or on, or having things move. Very few people report seeing full apparitions. Rarer yet are stories about witnessing past incidents or events, such as seeing a scene from a long-ago battle. Many stories concern single incidents, although some witnesses describe hauntings that last for months or years. Ghostly activity can happen over very long periods of time, and incidents are usually few and far between. Activity often fades as the years pass. Ghosts can be hostile or protective, interactive or passive. They can haunt houses, woods, apartments, battleships, skyscrapers, whatever. And yes, they can sometimes be busted (more on this in a future post). 

Have you witnessed an explainable event? Many people do--for example, a door opening and closing when no one else is home. Some decide it's paranormal; others conclude it's an unsolvable mystery. Whatever they believe, or don't believe, these stories about uncanny events are endlessly fascinating.

             Harry Price, the first ghost hunter. "People don't want the de-bunk, they want the bunk."