My Haunted House IV: Footsteps and Big Bangs

By far the most active period for weird happenings at the house were the 1980s. After the grate incidents in 1983, the family experienced some more common sorts of paranormal activity: sounds.

One morning I returned to the house after walking my daughter M to the elementary school down the block. I unlocked the door and stepped into the foyer--and heard heavy footsteps in the upper hallway. I knew right away that no flesh-and-blood person was upstairs. As I looked up the foyer staircase, the footsteps stopped. I ran upstairs and looked through all the rooms, but as I expected, no one was there. 

                                              The Eastlake design doorknob on the front door.

Later that year, I had returned once again from walking M to school one morning and was collecting laundry in the upstairs bedrooms when I heard the front door open. No knock. No sound of the deadbolt turning. But as clear as day, for several seconds, I heard the sound of the latch on the heavy ash door being released, the door swinging open, and the ambient sounds from the street. I called out, but no one answered. I then went to the foyer staircase and looked down. To my amazement, the door was shut and locked.

By this time, we had decided that the most likely candidate for who was causing these manifestations was Frank M. Cartwright. As I mentioned in Part II, Frank lived in the house from 1910 until his death in 1936. For much of that time he worked at the house, running his tack and livery business from what was then the barn. 

                                            

                                              A Cartwright family photo of the barn, c. 1915.              

                                                           Frank M. Cartwright, 1866-1836

                                        Part of the horse tack we found in the former barn.

When she visited the house in 1977, Frank's daughter Helen Ruth Kinney was aghast to see how the house had changed since when her parents owned it. During the Depression, they had duplexed the house, but had made minimal changes--locks installed on the foyer doors and a sink and shelves installed in the bedroom over the dining room to make an upstairs kitchen. When she and her brother sold the house in 1941, it looked much as it had when it was built. 

But by the time we acquired it in 1976, all--and I do mean all--of the woodwork had been painted, some ceilings lowered, the Victorian framework and mirrors over the fireplace removed, the fretwork spandrels taken down, and the original fixtures removed. The walls of the dining room, for example, had been painted Pepto-Bismol pink with a purple ceiling, and a "flying saucer" light that you could pull up and down had been installed over the table area. The hardwood floors were in a deplorable condition. The exterior had been sheathed in two layers of siding: "insulbrick", fiberboard sheathing covered with tar and granular material, and above that, asbestos shakes. All of the exterior and interior ornament had been removed.

                  Removing the layers of siding, 1977. Asphalt siding was under the asbestos shakes.

We had decided that Frank was the one haunting the place because: A. The ghost was obviously male. B. The activity started after we had completed the exterior restoration and had begun the interior restoration.

Helen Ruth Kinney also told us how her family loved parties. She had been a professional singer before she married, and when she and her husband homesteaded in northern Alberta, they hauled an upright piano with them. On Christmas week neighbors would come from miles around to sing, dance, and be merry around their piano. 

                                               

                                          Helen Ruth in costume for one of her singing roles

We liked music and parties, too. Every year from the early 1980s from when I sold the house in 2017, I would hold a party on the Winter Solstice.

The Winter Solstice party and carol sing was held each year on the solstice itself, whatever the weather or day of the week. Guests would bring holiday treats to share, and a large pot of glögg (Swedish mulled wine, very potent) and another of apple cider would be simmering on the stove. After socializing for an hour or so, the guests would assemble in the parlors for a short program of readings of the season--for example, Wallace Stevens' "The Snow Man", Thomas Hardy's "The Oxen", Clement Moore's "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," or a humorous holiday story. 

After that, people would arrange themselves around the tree and baby grand piano in the front parlor for the carol sing. Since many attendees were from the St. David's (Welsh) Society, we'd sing carols and songs in English and a few in Welsh in four-part harmony. We'd sing all the favorites, as well as some unfamiliar ones, always ending with "Silent Night" in English and then in German.

                  Singing around the tree, Solstice Party 2014, with David Evan Thomas at the piano.

Most years, 15-25 people would show up to celebrate the solstice. One solstice night in the mid-1990s Minneapolis was hit with a big snowstorm. By the time the party started, the ground was already covered with several inches of heavy, wet snow. Nevertheless, four diehards from the St. David's Society managed to get the house. Few cars and pedestrians were out and about.

Around 9:30, we were gathered around the piano in the front parlor singing Welsh Plygain carols when we heard someone come up onto the porch. The sound of someone wearing heavy boots came to the front door. Then silence. We expected whoever it was to come in through the unlocked door, but nothing happened.  

                                                  The front porch, decorated for Christmas.

All of us heard the footsteps, but we couldn't see anyone out the front window. I got up from the piano, went into the foyer, and opened the front door. Not only was no one there, but the drifted snow on the porch was unmarked by footprints. The others came and looked out, too. They were thunderstruck. Who or what had walked across the porch? Was that Frank letting us know he was coming to the party? I think so.

                                      The restored fireplace mantel in the front parlor, Christmas 1981

In 1991, inspired by the PBS TV series "The Civil War', we threw a party around that theme. Four people, including me, whose ancestors had served in the war told their family stories, and then we had various musicians sing and play songs from that era. The house was packed with guests. Before the concert began, several people were in the front parlor talking as we waited for the trumpet player, Colin, to arrive. (Coincidentally, the trumpeter was one of the teenagers who had heard footsteps when he came to feed the animals.) 

I was talking to my friend Mitzi in the front parlor when we heard the sound of boots coming onto the porch and crossing to the door. Those in the front room all heard the footsteps. "That's got to be Colin," I said, getting up and going into the foyer. But again, when I opened the door, no one was there. Mitzi was freaked out, as she clearly had heard the footsteps, as had the others. I suspected that it was party-loving, music-loving Frank who had once again made his arrival known.

Frank came to another solstice carol sing in 2015. At least I think so. We were singing around the piano, when a loud "bang" reverberated through the wall where the front door was located. Again, we looked out to see if anyone was at the door, but of course, there was no one.

The next year on Halloween Eve, there was another loud bang, this time from the back of the house. By then, the summer kitchen had been converted to an all-season room, with three windows looking out onto the back yard and a door with a window. From my Facebook post that day: 

"A curious incident this evening. It's 5:40 p.m. and I'm stirring the soup pot in the kitchen. Suddenly, a loud pounding sounds at the back door--three quick bangs like a fist striking the storm door. Viggo jumps up barking, and we both hurry to the door. There must be an emergency--garage on fire, someone hurt? I look through the window. No one is there. I quickly open the door. The gates are closed and latched. I go out and look around the yard, up on the roof, then come in and look in the basement. Nothing is disturbed or changed inside and outside. All is quiet. WTF?"

                                              The front window, decorated for Halloween, 2009
 

In 2017, the year after the second big bang, after I had bought my house in Duluth and was preparing to move, another loud bang rocked the house. But I'll wait till we get to that part of the story to tell you the details.

My Haunted House III: Lemme Outta Here!

Note: A couple of the incidents I'll be describing have been mentioned in previous posts in this blog. Rather than referring you to these posts, for the sake of continuity, I will be describing these incidents again in this series.

                                *                              *                               *                              * 

 

                         The house with the first paint colors after restoration. The original colors were               pea-green siding with yellow-gold trim.

Within months of the grate moving, another curious incident transpired when the family was out of town. Family friend Lucy was staying at the house while we had driven to Pittsburgh to visit relatives.

One day she returned to the house after work and found the front door wide open. Alarmed, Lucy went inside and checked all the rooms.  She found that burglars had broken in at the back of the house through the flimsy pine door to the summer kitchen. (This was when the summer kitchen was an unheated addition.) Nothing was disturbed on the first floor, but on the second floor in the master bedroom, Lucy found two dresser drawers pulled out and their contents dumped on the floor. A jewelry box containing some costume jewelry was missing, with a few pieces strewn on the stairs, in the foyer, and on the front porch. Cash and a watch belonging to Lucy that were clearly visible in the guest room were untouched.

                                            The entrance to the summer kitchen at the back of the house                                                                   before conversion to an all-season room.

The break-in had probably lasted only a few minutes. Why were these burglars in such a rush to flee that they left the front door open? Why did they risk running out the front door in broad daylight, where neighbors or passersby might see them? Why did they open only a couple of drawers before quitting?

The answer: They thought that someone was home. Did they hear footsteps coming down the stairs from the third floor? Were there sounds of someone moving around in the parlors or dining room? Whatever happened, it seems obvious that the thieves were in a big hurry to get out of there, choosing to escape through the front, rather than retracing their steps to the back. 

During the 'Eighties friends of my daughter Ceridwen who came to the house to take care of our pets when we were out of town had stories to tell about their encounters with an unseen resident--perhaps the same resident who had scared off the burglars. Six of these friends had similar stories to tell (and this is important), not knowing about the others' stories. Four girls related how after hearing heavy footsteps on the second floor as they were feeding the pets in the kitchen, they couldn't wait to get out of the house.

                                                         The front staircase after restoration.

The two teenage boys who had come to tend to the animals were completely freaked out by their experience. In the words of one of them:

"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 entry in winter.

Only one other break-in attempt occurred while I lived there--again via the back--but my dog Viggo stopped the would-be burglar and scared him off. Fortunately, thanks to Viggo, the ghost with the heavy boots did not have to put in an appearance.

At Home in the Afterlife

                                  “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
                                                    ― William Faulkner

For Halloween, here's one of my favorite stories. It involves a deceased owner hanging around, haunting her former home in Duluth, Minnesota. 

                                                    A street in Duluth's East End

In the late 1990s, I stopped by to visit a friend who was restoring a spacious 1905 Craftsman house in Duluth's East End. Knowing that I was collecting ghost stories, she introduced me to Marie, who lived with her family in the house across the street.

                                                            A 1910 Craftsman House

Marie had quite a story to tell. The 5,000+ square-foot house that her family occupied was built in 1911, designed by a prominent architect who had designed a number of notable houses, churches, and civic buildings, some now on the National Register. In 1917 a well-to-do young couple bought the house and moved in. The house was so large, the family had a live-in maid to help manage it for the couple, and eventually, their two children. The wife--whom we'll call Mrs. Smith--lived there until her death in the late 1960s.

At that point, Marie and her husband Paul acquired the house. On their first night in the house, Marie and Paul heard someone walking around above their second floor bedroom. Their dog heard it, too, following the sound of footsteps around with his eyes. Paul decided to check it out, but the dog was very reluctant to accompany him. Paul had to drag the dog up to the third floor with him. But no one was there. All was quiet. 

As the weeks went on, they regularly heard footsteps on the third floor. Paul and Marie learned that Mrs. Smith had had a liquor cabinet on the third floor over the master bedroom. Was it merely coincidental that the footsteps were heard in that area? They also heard someone walking around in what had been maid's room over the kitchen. Those weren't the only unexplained noises. From the kitchen they sometimes heard the crystals tinkling on the chandelier in the foyer, as if someone had opened the front door; they occasionally heard the back door open and shut. 

Three years after Paul and Marie moved in, their son was born. Marie took leave from work to care for him. One day, Marie was doing laundry in the basement. She loaded the washer and crossed to the stairs. As she walked past it, a large door with a window insert that had been propped against the wall since they moved in fell behind her with a loud crash. She had not so much as brushed against it. Terrified, Marie dashed up the stairs and scooped up the baby. Hot-footing it to the garage, she strapped him in his car seat and drove off. Marie drove around Duluth and environs for several hours, fearing to go back into the house alone. When her husband got home from work, they found the door still lying on the basement floor, and nothing else had changed.

Six years later, their son, now with his own bedroom, took to using the bathroom in the master bedroom suite at night because it was closer than the main bath. One night as he came into the darkened bedroom, he was startled to see a luminous blue form moving around his parents' bed as they slept. He ran back to his room and hid under the covers for the rest of the night. And that was the end of his visits to the master bathroom.

 

As the months passed, the odd noises continued. Sometimes a clap-on-off table lamp in one of the first floor rooms would go off, or on, when no one clapped or turned the switch. Marie and Paul had the opportunity to buy a large Persian rug that was original to the house, and they got it and installed it. Mrs. Smith--if that's who it was--calmed down somewhat after that, but paranormal activity never stopped completely.

One evening, Paul and Marie went out to attend an event. They came into the house through the back and walked through to the living room. As they came into the room, the babysitter and her friend looked up in surprise. 

"Did you just come home?" asked the teenagers--who freaked out when they heard the answer. A half an hour earlier, they had clearly heard the back door open and close and had assumed that the parents had been in the kitchen since then.

As time went by, stories about the house began circulating around town.  Sometimes when Marie was at a party, she would overhear someone relating a story about their house. It came as no surprise, as a number of people had witnessed strange goings-on there, and the family did not attempt to keep the incidents a secret.

The strangest incident of all happened one day as Mrs. Smith's son was driving down the street with a friend. As they approached the former Smith home, the friend said, "I've heard stories that your mother is haunting the family abode." 

"Rubbish!" exclaimed the son--just as the engine cut out right in front of the house.

 

                                                            Spooky black willow
 

Stories of hauntings by former occupants are among the most common ghost stories. As someone who lived for four decades in a house haunted by an owner who had died in 1942, I can relate. As Marie found, activity can be sporadic with long, quiet intervals between incidents. For the most part, the incidents were not scary, and our family learned to accept the occasional unexplained event, just as Marie's family had. 

    Halloween decorations at my old house

Dead Still

 One of the first stories I collected was from a librarian, Joan, who lived with her husband and two children in an old foursquare house on a broad avenue in South Minneapolis. 

                                                             A typical Midwest foursquare 

Because the librarian worked days and sometimes evenings and her husband worked night shift, they hired a babysitter to stay with the children until their mother got home in the evenings. As the weeks went by, Joan frequently found the kids curled up with the babysitter on the sofa instead of in bed. The babysitter said that the kids didn't want to go upstairs and be alone in their beds. When Joan asked why, the babysitter replied that there were sounds of someone moving around in the central landing hallway, but when Joan investigated, she found no one there.

At the same time, the door from the third floor onto the landing kept opening. Joan was sure they'd shut it, but they'd find it open even when no one in the family had been on the floor. As with the attorney with the opening hatch, Joan's husband got annoyed that the heat was flying up into the attic, increasing heating bills. He locked the door and assumed that would be the end of it. It wasn't. The locked door was unlocked and opened as before.

After the husband started locking the door, disturbances increased on the second floor. When Joan came home at night the kids and babysitter were always on the first floor, huddled together. Even though Joan and her husband had witnessed none of these nocturnal disruptions, the kids had, and they grew increasingly scared. It got to the point that they refused to sleep in their second floor bedrooms.

The husband decided to fix the problem for good. He nailed the door shut--not just one nail, but a dozen of them hammered all around the frame. He was reluctant to take this measure, but it was January, and the heating costs were increasing alarmingly. In addition, he and Joan thought that securing the door would perhaps stop the sounds the kids and babysitter were hearing at night.

The house was quiet for several nights. The kids returned to sleeping upstairs. But then, on one below-zero January night, Joan was preparing for bed in the master bedroom, which shared a wall with the staircase from the third floor. She turned out the light and was about to get into bed when she heard a faint scratching sound coming from one of the bedroom windows. Was she imagining it? No. Although barely audible, there was definitively a scratching noise.

Joan looked around the dark bedroom, trying to figure out the source. She went to the window to see if the wind was scraping a branch against the glass. No branches were anywhere near the window. White vapors from the chimneys of the neighboring houses rose silently into the air. All was dead still, as it is on extremely cold nights. Even the slightest sound will carry a long way. Abruptly, the scratching sound stopped. 

 Joan grew uneasy, overcome with a feeling of dread. She glanced at the clock. Almost midnight. Hesitantly, she prepared again to go to bed. But she heard another faint sound, this time coming from inside the stairwell from the attic. It sounded like fabric being brushed against the wall as someone descended the stairs. Swish, swish. Then, footsteps very slowly coming down, stopping after each step. Joan was frozen with fear as she stared at the wall, trying to imagine what was behind it.

The footsteps stopped at the door. Silence. Then. . . Crash! All hell broke loose. Joan heard the nails ripping out of the door, some rattling against the wood floor. The door burst open, slamming against the wall. And then suddenly, all was quiet again. The terrified kids and Joan ventured out of their rooms into the hallway. Joan turned on the light. The door was wide open. The nails were scattered around on the floor. No one was there.

It took a long time for Joan to calm down herself and the children. She shut the attic door, and they all went downstairs to finish the night on the sofa. When her husband got home in the morning and Joan told him what had happened, he was very upset. They obviously needed to do something different. After some discussion, they decided to call upon the elders of their church to do a cleansing ceremony. 

 Within a few days, the elders came out and did a prayer service. And here's where this story ends very differently than most similar stories: The prayers worked. There were no more weird sounds on the landing and stairway, and the door stayed shut. 

Although this story has an anticlimactic conclusion, Joan and her family were very grateful that there were no more disturbances and they all were able to sleep in their beds in peace.

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.

A Ghost Story from Powis Castle, Wales

Whenever I visit an historic site, I try to ask the docents if they've heard any ghost stories about the place. I specifically ask for stories, not if the site is haunted. Sometimes this doesn't turn out well, as during a tour of Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior's North Shore. I knew that there were well known stories of the place being haunted by a past lighthouse keeper, but wanted to find out if the people on site had any stories to tell. But when I asked the docent, he nearly blew a gasket. "No!" he huffed. "No ghosts." End of inquiry. I deduce that he had had about enough of would-be ghost hunters asking about the haunting and wanting to do investigations. I can understand his irritation.

However, when I asked the docent at Powis Castle, Wales, if she'd heard any ghost stories about the palace, her response was quite different. According to the National Trust, which owns the property, the castle and garden you see today reflects the changing ambitions and visions of the Herbert family, who occupied the castle from the 1570s. The oldest parts of the castle were built by a Welsh prince - Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn - (c1252), so it's no surprise that ghostly legends have sprung up about it. 

The most famous is the story of an old woman who stayed in one of the bedrooms in 1780. There are several variations, but the basic story is that she claimed a man in a gold-laced suit entered her room and led her through the castle to find a hidden chest and key. Hidden treasures and ghosts, what could be more exciting in a legend? 

                        The  rather spooky state bedroom at Powis Castle, not available on AirBnB

But I wanted to know if the people who worked there had any stories to tell. Yes, she said. The ballroom, which is located in the 1741 addition, was apparently haunted.  Several castle employees, including herself, had clearly heard footsteps sounding in the ballroom after hours. When the castle is open to visitors, many people walk through the rooms on tours. But when it's closed, especially after dark, she said it was unsettling to hear the footsteps sounding in the huge, empty ballroom. Also, people have reported that they heard the piano being played in the ballroom, and once, the piano had been moved several feet during the night when no one was in that building.

                                                     The ballroom. Photo: National Trust

These recent stories are not nearly as detailed or exciting as the old legends, but they reveal that ghostlore is still alive and well in the 21st century.

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
 

Engineers Meet Ghosts

People have very varied reactions to encounters with the paranormal, ranging from denial to completely freaking out. Engineers, being of scientific mind, usually do not immediately jump to conclusions when they experience weird goings-on. Here are two stories told by engineers about strange, uncanny encounters with the unexplained:

The first storyteller, Paul, was an electrical engineering student at the University of Minnesota. One Thanksgiving break he decided to go to the rustic family cabin in northern Wisconsin so he could read and study, rather than stay in the city for Turkey Day. Loading his car with books and provisions for the weekend, he drove to the muddy access lane to the cabin and packed in his supplies. At the cabin, he lit a fire and settled in.

 Later that evening as he was reading on the sofa, Paul heard a noise on the front porch that sounded like muffled footsteps. Opening the front door, he walked onto the porch and looked around. He called out. but there was no response; he shone a flashlight into the trees surrounding the cabin, but could see nothing moving. The woods were still and dark. He walked around the cabin, but could see no evidence of a trespasser. The cabin was about mile from the paved road, and he knew that a visitor to the cabin in late November would be very unlikely.

Once again, Paul settled down reading by the fire. About a half hour later, he distinctly heard heavy footsteps coming up the steps to the porch.  The sound of boots hitting the porch deck came from the steps to the door. Before he could to get up and go to the door, it suddenly violently burst open, hitting the wall as it swung. To his astonishment, no one stood there in the doorway. Paul jumped up and ran out on the porch. As before, all was dark and quiet. He could hear no sound of anyone or anything moving in the pitch black woods.

 Unsettled, Paul went back inside. What to do? It was a mile hike back to the car through the woods, and after that, he'd have a five-hour drive back to the Twin Cities. Paul turned to the open door and declared, "I didn't see anything or hear anything, and I'm going back to my reading." He closed the door and returned to his place by the fire.

For the rest of the weekend, he heard nothing untoward and there were no more disturbances. On Sunday, he drove back to the Cities rested and ready to resume his engineering studies.

The second story came from an engineering professor who related his experience while housesitting over the weekend for a friend when he lived in San Francisco. On the first day he was there, he had left a couple of dirty breakfast dishes in different places in the house. Later that afternoon, he noticed these dishes in the kitchen sink, even though he could not recall putting them there.

 When this same thing occurred the next morning, he was puzzled. Being of scientific bent, he decided to experiment by deliberately placing several soiled dishes throughout the house and noting where he put them. Later that day, he found all of the dishes sitting in the kitchen sink.

That was enough to satisfy his curiosity. Yes, a tidy unseen person was apparently moving dirty dishes into the sink. Since he was there only two days, he did not experiment further. He washed the dishes and put them away, and that was that.

Ghost in the Attic

The Healy Block Residential Historic District in South Minneapolis contains 14 Queen Anne houses built 1886-1892 by master builder Theron Potter Healy. The Victorian houses on the east side of Second Street, sitting on the northbound off-ramp from I-35W at E 31st Street, became well known because they were visible to passersby on the freeway. The houses on the west side had been wrecked in the 1960s during the construction of I-35W. A recently constructed sound barrier now cuts the surviving houses off from view, but they are still there. 

 

The 3100 block of Second Avenue, looking south, 1936. --Photo courtesy Minnesota Historical Society

It should come as no surprise that several people have told me ghost stories about these historic houses. One of these concerns an 1890 house on the Second Avenue block once visible from the freeway. The current owner “Dan” says that he knew the house would be his from the moment he saw it while driving by years ago.  The then-vacant house had been used a rooming house and was in a state of serious disrepair.

Dan called the number on the “for sale” sign out front. The then-owner, who lived out of state, told him that the house was not occupied, and that it would be difficult to get a key to him. Instead, the owner advised Dan to climb in through a basement window. And so he did.

Dan went from the dark, spooky basement, to the empty rooms on main floor, up the formal staircase to the second floor, then up to the third floor. As Dan was looking around the attic rooms, he heard someone moving around on the second floor. Dan froze, thinking that someone had seen him breaking and entering and had called the police. How could he explain that the owner had told him to break in?

However, when he went down to the second floor, no one was there. In fact, the house was completely still. Dan checked the first floor and basement and found no one. Not intimidated by the mysterious interloper, Dan wound up buying the house, which he still owns today.

      Queen Anne houses in the Healy Block Residential Historic District, Minneapolis
  

Shortly after Dan acquired the house, he invited celebrated psychic Echo Bodine in for a tour. She told him that the lower floors had residual hauntings, but nothing active. On the other hand, on the third floor “lived” a little boy ghost, an intelligent haunting. Echo told Dan that the boy had said to her, “Dan doesn’t see me, but Newton does.” This freaked out Dan because Newton was his cat’s name–and the psychic didn’t know that. 

The house has been restored, and the ghosts are still in residence. Dan still occasionally hears footsteps on the second and third floors, but is not disturbed by them, knowing that they are made by a friendly spirit.

                             Porch detail of another reportedly haunted house on the Healy Block

Blast from the Past

Lynn, a Minneapolis real estate agent, related this story about a friend who works in a local hospital. One day when she was visiting the hospital, she saw her friend Paul sitting in the cafeteria with three co-workers, his left arm in a cast and sling. When she joined them, she inquired about his injury. He explained that he'd slipped and broken his arm. The conversation then turned to other topics.

Ten minutes later, however, after the other people had left the table, Paul brought up the subject of his broken arm. "Lynn," he said in a low voice, "I didn't slip on the floor. But what did happen is so bizarre, I can hardly believe it myself. You're an open-minded person, unlike some of my medical colleagues--and I've got to tell you how I really broke my arm."

Paul went on to say that the month before, he and his wife had bought a business from the estate of an eccentric old antiquarian. For a couple of weeks he had gone over to the shop, trying to complete inventory and sort through the former owner's papers. These papers, however, were in such a state of disarray that he decided to pack them into an old wooden box and bring them to his house, where he could go through them at his leisure. He brought the heavy box home and lugged it up to his study on the second floor.

He lived in a spacious bungalow with his wife and two teen-aged children. The kids slept on the second floor, and the parents slept in the master bedroom at the back of the ground floor in a hallway off the dining room--a layout common to Craftsman bungalows.

The night that he had carried the box home, Paul and his wife were asleep in their downstairs bedroom when they were awakened by the sound of someone stirring overhead in the study. Their first thought was that one of the kids had gotten up to go to the bathroom, but no, they heard the sound of footsteps coming down the upstairs hallway from the study. The tread was heavy and decisive, like that of a man's boots.

As the footsteps reached the top of the stairs, Paul and his wife sat up in bed, staring wide-eyed at each other, then toward the sound. Down the stairs the boots came, deliberately and (they felt) menacingly. No burglar could be stomping like that, Paul thought. The footfalls sounded angry.

To their horror, the steps kept coming toward their bedroom--through the dining room and down the short hallway. The couple sat bolt upright in bed, clutching the covers in terror. The footsteps reached the closed door. In the dim glow of a nightlight, they saw the doorknob turning. 

 

Then, wham! the door flew open, banging against the wall. A flood of frigid air burst into the room. At the same time, husband and wife both leaped out of bed, he to the left, she to the right. As Paul sprang up, however, he lost his balance and fell heavily against a chest of drawers.

At this point the teenagers came racing downstairs, for they, too, had heard the footsteps. To the family's relief, after the burst of cold air, all went quiet. Paul's wife drove him to the emergency room to treat his broken arm. Not eager to face skepticism and possible ridicule from his colleagues, he decided to make up the story about slipping on the floor.

In the morning Paul and his wife dragged the box with the old man's papers back to the shop. And thereafter they slept in peace.