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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
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.
