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.

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