Or, Wisconsin’s Most Notorious Haunted Place

Read the original post here. Or keep scrolling for the story.

Summerwind mansion has always been steeped in legend and mystery and I had experienced its strangeness myself during a spring visit to explore the ruins. This was rare for me because I usually don’t stay at a place long enough to experience anything or capture anything unusual with my camera. Over the years many visitors to the site have reported unease about the property even if they had never experienced any ghostly activity themselves.

In 1916 US Secretary of Commerce Robert Lamont who served under the Herbert Hoover administration built Summerwind for himself and his family on the shores of West Bay Lake in northeast Wisconsin, the mansion was an escape from the pressures of political life in Washington D.C. during the summer months. The original structure, a fishing lodge, was purchased by Lamont, who employed Chicago architects to remodel the property and convert it into a mansion.

During his 15 years at the mansion Lamont believed the structure was haunted. Lamont suddenly abandoned the mansion in the mid-1930s after one particularly frightening evening. He and his wife had just settled down to an evening meal in the kitchen, when the door to the basement shook itself open and a ghostly form of a man appeared. Lamont grabbed a pistol and fired two shots at the apparition as door swung shut. Holes in the basement door could still be seen many years later after the home came under new ownership.

From the 1940s to the 60s the house was owned by the Keefer family but remained largely unoccupied. When Mr. Keefer died his widow subdivided the land and sold it to purchasers but they experienced financial difficulties in keeping up payments.

When Arnold and Ginger Hinshaw and family moved to the house in the early 1970s many strange occurrences began to unfold and much of the haunting seemed to take place during this time. Shadows would be seen moving down the hallways, whispers would be heard but then stop when the Hinshaws entered the room, unexplained electrical and mechanical problems often occurred at the home, windows and doors would open and close by themselves. One window raised and lowered so often at all hours that Arnold nailed it shut. An apparition of a woman would appear near the dining room.

During this time the Hinshaws tried to renovate their historic home but had trouble keeping workers because Summerwind gained a reputation for being haunted. Workers would not show up for work, usually claiming illness, a few of them simply outright refused to work. The Hinshaws decided to do the work themselves. During the renovation, Arnold was painting a closet in one of the bedrooms and removed a shoe drawer from a closet. He discovered a hidden dark space behind it. When Arnold investigated the space he thought he saw the remains of an animal. The entrance to this space was too small for him to fit into so he sent his daughter Mary with a flashlight to investigate. Moments later Mary let out a scream and claimed discovering a human skull and strands of black hair. For some reason no report was made to the police. The body mysteriously vanished when Ginger’s father and brother investigated the space many years later. The discovery of the corpse marked a turning point for the family. Arnold began display strange behavior, staying up late at night playing their Hammond organ that they purchased before moving into the house. The music became a strange mixture of senseless melodies which grew louder during the night. Ginger pleaded for him to stop but Arnold claimed the demons in his head demanded that he continue to play. He often played the bizarre music until dawn as his frightened wife and children took refuge in one of the bedrooms. Six months after moving into the house, Arnold suffered a breakdown and Ginger attempted suicide. Ginger shortly moved out of the house leaving Arnold and never seeing him again.

Several years later Ginger’s father, Raymond Von Bober, bought Summerwind disregarding Ginger’s pleas to leave the house alone. But with all of Von Bober’s attempts to renovate the house suffered the same problems as the Hinshaws’ years before. Von Bober’s son Karl experienced a variety of unnerving events. While walking through a hallway he heard a voice call his name, but he was the only one in the house. Then he heard what heard what sounded like two pistol shots and ran into the kitchen to find the room filled with smoke and the smell of gunpowder, an apparent supernatural reenactment from the 1930s Lamont incident.

During Von Bober’s renovations workmen also began to report uneasiness as tools began to disappear. Furnishings appeared in photographs, which had not been existence since the original owners had possession of the home. Room dimensions appeared to change in these photographs and as draftspeople tried to produce blueprints of rooms.

By the 1980s the mansion was abandoned for good. People visiting during this time reported seeing objects flying around, disappearing and reappearing, and photographs would have odd shadows in them. Some experienced seeing the mansion as it would have appeared in earlier times.
In June 1988 the mansion was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. All that survived was the house’s chimney stacks, foundations, and stone staircase.

On my first trip to explore the house I never could find it, despite being within several yards of the ruin. A few days later after further research I decided to try again. This time I finally found it and noticed the chimneys which stood like tombstones against the sky. A dull buzzing sound of a large group flies in the heart of the mansion grounds added an unsettling noise to the eerie atmosphere. As I walked around the ruin among the weeds and wild growing trees, I felt unease as if I was being watched.

Being intrigued by exploring these haunted places it’s sometimes hard to imagine the tragedy that happened to those who lived there and what they went through so long ago. I found myself thinking, what was so bad that happened here to make a family leave this beautiful house. Then I thought, maybe that’s how evil works, it tricks you into thinking nothing is bad as it looks, till you let your guard down.

Written by Corey Schjoth (Mar. 2014)

<3 Anna

Or, Paranormal Researchers Find Ghost Children

Read the original post here. Or keep scrolling for the story.

The ghosts of three children — two boys and a girl — as well as several adults are suspected by the owners and residents of haunting the historic Hotel Somerset, a Main Street boarding house and home of the popular McCormick’s Pub.

During the past five years, three residents have complained of their feet being tickled while sleeping, most recently during the past three weeks by Curtis Jones, a resident of the hotel for seven years. Jones said his neck also gets tickled in the middle of the night, and something messes up the order of his shoes underneath his bed.

While some might think it’s funny that a mischievous ghost could be messing with Jones, the 67-year-old Vietnam veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress said he considers it no laughing matter.

“I just want it to go away!” he said.

So does third-generation operator Tom McCormick. That’s why he called East Brunswick-based Paranormal Diagnostics Group to investigate (see a video of the Hotel Somerset ghost hunt atwww.MyCentralJersey.com/ MyCJVideos).

McCormick said he believes the ghost story because two other residents complained of tickled feet four and five years ago in a different room from Jones, but the same one where a tenant had died many years before.

On two separate evenings during the past week, McCormick said, his new night-vision surveillance system picked up what he said appeared to be three orbs darting in and out of a storage room. He also said that he, his wife, Shannon, and their 5-year-old son have experienced several run-ins with ghosts.

“I was getting soda down in the basement, when I heard a woman or a girl whisper to me, ‘Help me,’ ” Shannon said about an incident that occurred last year.

Two hours later, their son said he saw the ghost of a girl in the basement.

“We get to the bottom of the basement stairs, and he takes four steps and plants,” McCormick said. “I said, ‘Is she here?’ He pointed to the same exact same spot as my wife. I just grabbed his hand, and we ran up the stairs.”

McCormick said he called Paranormal Diagnostics Group because they have a medical background and use scientific equipment and evidence to confirm and more often debunk ghostly activity.

Respiratory therapists in a Somerset County sleep center by day, ghost hunters Robert McCaffrey, 48, of East Brunswick, and Dave Orloff, 42, of Howell, and formerly New Brunswick, have investigated Hotel Somerset three times in as many weeks. They said they have collected more evidence of paranormal activity than typically presented in one episode of “Ghost Hunters,” the Syfy Channel cable show that inspired their growing hobby.

“We have several sound recordings and video of flashes and shadows,” McCaffrey said. “We’re going to continue to investigate.”

The ghost hunters said they have had an interest in paranormal activity since their teens. They said their first investigation was five years ago, when Orloff’s neighbor invited them to Pennhurst Asylum, an infamous property near Valley Forge, Pa., that his family now owns and markets as a haunted attraction.

Originally, the “asylum” was the Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic, then the Pennhurst State School and Hospital. According to the 1968 news report “Suffer the Little Children,” many patients were abused and tortured, which continued until a 1977 lawsuit led to its closure 10 years later. According to a medium who conducted a séance with McCaffrey, Orloff and others at Pennhurst, the spirits of several of the abused, as well as their torturers, haunt the asylum.

“We’ve learned a lot since then,” McCaffrey said, “and have a lot better equipment.”

The ghost hunters use UV meters to measure fields of energy, laser lights and smoke machines to distinguish shadows, orbs and other images, and thermal imaging and night vision video cameras to capture them. After five years, McCaffrey said, they have yet to see a full-bodied apparition but have seen and recorded several other anomalies.

Paranormal Diagnostics also includes McCaffrey’s brother, Jonathan, 33, of Farmingdale, and Orloff’s brother-in-law, Tim Gorrie, 28, of Jackson. They said they hope to add a medium and a photographer/videographer to the team.

“We also would like to work with other paranormal groups,” McCaffrey said, “and break down the barriers that keep them from working together.”

Paranormal Diagnostics also has investigated the Burrowes Mansion, a Revolutionary War site in Matawan, and a Middlesex County home said to be possessed by a demon, whom they apparently recorded asking them less-than-politely to leave. The team also is interested in investigating the Bound Brook Hotel, another Revolutionary War site said to be haunted.

“Central Jersey is loaded with Revolutionary War sites,” McCaffrey said. “We would like to investigate each one of them, and see what kind of stories we can find.”

The history

The team’s interest in the Revolutionary War led them to Hotel Somerset, McCaffrey said.

Established in 1748, the Somerset is the oldest continuous hotel in the country, McCormick said. During the American Revolution, Gen. George Washington ate there and his men slept there while Washington stayed at the nearby Dutch Wallace House, McCaffrey added.

The hotel also played a part in the 1926 Halls-Mills murder trial in which a widow and her brothers were acquitted of the murder of her pastor husband and his mistress. During the trial at the historic Somerset County Courthouse, the jury was sequestered across Grove Street at the hotel.

McCaffrey and Orloff said they haven’t been able to determine whether the hotel’s suspected ghosts are related to the American Revolution, the trial or any other aspect of a rich history. But a medium told them that she could sense the presence of three deceased children, confirming the suspicion of McCormick’s son. Without ever having seen it, the medium drew a diagram of Jones’ room and said his closet is a vortex of paranormal activity.

“Something definitely is going on at the foot of his bed,” McCaffrey said in reaction to extensive energy readings usually indicative of electrical wiring or appliances.

“We were able to debunk the readings at Curtis’ front door because there is electrical wiring there, but there’s nothing electrical at the foot of his bed,” he continued. “So where are those readings coming from?”

The haunting

McCormick said he thinks he knows the source, based on a disturbing experience he had five years ago, while he, his wife, and their newborn son temporarily stayed in a room across from Jones, as their home was being remodeled.

“I woke up to a loud popping, like somebody lit a pack of little ladyfinger firecrackers close to my face,” McCormick said. “Turns out another guy, five rooms down, heard it. Four days later, we were out. I was upset because I’ve never really had anything bad happen here, like ‘Boo!’ Okay, I’ve seen some stuff move, I’ve purposely closed doors, and then I come back, and they’re opened again. But it’s always been stuff like that, nothing to scare me, so I was really upset by this.”

McCormick said he recently found out from his parents that throughout their 40-year ownership, five tenants died in the hotel. Another killed himself by jumping out of a window in the same room in which McCormick and his young family had stayed. During the first paranormal investigation of the hotel three weeks ago, McCormick and McCaffrey said they saw and took photos of blue orbs in that room.

In the attic, the team also recorded audio of what seemed to be the name Evelyn. McCormick said he asked his father, Ken, about a connection to that name.

On Friday, McCormick told the team that an Evelyn Epright lived behind the hotel in a home that was torn down in the mid-1960s. As they sat at a booth around a laptop computer, Orloff played back the recording, and McCormick’s jaw dropped when he heard the voice say, “Evelyn Epright.” He burst out of his seat and yelled, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

The team then played the recording several more times at various speeds. The voice clearly said “Evelyn,” then pronounced the same syllables and rhythm as Epright. Yet, other than once living next to the hotel, Evelyn Epright had no connection to it, the McCormicks said. But a Dorothy Epright was a waitress there in 1954, according to a city directory.

The hunting

Paranormal Diagnostics also recorded video in the hotel’s attic, from where footsteps often have been heard despite a lack of floor boards on which to walk. As a machine pumped smoke through a maze of laser lights, the team called out to an Evelyn Epright, as well as to the suspected children, asking them if they wanted to play and if they liked ice cream.

In the basement Saturday night, Shannon reluctantly agreed to participate in the third and latest investigation because “the spirits seem drawn to her,” her husband said. She said she saw someone suddenly poke their head out from behind McCaffrey, as he and her husband stood next to each other videotaping, the ghost hunter with a thermal imaging camera.

“Honey, did you just poke your head out behind Rob?” she asked.

“Uh, no,” her husband replied.

Shannon then bolted up the basement stairs in fright.

“I think it’s safe to say this place definitely is haunted, but by who or what, we don’t know,” McCaffrey said. “We’re going to compile all our evidence over the next couple of weeks and see what we can find out.”

When not busy busting ghosts, Paranormal Diagnostics Group lectures at local libraries and colleges. On Thursday, McCaffrey and Orloff will discuss and give a presentation about various investigations. The 11 a.m. event at the Bridgewater Township Library will focus on Revolutionary War sites and their history but also will demonstrate ghost-hunting equipment, McCaffrey said.

The ghost hunters also will visit Raritan Valley Community College in the North Branch section of Branchburg on May 20. For more information, email[email protected] or like Paranormal Diagnostics Group on Facebook.

–Written Bob Makin on April 9, 2014

<3 Anna