Summerwind

Summerwind is a haunted house in Wisconsin that has a terrifying history. It is often called the most haunted mansion in the world. Read on to discover the details of the haunting of Summerwind.

Back in the 1900s, Summerwind was called Lamont Mansion and a man called Robert Lamont lived there with his wife. When Mr Lamont moved into the house, the maids he employed told him that it was haunted. But he was a stubborn man and refused to believe in ghosts and the supernatural. However, something was about to convince him.

One evening, as he and his wife were eating dessert in the kitchen, the door to the basement began to rattle and nearly shook off its hinges. Suddenly, the door burst open and the ghostly form of a man was standing there.

Mr Lamont took one look at the ghost, and pulled out a pistol. The ghost swung the door shut and Lamont fired two shots in its direction, before fleeing the residence with his wife. The Lamonts abandoned the property that night and never returned.

After remaining vacant for some time, the haunted house became the residence of Arnold and Ginger Hinshaw and their six children, who moved into Summerwind during the early 1970s.

From the moment they set foot in Summerwind, the Hinshaws and their children started to see vague shapes and shadows flickering down the hallways. They also claimed to hear the haunting sounds of muffled voices in the darkened, empty rooms. When they would walk inside, the noise would suddenly stop.

Summerwind’s windows and doors would often open and close on their own. Eventually, Arnold had to resort to nailing all the windows shut. On one occasion, Arnold was just about to get into his car to drive to work when the vehicle suddenly burst into flames.

Most alarming of all was the ghostly shape of a black-haired woman that was often seen floating back and forth behind the French doors that led off from the dining room.

During renovations on the house, Arnold Hinshaw removed a drawer from a fitted closet and discovered a hidden recess behind it. Shining a flashlight into the recess, he could see what appeared to be the skeletal remains of an animal.

The hole was too small for him to fit through, so when his children came home from school, he convinced his daughter Mary to crawl into the recess to see what was lurking inside. Poor Mary squeezed through the narrow opening and then, all of a sudden, started to scream in horror. She discovered that the remains were not those of an animal. It was actually a human skull with strands of dirty black hair still attached to it. The grisly remains also contained an arm and a portion of a leg.

Shortly after the horrifying discovery in the hidden compartment, things started to take a turn for the worse at Summerwind. Arnold slowly began to lose his mind, staying up all night long, playing haunting organ music. His wife, Ginger, pleaded with him to stop but Arnold claimed the demons in his head demanded that he play. He often crashed the keys on the organ until dawn, frightening his wife and children so badly that they often huddled together in one bedroom, crying and cowering in fear.

Within six months of moving into Summerwind, Arnold suffered a complete breakdown and Ginger attempted suicide. Arnold was sent to a mental hospital and his wife took the children and went to live with her parents in Wisconsin. The mansion, once again, was left unoccupied.

But not for long. Ginger’s parents, Henry and Marie Bober, decided to buy Summerwind house and planned to turn it into a restaurant. Ginger begged them not to buy the disturbing old place, but they refused to listen.

When Henry Bober attempted to renovate the house, he suffered countless problems. Every time they tried to measure the rooms, the dimensions changed drastically. It seemed as if Summerwind was gradually changing shape. After hearing strange voices and seeing ghostly apparitions, builders refused to work on the property.

One day Mr Bober was in the house on his own when he heard gunshots coming from the kitchen. He rushed downstairs and threw open the kitchen door but it was empty. He smelled gunpowder in the air but the only bullet holes he could find were the ones in the basement door, lodged there years before.

Mr Bober was forced to abandon his plans to convert Summerwind into a restaurant and instead sold the building. In 1988 Summerwind was struck by lightning several times, resulting in a fire that destroyed much of the old mansion. Today, only the house’s chimney stacks, foundations, and stone steps remain. The evil lurking in Summerwind Mansion had finally succeeded in destroying itself.