Nightcrawlers

16

INTO THIN AIR?

August 21, 1958:

Haymarket—Apparently, Charles Nielsen and his wife Clarice have disappeared from their Charing Street home without a trace. Their handsome little brick ranch stands empty some two miles outside of Haymarket. The house is filled with a lifetime of belongings and, according to police, a quantity of cash that “someone deciding to make a run would surely take with them.” The only thing peculiar, according to Bayfield County Sheriff’s deputies, is that the front door was found standing open and an odd note was left on the kitchen table complaining that “those voices from below” were becoming unbearable…

MYSTERIOUS TRAGEDY

November 12, 1962:

Bayfield County—Donald Brazelton was found dead in his Bellac Road farmhouse Wednesday evening by a neighbor, Douglas Rogers, who claimed Brazelton had been acting oddly for some time. Police report that the Brazelton farmhouse had been completely boarded up—windows and doors—from the inside as if Brazelton had been afraid of something getting in. Neighbor Rogers said, “I knew something like this was going to happen. I just knew it. I think if I live to be a hundred, I’ll never get the sight of Don’s face out of my mind—all twisted up like he was scared to death…”

FARMER’S FIELD COLLAPSES

May 28, 1966:

Bayfield County—Watch your step, so says John Crywck, and he ought to know: on May 26 several hundred feet of his east pasture simply collapsed. Luckily, there were no animals grazing in said area. “It happened in the middle of the night, I guess,” Crywck said. “I slept through the whole thing.” Upon waking, Crywck discovered that a good portion of his eastern pasture, what he deems is “enough to drop more than one good-sized barn into,” had simply fallen into a great central pit some fifteen feet deep. The pit is even now filling with subterranean water.

Old-timers in the Haymarket area might recall a similar episode that occurred back before World War I at the old Bayfield County Cemetery. In that instance, no less than thirty graves and part of the north wall collapsed into a thirty-foot trench due to sub-surface subsidence.

Both of these peculiar episodes bring to mind certain colonial folk tales about the entire region being honeycombed with passages and caves. Dr. Carl Lancer of the University of Wisconsin’s Geology Department says there might be a grain of truth to the old tales. “Bayfield County sits on the copper-bearing Keweenaw range of ancient Proterozoic rock. People have been mining copper in both northwestern Wisconsin and upper Michigan for centuries,” he explained. “There’s no doubt miles of naturally occurring limestone caves exist beneath the surface, and probably miles of shafts cut out by prehistoric Indian miners and the later white colonists. Most towns in Bayfield County are probably sitting atop ancient mines. So it’s not surprising that the earth might give from time to time…”

THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT?

June 7, 1969:

Bayfield County—Apparently so. Roger Horsley and family have decided that enough is enough. In 1968 they purchased an abandoned farm on Old School Road bordering the Namekagon River. A prime chunk of real estate with no less than fifty wooded acres. The Horsleys, who had retired from Madison, built their dreamhouse, a beautiful Cape Cod of well over $100,000. Despite continued complaints lodged with the sheriff’s office, strange things continued to happen on the old farm: The sound of fists rapping on windows and doors in the dead of night, figures seen skulking about the property, voices heard whispering after dark. “Enough is enough,” Horsley said. “People will think we’re crazy, but they haven’t seen the things we’ve seen. A high-crime inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood would be peaceful compared to this place…”

HUNTERS VANISH WITHOUT A TRACE

November 25, 1972:

Sawyer County—There are oddities and then there are oddities. Not six weeks after two trout fishermen disappeared north of Spider Lake, three hunters, it seems, have joined them. Paul Marsalis, Frank Pence, and Wilbur Stanchely, all of Red Cliff, have gone missing. The three have hunted together for years, according to Pence’s wife. She reported them overdue to both Sawyer County and Bayfield County sheriff’s offices. A search party located their tent camper on the Namekagon River in the northern Sawyer County/southern Bayfield County area. Sheriff’s deputies admitted that the camper was “in a terrible state,” the canvas torn and camping equipment scattered about. A great deal of blood was found in the camper and officials are not ruling out foul play. “It looked like the mother of all bears went at that camper,” another hunter who prefers to remain anonymous said upon reaching the site with sheriff’s deputies. “Everything was smashed and broken, sleeping bags shredded. There were rifles laying around and it smelled like they’d been fired…”

THE STRANGE SAGA OF GHOST-BOY

June 20, 1973:

Pigeon Lake—When it comes to offbeat and spooky tales, Wisconsin has no shortage. Particularly in Bayfield County, where the tradition of dark legendry and old wives’ tales are particularly rich and apparently still quite active. Well, with that in mind, it’s time to add a new chapter: Ghost-Boy. Yes, you heard me right. Ghost-Boy. If you are conjuring up images of Casper, the Friendly Ghost, then you are way out in left field. For according to the dozen or so reliable witnesses, Ghost-Boy is anything but friendly. Yes, our local haunt has a nasty tendency to knock on doors in the dead of night and peek through windows. He is described by witnesses as being “hunched over like sort of an evil dwarf or goblin” and having a face “all white and distorted with big yellow teeth.” And if that isn’t enough to make you sleep with the lights on, consider this: Ghost-Boy’s eyes are said to be luminous.

A local farmer claims Ghost-Boy has been making away with his livestock… a dozen chickens and Guinea hens and three suckling pigs to boot. That he has found the remains of the animals scattered in the woods. A very hungry ghost, indeed.

But if you’re inclined to laugh this off, consider Mabel Willard of Old Pond Road, just outside Haymarket. Mrs. Willard, a staunch and independent widow of 83, says, “I’m not like the others… I ain’t afraid to admit there’s funny business in this county and always has been. Problem around these parts is that folks are afraid they’ll be laughed at. Not me. Laugh all you want, but it don’t change things. Folks around here have seen plenty they won’t even admit to themselves.” And Mrs. Willard, apparently, knows of what she speaks, for Ghost-Boy has made more than one appearance on her property. “First time, I was getting ready for bed when I hear a sort of scratching at the door,” she claims, “and then a scraping at the living room window. That’s when I saw that awful, grotesque face. Just white and grinning with a big mouth of teeth. I saw it, all right.”

So if you’re inclined to dismiss this as sheer fantasy, just remember, you’ve been warned. If Ghost-Boy comes scratching at your window, you have no one to blame but yourself…

MAUSOLEUM VANDALIZED

October 15, 1977:

Pigeon Lake—In what local officials are calling “simply a horrendous travesty,” a family mausoleum at the Angel of Hope Catholic Cemetery outside Pigeon Lake has been broken into by person or persons unknown. The perpetrators gained entrance by smashing the lock on the outside of the vault door. Whereupon, they rummaged through the contents of the Goodchild family mausoleum, pulling caskets from their berths and smashing them to kindling. Cemetery caretakers found the atrocity early this morning and immediately contacted the county sheriff. “I hope I never see something like this again,” John Pastula, caretaker, said. “Coffins smashed and skeletons tossed to the four winds. There were bones everywhere, dozens and dozens of bones.” The sheriff’s department revealed that no one had been interred in the Goodchild vault in over thirty years and the last remaining member of the Goodchild family lives in another state. “I’ve heard about some pretty nasty Halloween pranks in my time,” Deputy Sheriff Matthew Godfrey is quoted as saying, “but this is just profane.” And profane it surely is. Authorities say they can think of no reason someone would commit such a vile act of desecration…

BOY SCOUTS STILL MISSING

June 10, 1982:

Bayfield County—

For the fourth straight day, sheriff’s deputies and no less than 100 volunteers beat the brush in the Ghost Lake area just off County Highway M searching for three Boy Scouts from Ashland who disappeared there June 6 on an overnight campout. According to scout master Roger Halen, the troop had set up on Ghost Creek for two days of fishing and hiking and woodcraft. On the night of June 5th, apparently Mike Trombly, 13, and Douglas Kestila, 11, both of Ashland, ventured out after the other scouts were asleep with Troy Bakely, 13. Bakely was found the next morning, wandering up the side of Highway M in something of a daze. He is currently under observation at Hayward Memorial and is expected to make a complete recovery. According to Bakely, he and the other boys had heard stories from older scouts that if you went up to the junction of Ghost Creek and Ghost Lake after midnight, you would “be able to see Indian ghosts coming up out of the ground.” Although Bakely is obviously distraught, he claims that both Trombly and Kestila were pulled down into the mud by what he calls “white, scary hands.” At this point, Bayfield County Sheriff Albert Susskind said he will not “overlook anything, even the wildest speculation…”

A YULETIDE MYSTERY

December 24, 1985:

Haymarket—Just in time for Christmas, yet another tragedy to fill our overflowing cups with. A sparkling new log home outside Haymarket has been found empty. Gone are Richard Shoen, his wife Ruth and three children. The children reportedly told friends of seeing “weird, spooky figures looking in their windows at night.” Police are investigating…

SHADOWS IN THE NIGHT

January 13, 1989:

Pigeon Lake—Paul Barrington, a retired Ashland councilman, was rushed to Hayward Area Memorial Hospital after suffering a heart attack. His wife said that “funny things” had been going on around their secluded nineteenth-century farmhouse. That her husband had seen some “weird shape” lurking around an outbuilding and had given chase with a shotgun. He was found in the snow, barely conscious, by his wife. Tracks found in the drifted snow nearby were called “curious, to say the least” by investigating sheriff’s deputies…