Summerwind Info from Wikipedia

Blog Owner's Note:Please note the following information came from Wikipedia. A site where you can sign up and then upload information or edit information that is all ready there. And you don't even have to have any proof or anything. You can just type in anything you want. So...take the following with a grain of salt.

Summerwind was constructed during the early 20th century as a fishing lodge. In 1916 it was purchased by Robert P. Lamont, who employed Chicago architects Tallmadge and Watson to substantially remodel the property and convert it into a mansion. The renovations took two years to complete, and led to the near total reconstruction of significant portions of the property.

Lamont remained in Summerwind for approximately 15 years, during which time the maids told Lamont that the mansion was haunted, but he did not believe them. However, he is then reported to have abandoned the property suddenly in the mid 1930s after witnessing an apparition in the mansion's kitchen. Local legend holds that he and his wife were eating dessert in the kitchen, when the door to the basement started to shake open, revealing the ghostly form of a man. Robert Lamont was reported to have taken one look at the ghost, and pulled out a pistol. The ghost swung the door shut and Lamont squeezed off two shots in its direction, before fleeing the residence with his wife. The ghost is said to be angelica.

During the 1940s, the property was sold to the Keefer family, who maintained the mansion, but never lived there on a permanent basis. Some accounts place the sale after Lamont's death in 1948. Others place it around 1941, prior to his death.

After the death of Mr. Keefer, his widow subdivided the land and sold it. However, the plot containing Summerwind reverted to Mrs. Keefer several times after various purchasers experienced financial difficulties and were unable to keep up payments. During this period there were no specific paranormal incidents recorded, but purchasers reported unease about the property, and it remained largely unoccupied.

After remaining vacant for some time, the house became the residence of Arnold and Ginger Hinshaw and their four children, who moved in during the early 1970s. It is from this time onwards that most of the haunting reports originate.

After taking up residence, the Hinshaws reported a number of strange occurrences, ranging from flickering shadows that appeared to move down the hallways and soft voices that stopped when they entered rooms, to unexplained electrical/mechanical problems and sash windows that raised themselves. They also reported seeing the ghost of an unidentified woman who appeared several times in the vicinity of the house's dining room.

Urban legend holds that after experiencing extended difficulties retaining workmen the Hinshaws decided to renovate the house themselves. During these renovations, Arnold is said to have removed a shoe drawer from a fitted closet and discovered a hidden recess behind it. In that recess Arnold discovered what he at first took to be the remains of an animal. However, because of the cramped entrance, he could not be certain of what he had seen. Later that day, he sent his daughter Mary into the recess to see what the unidentified object really was, only for Mary to discover a human skull and strands of black hair. No report of the find was ever made to the police and the veracity of the legend has never been determined. The body was reported to have vanished when Ginger's father and brother investigated the recess, several years later.

Within six months of moving into Summerwind, Arnold suffered a breakdown and Ginger attempted suicide. Arnold was sent for treatment and Ginger moved in with her parents in Granton, Wisconsin. The land, once again, reverted to Mrs. Keefer.

Years later, Ginger's father, Raymond Bober, announced plans to buy Summerwind and turn it into a restaurant with the help of his wife, Marie, and son, Karl. The Bober's attempts to renovate the house suffered from many of the same problems as the Hinshaw's attempt. Bober's son Karl; who traveled to the house alone in order to arrange estimates and pest control work, also reported a variety of unnerving events including voices and an apparent supernatural reenactment of the alleged 1930s Lamont incident.

At this time, workmen also reported feeling uncomfortable and complained of missing tools and other happenings. One example is that when they attempted to draw blueprints, the dimensions of the house would change, with some rooms producing larger measurements on some days than on others. Photographs taken of the same location, on the same film, were also said to show a single room as several different sizes. even if they were taken seconds apart, or to show furnishings that had been in the room when the Hinshaws had lived there, but which had since been removed.

After experiencing several apparently supernatural incidents, and a number of conventional difficulties, Bober abandoned his plans to convert Summerwind by 1979 (at which point the land again reverted to Mrs. Keefer) and instead applied for permission to operate a concessions stand nearby, but his application was turned down because of a problem with local ordinances.

Bober documented his experiences in Summerwind and published them in 1979, under the pseudonym “Wolffgang Von Bober”.

In November 2005 the Discovery Channel aired an episode of A Haunting about the Hinshaw's experiences when they lived at Summerwind.

After Raymond Bober relinquished the property it was sold one more time. but again reverted to Mrs. Keefer. In 1986, by which time the mansion had fallen into disrepair, Summerwind was purchased from the estate of Mrs. Keefer by a group of three investors. Later the land and the ruins was sold to a Canadian family, who live in Richmond Hill, Ontario. They report frequent unexplained hauntings.

There have been several largely unconfirmed reports by people who have investigated the house in its abandonment, often involving objects flying around, disappearing and reappearing, and photographs with odd shadows in them. Late night clandestine visitors have also reported that they have seen Summerwind mansion as it would have appeared in an earlier time. Subsequent visits then revealed the true run-down condition of the manor.

In June 1988, Summerwind was struck by lightning several times, resulting in a fire that destroyed much of the mansion. Today, only the house's chimney stacks, foundations, and stone steps remain.

According to accounts given by Bober, the events at Summerwind can be traced back to 18th century American explorer and writer Jonathan Carver, who Bober believed was haunting the site.

In his 1979 book, Bober claimed to have been contacted by Carver, who told him that he was searching the grounds looking for deeds to the northern third of Wisconsin, which were built into the footing of Summerwind 130 years after his death. They had been granted to him by Sioux Indians as a gift for settling a fight between two Sioux tribes that nearly led to war. Bober believed that Carver had wanted the past owners of the house to help him find the deeds, or to make way for people who would. Despite searching the house's foundations, Bober was unable to locate any sign that the deeds had been buried there.

The only connection between Carver and the house itself is that the house falls under the jurisdiction of the elusive deed. No other explanation was offered by Bober as to why someone would put the deed into the foundation of Summerwind.

In 1983, freelance writer Will Pooley contacted Herb Dickman, one of the men involved in setting Summerwind's foundations in 1916. Dickman said he had no knowledge of any foreign objects being built into the mansion's footings, or of any anomalies surrounding them.

Related Posts:Since there are so many stories in Summerwind, I am going to make a page just for them.

Ghosts Had A Favorite Haunt

This article came from the Milwaukee Journal.

Oct. 21, 1985

Haunted Heartland Series.

THE NAME "Summerwind" evokes a picture of a stately home, light, and airy, expansive windows open to the breeze. So it once was. But now this mansion, on the shore West Bay Lake in Wisconsin's Vilas County, is a dilapidated ruin, its windows broken, its roof rotted and its dormers filled with bats. Summerwind is the most notorious haunted house in Wisconsin......

The mansion was built in 1916 by Robert P. Lamont, who in 1929 became President Herbert Hoover's secretary of commerce. For years, it was the Lamont family's summer home, a quiet haven in the North Woods far from the hustle and heat of Washington D. C.

Upon Lamont's death, Summerwind was sold.....and sold again. The house has had a number of owners, yet is still known locally as the "Lamont Place." Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened there.....or did it?

For six months in the early 1970's, Arnold Hinshaw, his wife Ginger, and their six children lived at Summerwind. Within these few months Arnold was driven mad by ghosts and his wife attempted suicide.

From the day the Hinshaws moved into the house they saw vague shapes flitting down the hallways and heard voices mumbling in dark corners. And every evening while they ate dinner, the ghost of a woman the family called Mathilda floated back and forth beyond the French doors to the living room.

For a brief time Ginger wondered if they were all imagining these things; but after numberous unexplained occurrences, she decided they were not imagining things. These occurrences included: A new water heater broke down, but started working again before the repairman could be called: the same thing happened with a new water pump. Other appliances failed, too, thyen mysteriously fixed themselves.

Windows and doors that were closed at night were open in the morning. A heavy window in the master bedroom, without sash weights or pulleys, was difficult to raise. One morning Arnold closed the window and started downstairs. Remembering that he'd left his waller on the dresser, he returned to the bedroom. The window was open! He drove a spike into the window casing. The window stayed closed. Months later, the spike was removed with a crowbar, but no nail hole could be seen!

The couple hired subcontractors to undertake restoration projects in the house, but invariably the workers failed to show up, pleading illness or non-delivery of materials. A few told Ginger that they refused to work on that house.

The couple then realized that they would have to do the work on the hosue themselves.

One day they began painting a closet. A large shoe drawer was installed along the closet's back wall. The Hinshaw's rempoved it in order to prevent the paint from sticking. Behind the drawer they discovered a dark space. It aroused their curiosity.

Ginger got a flashlight and Arnold wedged himself into the openeing up to his shoulders. He beamed the light back and forth, then suddenly backed out of the opening. He was speechless -- a skeleton was jammed into the compartment!

Because there was a lot of plumbing and structural material in the way, Arnold couldn't squeeze far enough into the opening to be sure. The Hinshaw children then arrived from school, and their parents told them about the bones. Ginger said a bear had been trapped in the wall while the house was being built.

Their daughter, Mary volunteered to crawl into the space with the flashlight. Moments later she yelled that she saw a head of dirty black hair, a brown dried-up arm, and part of a leg.

The other children, thinking it was a game, wanted to see the bones, too. Each took a turn. And each emerged serious and quiet. Ginger made them promise to never say a word to anyone.

After the children skipped off, Arnold and Ginger speculated how the body had gotten there. Arnold suggested there may have been a murder while the house was being built and the body was dumped there. But the Hinshaws did not call the police, figuring nothing could be done about the crime since so many years had elapsed. Besides, most of the crew who had worked on the house and known about the crime would probably be dead anyway.

About this time Arnold began to stay up late and play the Hammond organ the couple had bought before moving to Summerwind. He always enjoyed playing in the evenings; it was a relaxing hobby. But now Arnold's playing became a frenetic jumble of melodies and chords, growing louder by the hour. Ginger pleaded with him to stop, but he said the demonds in his head demanded that he keep playing. Night after night, the family was kept awake until dawn by the awful music. The children were so frightend they huddled together in one bedroom.

Arnold soon had a breakdown, and not long after that Ginger attempted suicide. While Arnold was undergoing treatment, Ginger and her children moved in with her parents in Granton, in Clark County, Wisconsin. Ginger and Arnold eventually divorced. After Ginger regained her health, she married George Olsen. Her new life was happy and tranquil, and the days at Summerwind seemed only a distant nightmare.

But the past came rushing back.

Ginger's father, Raymond Bober, a popcorn vender, announced that he was going to buy Summerwind. He and his wife Marie would open a restaurant in the mansion and eventually turn it into an inn. They figured its beautiful North Woods location on a quiet lake would attract many guests.

Ginger was horrified. Although she had never given her parents all the details of her frightening experiences in the house, she begged them not to buy it. But Bober's mind was made up. He knew the place was haunted and said he knew who the ghost was -- Jonathan Carver! According to Bober, the 18th century English explorer was searching for an old deed to the land granted him by the Sioux Indians in return for negotiating peace between two warring nations. The grant supposedly took in most of the northen third of Wisconsin. The deed was locked in a black box and sealed in the foundation of Summerwind. Carver's ghost sought Bober's help in locating it.

But how did Bober know this? From communicating with Carver through dreams, hypnotic trances and a Ouija board, he claimed. At least thats what he wrote in his book "The Carver Effect," published in 1979 under the name Wolfgang von Bober.

Shortly after Bober bought Summerwind, he, his son Karl, Ginger and her new husband, George, spent a day inspecting the mansion. The group was just leaving the second floor when George spotted the closet at the end of the hall. He began pulling out drawers and looking behind them. Ginger begged him to stop.

George dropped his flashlight and asked what she was talking about. Until now, Ginger had never told anyone about the discovery of the corpse. Sitting in the kitchen later, fortified by hot coffee, Ginger told the entire story.

Undaunted, the men gathered lanterns and returned to the closet. Karl insisted on going into the space first. In a moment he backed out. It was empty!

Ginger's father and her husband also inspected the area. They saw pipe,s beams and insulaton.....but no body! Where had it gone? Who had removed it? Why? Or, had there ever been a body there in the first place?

Over Labor Day weekend Karl traveled alone to Summerwind. He had gone to get a repair estimate on the well and also to look for an exterminator who could rid the house of bats. He thought he might even trim some trees and tidy up the lawn if the weather was good.

It started to rain the first day and Karl ran upstairs to close a window. In the dark hallway, a deep voice called his name. The young man spun around. Karl saw no one. Perhaps it was a friend outside. Karl looked out a window onto the courtyard, but saw no one.

Karl closed the window and went downstairs. When he reached the living room, he heard two shots. A heavy caliber pistold, he surmised. Close by. Was someone hunting on the property? Karl started for the back door.

Once in the kitchen Karl found the room filled with acrid smoke of gunpowder. Someone had fired from inside the house! But an intruder could never have entered or escaped without being heard; the back door always stuck and had to be noisily pushed open or slammed shut. The other doors were all barred on the inside. Karl made a through search of the kitchen. He discovered two bullet holes in the door leading to the basement. But the holes were old ones that had been worn smooth on the edges! Karl left the house that afternoon.

In his book, Bober wrote that the original owner of the house, Robert Lamont, whome he called Patterson, had fired two shots at a ghost. But that had been decades ago.

Bober's attempts to renovate the house were as futile as those of his daughter. Workmen refused to stay on the job, complaining about being watched by evil eyes. Bober's wife, Marie, understood the complaint. She was always uneasy around the house. Everytime she sat in the sunny courtyard, she felt someone watching her from the windows of the master bedroom.

On one occasion, her husband found one of the windows open that he knew he had closed a few minutes before, but he never mentioned it to marie for fear of alarming her.

If the ghost of Jonathan Carver wanted help in locating his deed, why did he manifest himself in such diabolical ways? Bober explained that Carver did not want any improvements made in the property and that he resented anyone living in the house or renovating it in anyway.

The Bobers never attempted to stay in Summerwind overnight. Instead, they cooked and slept in a camper on the grounds. And Bober spent many days searching the basement and chipping away at the foundation in efforts to locate the black box containing Carver's deed.

Will Pooley, a free-lance writer, visited Summerwind in the fall of 1983 to gather facts. His research had revealed that even if Bober had unearthed Carver's deed, it would have been worthless. Not only had the British goverment ruled against an individual's purchase of lands from the Indians, it was also later determined that the Sioux had never owned land east of the Mississippi River anyway. In addition, although the original deed apparently was found in an old land office in Wausau, Wisconsin during the 1930's, historians argue that it is very unlikely that Carver ever traveled as far north as Vilas County. Thus, how could the deed have gotten into the foundation of a house built 136 after the explorer had died?

Pooley talked to dozens of local residents who had some connection with Summerwind. They revealed the history of the house.

Herb Dickman of Land O'Lakes helped pour the foundation for the Lamont Mont mansion in 1916; he recalled that the only thing they put in there was stone. There was no black box containing a deed. Dickman also lived in the house for three months after it was finsihed. He said nothing unusual ever occurred.

Gene Knuth, Resident of the area for over 60 years, told Pooley that children started calling the mansion haunted only after it had been abandoned and became dilapidated. It never had that repuation while it was occupied.

Carolyn Ashby of Land O'Lakes lived in the mansion as a child durning the summers in the early 1940's. She didn't remember any ghosts, but admitted that the place seemed spooky, especially at night, because of its many rooms.

Other neighbors told writer Pooley that the Bobers spent less that two full summers on the estate. After Bober abandoned plans for his restaurant, he tried to get a permit to operate a concession stand near the house, but local ordinace prohibited it.

There is some uncertainty as to whether Bober actually owned Summerwind. One area resident told Pooley that Raymond Bober had tried to buy the property on a land contract, but was unsuccessful.

Is the myster of the haunted house based on publicity and the deterioration of a once-magnificent home? Summerwin's neighbors think so. And they resent strangers tramping over their lawns and driveways and knocking on their doors. Today, even charted buses disgorge ghost-hunters on the grounds of the Lamont mansion.

What do the visitors see? Only the gray skeleton of a Victorian relic in a grove of pines. Yet, when winds whine through the shattered windows, and doors creak on rusty hinges, and bats fly low in a sullen sky, it's easy to believe that something lurks behind those weathered walls

But, of course, everyone knows there's no such thing as a ghost. A longtime area resident Gene Knuth remarked, "I don't beleive in ghosts -- but I've been afraid of them all my life."

From the book Haunted Heartland wrote by Beth Scott & Michael Norman.

Blog Owner's note:In the 1980's Summerwind was struck by lightening, and burnt to the ground. Only pieces remain standing.

Related Posts: Summerwind Part 1
Summerwind Part 2
Summerwind Part 3

Summerwind Mansion - Part 2

This article is from the www.examiner.com

April 19, 1:06 PM by Kathie Kessler

Summerwind – Part 2

After learning her father was buying Summerwind as a business venture, Ginger finally broke down and told him the experiences she and her family had while they lived there. Her father, Raymond Bober, didn't believe in such nonsense and went ahead with his plans.

It wasn't long before the same strange phenomenon began to happen all over again. Contractors would draw up blueprints, only to find the rooms dimensions would differ from one day to another. Even photographs taken within seconds of each other would show the rooms to look different, again some even showing furniture that had long been removed. Workman's tools would go missing, they would hear voices and some refused to work there at all.

After Raymond Bober experienced some of the same supernatural occurrences, along with a number of other conventional problems, he let the property once again revert back to Mrs. Keefer in 1979, who sold the ruins of the house and property in the 80's to come investors, until it was purchased by a Canadian family who also reported the same haunting events. In June of 1988 Summerwind was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Only the foundation, chimneys and steps remained.

What was the cause of the haunting? According to Mr. Bober, who published the book “The Carver Effect” the person haunting the property was Johnathan Carver, an American explorer who died in 1780. He said he was “contacted” by Carver who said he had been given the land as a gift after settling a dispute between two fighting Sioux Indian tribes that almost lead to war. The deed was supposedly buried somewhere on the property or in the foundation of Summerwind. Apparently he would haunt anyone who lived there until the deed was found.

No deed has ever been found. In 1983, Herb Dickman one of the original workers who laid the foundation for Summerwind in 1916 was contacted and said he remembered no objects being placed in the foundation.

In November of 2005, the Discovery Channel did “A Haunting” episode on Summerwind Mansion. You can also read the rest of the story in “The Carver Effect” written in 1979 by Raymond Bober under the pseudonym Wolffgang Von Bober.

You can view photographs of Summerwind at their website promoting “The Carver Effect” book.

See Part 1 of this story by clicking Part 1

Wisconsin’s Most Famous Haunt - Summerwind Mansion

This article is from the www.examiner.com


April 16, 9:58 AM By Kathie Kessler


Summerwind – Wisconsin's Most Famous Haunt! Part 1


Built on the beautiful shores of West Bay Lake, was Wisconsin's most famous haunted houses, Summerwind Mansion.


Constructed in the early 1900's as a fishing lodge, the property was purchased in 1916 by Robert Lamont who spent the better of 2 years renovating the property. Robert Lamont lived in the home for 15 years until he witnessed what he thought was an intruder in his kitchen. He took two shots at the man, before he realized he had just seen a ghost. He fled the home in the 1930's.


The home was sold to the Keefer family in the 40's, but they never lived there permanently. When Mr. Keefer died Mrs. Keefer began selling off parcels of the property but the house always seemed to revert back to her, as every tenant either moved out or befell some financial ruin. The property, once again abandoned, was finally sold to Arnold and Ginger Hinshaw who moved in with their children. The house was in terrible shape from weather and vandalism and required much work. Strange things would began to happen right from the beginning. A relative was out helping clean up the yard one weekend when he heard a gunshots. He looked around for nearby hunters, but was surprised by the smell of gunpowder in the kitchen and two gunshot holes in the basement door. He examined the holes, they were not recently made, they were smooth and painted over the shots from Robert Lamont over 40 years earlier!


Windows would be closed, only to be found open again the next day. Rooms would be measured for materials but when they arrived the room sizes would be drastically different. A scrap of lace curtain that hung on a curtain rod was taken down and burned more than 6 times, but would repeatedly be found re-hung in the window. Photographs taken would show furniture in the room that was no longer there.


While removing some built in cabinets, George pulled out some drawers and found a space behind one.. he got a flashlight, crawled down and what he saw was unbelievable, an old dried up, shriveled corpse of a person, that would later disappear when re-investigated, after being seen by two separate people.


Within 6 months of moving in to Summerwind, Arnold had suffered a nervous breakdown and Ginger tried to commit suicide. Fearing for their safety Ginger fled and moved back in with her parents. She eventually remarried and thought the horrors of Summerwind were behind her. Until she found out her father purchased it to turn into a bed and breakfast!


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Summer Wind Part 2
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