Posted on 04/19/2006 8:09:34 PM PDT by CurlyBill
BY MICHAEL BURKE
Journal Times
RACINE — It’s just possible that someday a guest of Hughes House Bed & Breakfast could glimpse something otherworldly or hear inexplicable bumps in the night.
Several people say they have seen and/or heard apparitions and other strange phenomena at 1500 S. Main St. Dan Dashner, co-owner of the house with Mike Reynolds, is one of them.
“Mike and I both have seen things and heard things,” Dashner said. He realizes that, in some people’s eyes, uttering that makes him crazy or a liar. But he stands by his statement.
Those who do believe in the supernatural take note of the fact that a previous resident of the house, Helen Kearney, died there in a fire in 1945. Another former resident, a man, died there after a long illness.
Dashner has several stories about odd occurrences during his three years in the house.
One of them starts with the night he awoke to a crash at 3:15 a.m. The glass of water he keeps on a side table each night was on the floor, shattered. Dashner had never knocked it off before but figured that’s what had happened.
The next night, the glass fell off again and broke. Dashner said he had been sleeping on his side, facing the other way, at the time. Again, the clock said 3:15 a.m.
The third night, against his better judgment, Dashner placed a glass of water on the side table. But he put it on the other side of the lamp from him, seemingly well out of reach.
When he was startled awake that night, the glass had been smashed onto the floor, with some shards of glass ending up 12 feet away. The time was precisely 3:15 a.m. Then Dashner stopped his glass of water routine.
About a year ago, he said, he was loading the dishwasher early in the morning and caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned and saw a white, misty, formless shape moving toward the bathroom.
What Reynolds saw from inside the bathroom was a man; then he was gone.
People have also heard footsteps coming from the west wing when no one could possibly have been there, Dashner continued. He called them “definite footsteps — deliberate, very real.”
Rob Tomes, a carpenter, said he had his own strange experience in the house’s west wing about two years ago, as he worked on the second-floor landing.
“I saw some kind of movement down the hallway,” Tomes said. He thought he saw in the hallway someone who then went into the small rear bedroom.
“I thought somebody had got in,” Tomes said. “I walked down there, saying, ‘Hello, hello.’ It was upright, like a person. I thought maybe I caught a shadow of someone going into the room.”
When he entered the room, it was empty, although there is no other way out of there.
“After I heard that a lady died in the house, I thought it might be something supernatural,” Tomes said. “I’m not positive, but I know I saw something.”
Those accounts, and more, sound much like what Joyce Wilde of Racine saw while she rented part of the circa 1899 house.
About the man who died there, she said matter-of-factly, “It was his ghost that we kept seeing in the kitchen. ... It looked like him, and had the outline of his head and face, and was the same height.”
Wilde said whenever changes were being made to the house, the sightings and strange sounds would increase. “These spirits, whenever there was any kind of upset, we would see them a lot.” “You could just get a sense of their curiosity ... about what’s being changed.”
Wilde added, “I think if people were aware of the history of that house, and they open themselves up to it, I’m sure they can see (spirits).”
Dashner said he doesn’t plan to mention the strange occurrences on the Hughes House Web site. “But if people ask or comment or see something, my plan is to keep a journal.”
If your state records deeds like here in PA, you should be able to trace back the ownership through public records. It takes some time in the county courthouse in what we call the Register of Deeds office. I went through this a couple of years ago when trying to document ownership of a property adjacent to ours. I'll try to remember how it worked. . .
Assuming a similar system as ours, when you bought your property, the previous owner of the property was listed on your deed. In addition to the name of the previous owner, your deed should give the location at which the previous owner's deed was registered. It's listed in terms of book and page number. At the courthouse, you should be able to request microfiche or a deed book corresponding to the identifying numbers. In this way, you can look up your previous owner's deed. On that deed will be the next link back in the chain of ownership - previous owner and book/page number of HIS deed. In this fashion, you can trace back the ownership of the property.
It can get tricky for several reasons. First, property boundaries can change through subdivision, adjacent land acquisition or eminent domain actions. You'll need to read the descriptions carefully. Second, sometimes the old deeds are hard to read because they're handwritten and faded. Third, there can be gaps in the information.
I encountered a gap because a portion of the adjacent property was seized for road widening in 1963. Apparently the state compensated the property owners, knocked down the house, and used most of the land, but never actually changed the title. The land did not show a change of ownership, and yet the county and township records show no owner and no tax liability. The land appears for all practical purposes to have no owner. We were able to piece it together because my husband remembered the name of a childhood playmate who lived there. It can be a puzzle, but also very interesting.
"Not really sure what to think, but at least I don't think we're nuts anymore."
There's a lot more here than we understand. I thought I encountered my dead grandfather (who died well before I was born; he himself was born in 1876) as a child, when I was looking through an old trunk in the attic of my grandmother's house. He wasn't especially happy that I was messing around with his Sunday-go-to-meeting hat. It was dismissed by my parents as an oveactive imagination, but I don't know where a seven year old would have picked up "Sunday-go-to-meeting," which was archaic speech even then. So, I may have had an experience, or maybe not. I don't rule it out.
At the risk of sounding a little new-agey, though, I'd say if this presence or emanation doesn't bad-vibe you, don't sweat it too hard. But, if you're particularly religious, you might gain some comfort and insight by asking your clergy about it (in confidence of course, people do gossip). If my grandmother had known about my little experience, she would have run upstairs, told that "haint" to be gone, and rebuked it, whether it looked like her late husband or not, lol.
What do you do when a young child looks over your shoulder and says "Who's that?" ... or "Who is the man that comes into my room at night?" ... or "who is the man in the basement?" ... or even "Why is there a lady walking down the hall every night?" What do you do when a dog or cat refuses to enter a room? I'm not sure about you folks, but I would LOVE to stay in a house like that!!!
I'm a Christian, and I don't think there's anything to worry about. Interesting story. Did you actually see him?
Interesting theory, stimulation of the temporal lobe can do the same thing. However, neither would explain objects flying across the room or visions of mists or outlines of ghosts, or voices.
Bump for later.
I remember thinking so, but it was a little confusing, because he was wearing the hat I had in my hands.
Not according to the info I have.
Um, if it seems at all threatening, leave. Same thing if your faithful pet won't go in a room and seems scared of it for no reason. Something *bad* happened there. Friend of mine discovered that one the hard, hard way.
I'm more of a skeptic than not, but I've come to the conclusion that bad events are more likely to leave an "echo" of themselves behind than good things.
Also, please put me on your ping list.
"Friend of mine discovered that one the hard, hard way."
Interesting. Can you elaborate? And, I agree, by the way, that intensity of emotion seems to play a role in what seems to be a part of the past that is still here in some way. Especially negative emotion.
But being in Racine, the ghost was reportedly shot.
Or perhaps.. "Bang thy head against thy wall repeatedly for 3 hours a day. Allah commands thee!"
Should I ask if the ghost survived the shooting?
That might work, lol.
Thank you for that info!
Thanks. It's informative if nothing else.
Short enough story, sure.
A friend of mine bought a house in Fort Worth. We were coworkers at the time, and one night I had to give him a ride home. He invited me in, I hung out there a while, met his live-in girlfriend and in the normal course of events, had to use the restroom.
The moment I closed the bathroom door, I got the sense that something was horribly, terribly, utterly wrong. Every alarm bell in my head went off. Looking around carefully, I didn't see anything wrong, yet something was ringing those little mental alarm bells. I cautiously unzipped, used the facilities, and bolted out of that bathroom.
I didn't say anything to my friend that night, but the next day I mentioned that he had an odd bathroom and that he might want to redecorate it in cheerier colors. (This was painted in the standard bathroom beige, nothing strange about it.) He gave me a strange look and said that I wasn't the first person to say that and that he'd think about it. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of it.
Except that two weeks later, his girlfriend attempted suicide in the tub in that restroom. She failed, but that got me to thinking. I did some research and found out that the previous owner had successfully committed suicide (by hanging) in that restroom - but instead of hanging himself by the shower bar and snapping his neck, he'd botched the job and slowly strangled himself. There were also hints that he maybe hadn't been the first, either.
My friend moved out *very* shortly thereafter and quickly sold the house.
I didn't see anything in that bathroom, but I sure *felt* something. My friend didn't seem to notice anything - until, of course, the g/f tried to off herself.
For the record, not only did I not know *anything* about the house, I didn't even live in the state at the time the previous owner offed himself. And none of the inhabitants of the house had any inkling that this had happened - I saw the disclosure paperwork afterwards, and it said nothing about homicides, suicides, or deaths in the house.
Not the first time that the alarm bells went off in my head for no immediately apparent reason, but the first time I'd found out why so quickly thereafter.
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