The Victims of the Ft. Hood Shooting

Fort Hood Shooting Victims Had Different Reasons for Enlisting in Army

Saturday , November 07, 2009
(Fox News Website)

FORT HOOD, Texas —

The 13 people killed when an Army psychiatrist allegedly opened fire on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, included a pregnant woman who was preparing to return home, a man who quit a furniture company job to join the military about a year ago, a newlywed who had served in Iraq and a woman who had vowed to take on Usama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Here is a look at some of the victims.

———

Francheska Velez

Velez, 21, of Chicago, was pregnant and preparing to return home. A friend of Velez's, Sasha Ramos, described her as a fun-loving person who wrote poetry and loved dancing.

"She was like my sister," Ramos, 21, said. "She was the most fun and happy person you could know. She never did anything wrong to anybody."

SLIDESHOW: Fort Hood Victims

Family members said Velez had recently returned from deployment in Iraq and had sought a lifelong career in the Army.

"She was a very happy girl and sweet," said her father, Juan Guillermo Velez, his eyes red from crying. "She had the spirit of a child."

Ramos, who also served briefly in the military, couldn't reconcile that her friend was killed in this country just after leaving a war zone.

"It makes it a lot harder," she said. "This is not something a soldier expects — to have someone in our uniform go start shooting at us."

———

Capt. John Gaffaney

Gaffaney, 56, was a psychiatric nurse who worked for San Diego County, Calif., for more than 20 years and had arrived at Fort Hood the day before the shooting to prepare for a deployment to Iraq.

Gaffaney, who was born in Williston, N.D., had served in the Navy and later the California National Guard as a younger man, his family said. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he tried to sign up again for military service. Although the Army Reserves at first declined, he got the call about two years ago asking him to rejoin, said his close friend and co-worker Stephanie Powell.

"He wanted to help the boys in Iraq and Afghanistan deal with the trauma of what they were seeing," Powell said. "He was an honorable man. He just wanted to serve in any way he can."

His family described him as an avid baseball card collector and fan of the San Diego Padres who liked to read military novels and ride his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Gaffaney supervised a team of six social workers, including Powell, at the county's Adult Protective Services department. Ellen Schmeding, assistant deputy director for the county's Health and Human Services Agency, said Gaffaney was a strong leader.

He is survived by a wife and a son.

———

Pfc. Aaron Thomas Nemelka

Nemelka, 19, of the Salt Lake City suburb of West Jordan, Utah, chose to join the Army instead of going on a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, his uncle Christopher Nemelka said.

"As a person, Aaron was as soft and kind and as gentle as they come, a sweetheart," his uncle said. "What I loved about the kid was his independence of thought."

Aaron Nemelka, the youngest of four children, was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan in January, his family said in a statement. Nemelka had enlisted in the Army in October 2008, Utah National Guard Lt. Col. Lisa Olsen said.

———

Pfc. Michael Pearson

Pearson, 21, of the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook, Ill., quit what he figured was a dead-end furniture company job to join the military about a year ago.

Pearson's mother, Sheryll Pearson, said the 2006 Bolingbrook High School graduate joined the military because he was eager to serve his country and broaden his horizons.

"He was the best son in the whole world," she said. "He was my best friend and I miss him."

His cousin, Mike Dostalek, showed reporters a poem Pearson wrote. "I look only to the future for wisdom. To rock back and forth in my wooden chair," the poem says.

At Pearson's family home Friday, a yellow ribbon was tied to a porch light and a sticker stamped with American flags on the front door read, "United we stand."

Neighbor Jessica Koerber, who was with Pearson's parents when they received word Thursday their son had died, described him as a man who clearly loved his family — someone who enjoyed horsing around with his nieces and nephews, and other times playing his guitar.

"That family lost their gem," she told the AP. "He was a great kid, a great guy. ... Mikey was one of a kind."

Sheryll Pearson said she hadn't seen her son for a year because he had been training. She told the Tribune that when she last talked to him on the phone two days ago, they had discussed how he would come home for Christmas.

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Spc. Jason Dean Hunt

Hunt, 22, of Frederick, Okla., went into the military after graduating from Tipton High School in 2005 and had gotten married just two months ago, his mother, Gale Hunt, said. He had served 3 1/2 years in the Army, including a stint in Iraq.

Gale Hunt said two uniformed soldiers came to her door late Thursday night to notify her of her son's death.

Hunt, known as J.D., was "just kind of a quiet boy and a good kid, very kind," said Kathy Gray, an administrative assistant at Tipton Schools.

His mother said he was family oriented.

"He didn't go in for hunting or sports," Gale Hunt said. "He was a very quiet boy who enjoyed video games."

He had re-enlisted for six years after serving his initial two-year assignment, she said. Jason Hunt was previously stationed at Fort Stewart in Georgia.

———

Michael Grant Cahill

Cahill, a 62-year-old physician assistant, suffered a heart attack two weeks ago and returned to work at the base as a civilian employee after taking just one week off for recovery, said his daughter Keely Vanacker.

"He survived that. He was getting back on track, and he gets killed by a gunman," Vanacker said, her words bare with shock and disbelief.

Cahill, of Cameron, Texas, helped treat soldiers returning from tours of duty or preparing for deployment. Often, Vanacker said, Cahill would walk young soldiers where they needed to go, just to make sure they got the right treatment.

"He loved his patients, and his patients loved him," said Vanacker, 33, the oldest of Cahill's three adult children. "He just felt his job was important."

Cahill, who was born in Spokane, Wash., had worked as a civilian contractor at Fort Hood for about four years, after jobs in rural health clinics and at Veterans Affairs hospitals. He and his wife, Joleen, had been married 37 years.

Vanacker described her father as a gregarious man and a voracious reader who could talk for hours about any subject.

The family's typical Thanksgiving dinners ended with board games and long conversations over the table, said Vanacker, whose voice often cracked with emotion as she remembered her father. "Now, who I am going to talk to?"

———

Spc. Frederick Greene

Greene, 29, of Mountain City, Tenn., was assigned to the 16th Signal Company, Fort Hood, Texas.

———

Staff Sgt. Justin M. DeCrow

DeCrow, 32, was helping train soldiers on how to help new veterans with paperwork and had felt safe on the Army post.

"He was on a base," his wife, Marikay DeCrow, said in a telephone interview from the couple's home at Fort Gordon, Ga., where she hoped to be reunited with her husband once he finished his work at Fort Hood. "They should be safe there. They should be safe."

His wife said she wanted everyone to know what a loving man he was. The couple have a 13-year-old daughter, Kylah.

"He was well loved by everyone," she said through sobs. "He was a loving father and husband and he will be missed by all."

DeCrow's father, Daniel DeCrow, of Fulton, Ind., said his son graduated high school in Plymouth, Ind., and married his high school sweetheart that summer before joining the Army. The couple moved near Fort Gordon about five years ago, he said.

About a year ago, his son was stationed in Korea for a year. When he returned to the U.S., the Army moved him to Fort Hood while he waited for a position to open up in Fort Gordon so he could move back with his wife and daughter, Daniel DeCrow said.

DeCrow said he talked to his son last week to ask him how things were going at Fort Hood.

"As usual, the last words out of my mouth to him were that I was proud of him," he said. "That's what I said to him every time — that I loved him and I was proud of what he was doing. I can carry that around in my heart."

———

Sgt. Amy Krueger

Krueger, 29, of Kiel, Wis., joined the Army after the 2001 terrorist attacks and had vowed to take on Usama bin Laden, her mother, Jeri Krueger said.

Amy Krueger arrived at Fort Hood on Tuesday and was scheduled to be sent to Afghanistan in December, her mother told the Herald Times Reporter of Manitowoc.

Jeri Krueger recalled telling her daughter that she could not take on bin Laden by herself.

"Watch me," her daughter replied.

Kiel High School Principal Dario Talerico told The Associated Press that Krueger graduated from the school in 1998 and had spoken at least once to local elementary school students about her career.

"I just remember that Amy was a very good kid, who like most kids in a small town are just looking for what their next step in life was going to be and she chose the military," Talerico said. "Once she got into the military, she really connected with that kind of lifestyle and was really proud to serve her country."

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Pfc. Kham Xiong

Xiong, 23, of St. Paul, Minn., was a father of three whose family had a history of military service.

Xiong's father, Chor Xiong, is a native of Laos who fought the Viet Cong alongside the CIA in 1972; Chor's father, Kham's grandfather, also fought with the CIA; and Kham's brother, Nelson, is a Marine serving in Afghanistan.

"I very mad," Xiong's father said Friday. Through sniffles and tears, he said his son died for "no reason" and he has a hard time believing Kham is gone.

Kham Xiong was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan, and his sister Mee Xiong said the family would be able to understand if he would have died in battle.

"He didn't get to go overseas and do what he's supposed to do, and he's dead ... killed by our own people," Mee Xiong said.

Xiong was one of 11 siblings and came to the U.S. when he was just a toddler. He grew up in California, then moved to Minnesota with the family about 10 years ago, Chor Xiong said.

He was married and had three children ages 4, 2 and 10 months. He and his wife had moved to Texas in July, Chor Xiong said.

Xiong attended Community of Peace Academy, graduating in 2004, said high school principal Tim McGowan.

"His greatest attribute was his ability to make people smile and make people laugh. Looking back, that's the fondest memory I have — is that smile of his and that smile that he brought to my face," McGowan said.

For his father, the death of the little boy who followed his dad everywhere was hard to take. "I don't think he's dead," Chor Xiong said, then whispered, "I don't think he's dead."

———

Juanita Warman

Warman, 55, was a military physician assistant with two daughters and six grandchildren.

Her sister, Margaret Yaggie of Roaring Branch in north-central Pennsylvania, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that her sister attended Pittsburgh Langley High School and put herself through school at the University of Pittsburgh. She said her sister spent most of her career in the military.

———

Major L. Eduardo Caraveo

Caraveo, 52, arrived in the United States in his teens from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, knowing very little English said his son, also named Eduardo Caraveo.

He earned his doctorate in psychology from the University of Arizona and worked with bilingual special-needs students at Tucson-area schools before entering private practice.

His son told the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson that Caraveo had arrived at Fort Hood on Wednesday and was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. Eduardo Caraveo spoke to the newspaper from his mother's Tucson home.

His father's Web site says he offered marriage seminars with a company based in Woodbridge, Va.

———

Russell Seager

Russell Seager's uncle said he joined the Army a few years ago because he was a psychiatrist who wanted to help soldiers returning from war adapt to civilian life again. He taught at Bryant & Stratton College in Milwaukee.

The Tell Me Experiment – Three Generations

Today I was working at the Ring Farm today, as I do every day I don’t have class and every weekend. There were 300 kids and then adults, a few families and a couple of walk-ins. It was a mad house and order was soon lost as the “responsible adults” with the 300 kids weren’t very organised. Most of the families stuck together in a group, but there was one that was just the 4 of them; 2 adult women and child sisters. There were 5 of us women doing “classes” and two men running the tractors. The owner’s brother was on the tower in the corn maze keeping an eye on that.

As three of us sat at concessions waiting to see who was doing what, I was approached by the family of 4 who wanted to go through the cotton maze and corn maze. They had just gotten off the hay wagon. So I volunteered and we headed to the cotton patch. I gave my short spiel about the stages of growth, etcetera, then decided to go with them through the cotton maze.

As we walked, I talked with the  adults, I learned that their names were Nancy and Amy and they came from Franklin County. The girls were Kristen and Tori. Nancy was their grandmother, and Amy was their great-grandmother. There were three generations of the family wandering in the cotton maze. Nancy’s son (the girls’ father) had to work so he couldn’t make it (though Amy thought he was playing golf). In the corn maze Tori said that their father would be taking two days off and their mother three. I asked about they were farming families and they were, though just for awhile. Amy’s father grew cotton, hay, and corn. Amy’s husband grew corn, clover, and something else…I can’t quite remember. He did that for awhile before landing a construction job with TDOT.

I learned several things i didn’t know. I had only heard about the cotton gin in my history book. Coming from Long Island, the “rawest” cotton I’d ever seen was the cotton balls I bought at the grocery. I didn’t know a cotton plant till I was wandering through the cotton patch maze last year. I kinda looked like the caveman that saw fire for the first time. Anyway, I didn’t realise that the cotton gin only separated the cotton seeds from the cotton. Until 1950 somthing, cotton was picked by hand and put into sacks. Amy said she could only pick about 100 pounds of cotton a day but others picked 200-300 pounds per day. The sacks were weighed and payment was contingent upon weight and how clean the cotton was. By clean, they mean cotton and seeds with little to no bits of plant or bulb mixed in.

I also learned about clover. I’d seen clover mixed in with grass and all but never paid much attention to it. Apparently, farmers plant clover crops during a fields off season because they are rich in nitrogen. Then at the end of the season, the clovers are turned into the earth and it helps the earth restore the nutrients used the previous season. Clover is NOT what we find in cloves (cigarettes). There are actually cloves that are grown in tropical climates.

After we finished wandering through the cotton patch, we talked about corn and then started the corn maze. The girls wanted me to stay with them through the maze. I decided to do the maze since there was nothing else to do. The maze is cut out as Rutherford County, TN. The major communities are marked with signs that have the history and a number. We were doing ok, until we got to the back left corner. We were writing the numbers next to the stars that mark where the communities are in the maze. We got off track somehow.

All in all, we found a little over half the communities and the girls were ready to move on. They were tired and it was rather hot in the maze with the sun beating down on us. We all dressed for the cold and suffered for it. They learned about the history of some of the communities, as did I, and they told me some additional information that wasn’t on the signs. I never knew that Sam Davis was a child who was hung as a spy during the Civil War. I just always assumed (and we all know what happens when you do that) that Sam Davis was a grown man who did something great. Eaglesville was named because a freakishly large Eagle was killed in the hills behind the town.

It truly is amazing what you learn when you shut your mouth and open your ears.

The Tell Me Experiment – The Late Traveler

I was sitting in my speech class on the first day and the instructor told us to, as an assignment, go to a party. That’s right, were were to go to a party. I didn’t, of course, cause I don’t go to parties. It’s not my scene. The assignment called for us to strike up a conversation with someone and just listen. We weren’t allowed to share stories back, offer advice or anything. All we could do was ask them to tell us more or to elaborate. After tonight’s encounter, I’ve decided to keep it up and write about the people I meet.

Fast forward to tonight, Monday 12 October 2009. There was something going on in the theatre and I was nosy. We took a test in a classroom that had computers then were set free until 7 when we had to regroup in our proper class room. I wandered through the art gallery looking at exhibits which consisted of pictures of signs through out Middle TN that were mad at the Columbia Neon Sign Company. There were blue prints, pictures, drawings, and even a box of old contracts and ledger pages dating back to the 1940s. But that didn’t tell me what was going on in the theatre.

I suffered through an hour of class then during break wandered to the far side of building, past the theatre, to that restroom to clean out my coffee cup and get some water to put my powdered tea into. While in the loo, I heard a strange sound outside the door. I surmised that someone was coming with some sort of cane or walker and opened the door. A woman about 5’2” dressed in a black sweater over a red top and black pants came in using a walker with wheels in the front and tennis balls on the back legs of it. She thanked me for holding the door and headed for the handicapped stall. I held the door open for her again and she closed it behind her.

I finished cleaning and filling my cup and then repinned my hair to stall for time till the lady emerged from the stall. I knew she’d need help with the door again and it wasn’t too much trouble to wait a moment. She emerged a few moments later and teased me that I was very pretty already and didn’t need to fix my hair anymore. I told her I was repinning it so it wouldn’t fall in my face while I was writing notes. She asked me if I was a student and I said yes. She asked what I was studying to do and I gave her the reader’s digest version. She told me that in her day education wasn’t that important and that I was smart to get one. By that time she was done washing her hands and was and was ready to head back to the theatre.

As I held open the door for her again, I asked her what was going on. She said the Kiawanas were having their yearly fund raiser. They have some sort of travel presentation come and you can purchase DVDs of different countries. So she was telling me that she had traveled to England and France and several places in the US. She wanted to travel more. She said she and her husband had started to travel in their seventies because when he had retired, she was still working. She then had a stroke which stopped their traveling for awhile.

As I followed her down the wrong hall way, she mentioned that her husband had been in WWII and that he was in Japan and the Pacific theatre. He had done some traveling then and then they traveled together in their retirement. She told me I needed to get out and see things, that it would be good for me. I asked her if she needed help finding her way and she laughed and said if I wasn’t there she’d be lost for sure. We walked back to the lobby and I walked her to the theatre door and held it for her. She thanked me again and wished me a good night.

I didn’t tell me her name, and I didn’t tell her mine, but I think I know enough information that I could find her again. I’m tempted to attend a Kiawanas meeting and see if she’ll tell me more about her travels and her husband’s time over seas. I wonder if they belong to the American Legion? Stay tuned to see if I can catch up with her again.

Excerpt from “Dead Men Do Tell Tales”

THE MURDER OF PEARL BRYAN
History & Hauntings of Bobby Mackey's Music World
Wilder, Kentucky

DEAD MEN DO TELL TALES: History & Hauntings of American Crime & Mystery
by Troy Taylor

The Complete Story of the Murder of Pearly Bryan, along with the hauntings of Bobby Mackey's Music World can be found in Dead Men Do Tell Tales! Click on the Book Cover above for More info & to Order!

Wilder, Kentucky is a small town that is located just south of Cincinnati, Ohio. For many years, the town has been subject to visits from curiosity-seekers, tourists, paranormal investigators and media reporters. They come here in search of a place called Bobby Mackey’s Music World, a night club and tavern that may be one of the most haunted, and most sinister, locations in America!

The building where the nightclub is now located has a long and bloody history in the area, from its origins as a slaughterhouse to its tangible link to one of the greatest ghost stories of southern Indiana. It was constructed back in the 1850’s and was one of the largest packing houses in the region for many years. Only a well that was dug in the basement, where blood and refuse from the animals was drained, remains from the original building. The slaughterhouse closed down in the early 1890’s, but legend has it that the building was far from abandoned. According to the lore, the basement of the packing house became a ritual site for occultists. The well was used to hide the remains of small animals that were butchered during their ceremonies.

The Bryan Home in Greencastle, Indiana

Apparently, a small satanic group made up of local residents gathered at the empty building, managing to practice their rituals in secret. However, they were exposed in 1896 during one of the most spectacular murder trials ever held in northeast Kentucky. It was so large that tickets were sold to the hearing and more than 5,000 people stood outside the Newport, Kentucky courthouse for information about what was taking place inside. The trial, and the murder that spawned it, has become an integral part of Bobby Mackey’s haunted history.

 

Pearl Bryan, the daughter of a wealthy farmer, was an attractive, young woman who lived in Greencastle, Indiana in 1896. She was the youngest of 12 children from a prominent family and by the age of 22, was one of the most popular girls in the area. She had graduated from Greencastle High School in 1892 and had more than her share of suitors. Unknown to her friends and the polite members of Greencastle society, Pearl was pregnant. Her cousin and close friend, William Wood, had recently introduced her to Scott Jackson, who was then attending the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati. He and Wood, who was then attending medical school at DePauw University, became close friends but unbeknownst to Wood, Jackson was an alleged member of the occult group that met the former slaughterhouse in Wilder. Jackson's family was as well-to-do as the Bryan's and so he was immediately accepted as a suitor for Pearl. He soon seduced her however and she became pregnant. Pearl turned to Wood, who in turn, informed Jackson of the problem. He made arrangements to remedy the situation with an abortion in Cincinnati.

Pearl left her parent’s home on February 1, 1896 and told them that she was going to Indianapolis. Instead, she made plans to meet with Jackson and his roommate, Alonzo Walling, in Cincinnati. It would be the last time that her parents would ever see her alive. She was at that time five months pregnant.

Jackson’s medical skills were apparently much more inept than he had led his friend William Wood to believe. He first tried to induce an abortion using chemicals, apparently cocaine. This substance was later discovered in Pearl’s system during an autopsy. After that, he tried to use dental tools, but botched that as well. After an hour or so, Jackson and Walling has a frightened, injured and bleeding young woman on their hands and that’s when the story takes an ever darker turn.

A newspaper Illustration of
Pearl Bryan

The three of them left Cincinnati and traveled across the Ohio River and into Kentucky. Jackson took them to a secluded spot near Fort Thomas and here, he and Walling murdered Pearl Bryan. Using dental instruments, they severed her head from her body. It was a "clean cut", according to the testimony of the doctor who later examined the body. He also determined that Pearl had been alive at the time because of the presence of blood on the underside of some leaves at the murder scene.

Pearl’s body was found about two hundred feet off the Alexandria Turnpike and less than two miles from the abandoned slaughterhouse. As her head was nowhere to be found, Pearl was identified by her shoes. They bore the imprint of Louis and Hays, a Greencastle shoe company that was able to confirm that they had been sold to Pearl Bryan. During the trial that followed, Walling testified that it had been Jackson’s idea to cut Pearl up and distribute her body in the Cincinnati sewers. Only the head was taken, for which Jackson apparently had other uses. Pearl’s luxurious blond hair was later found in a valise in Jackson’s room.

Alonzo Walling

Scott Jackson

Pearl’s head was never found and legend has it that it was used during a satanic ritual at the slaughterhouse. It was then dumped into the well of blood and was lost. Jackson and Walling were brought to trial in 1897 and were quickly found guilty and sentenced to death. William Wood was later arrested and charged as an accomplice. Charges against him were dropped when he agreed to testify against the other two men. According to reports, Jackson and Walling were both offered life sentences instead of execution if they would reveal the location of Pearl’s head. Both men refused. They went to the gallows behind the courthouse in Newport on March 21, 1897. It was the last public hanging in Campbell County.

The gallows where Jackson &
Walling were Hanged

The stories spread that Jackson and Walling were afraid of suffering "Satan’s wrath" if they revealed the location of Pearl’s head. The slaughterhouse was then a closely guarded secret and other occultists would have been exposed if the two men had talked. One reporter commented later that Walling, as the noose was being slipped over his head, threatened to come back and haunt the area after his death. The writer also stated a few days later, in an article in the Kentucky Post newspaper that an "evil eye" had fallen on many of the people connected to the Pearl Bryan case. Legend has it that many of the police officials and attorneys involved in the case later met with bad luck and tragic ends.

After the trial ended, the slaughterhouse fell silent and remained empty for many years. It was eventually torn down and a roadhouse was constructed on the site. During the 1920’s, the place became known as a speakeasy and as a popular gambling joint. Local lore has it that during this period, a number of murders took place in the building. None of them were ever solved because the bodies were normally dumped elsewhere to keep attention away from the illegal gambling and liquor operation.

The Nightclub Years
After Prohibition ended in 1933, the building was purchased by E.A. Brady, better known to friends and enemies alike as "Buck". Brady turned the building in a thriving tavern and casino called the Primrose. He enjoyed success for a number of years but eventually the operation came to the attention of syndicate mobsters in Cincinnati. They moved in on Brady, looking for a piece of the action. Brady refused offers for new "partners" and outright bids to buy him out of the Primrose. Soon, the tavern was being vandalized and customers were being threatened and beaten up in the parking lot. The violence escalated until Brady became involved in a shooting in August 1946. He was charged and then released in the attempted murder of small-time hood Albert "Red" Masterson. This was the last straw for Buck and he sold out to the gangsters. It was said that when he left, he swore the place would never thrive again as a casino. Brady committed suicide in September 1965.

After Brady sold out, the building re-opened as another nightclub called the Latin Quarter. Several times during the early 1950’s, the new owners of the bar were arrested on gambling charges.. In 1955, Campbell County deputies broke into the building with sledge hammers and confiscated slot machines and gambling tables. Apparently, Brady's promises had come to pass.

It was also during this period that the legends of the building gained another vengeful ghost. According to the stories, the owner of the club’s daughter, Johanna, fell in love with one of the singers who was performing here and became pregnant. Her father was furious. Thanks to his criminal connections, he had the singer killed. Johanna became so distraught that she attempted to poison her father and then succeeded in taking her own life. Her body was later discovered in the now infamous basement... and according to the autopsy report, she was five months pregnant at the time.

Bad luck continued to plague the owners of the tavern. In the 1970’s, it became known as the Hard Rock Cafe, but it was closed down by authorities in 1978 because of some fatal shootings on the premises.

Bobby Mackey's Music World

Bobby Mackey's Music World

Finally, the building was turned into the popular bar and dance club that it is today. Bobby and Janet Mackey purchased the building in the spring of 1978 with the intention of turning it into a country bar. Mackey was a well-known as a singer in northern Kentucky and had recorded several albums. He actually scrapped his plans to record in Nashville in order to renovate the old tavern. Once the bar was opened up, it immediately began to attract a crowd.

Despite a number of years success with the place though, the good times have never been able to erase the "taint" caused by the history of murder and death. The hauntings at Bobby Mackey’s Music World remain stained with blood.

Carl Lawson was the first employee hired by Bobby Mackey. He was a loner who worked as a caretaker and handyman at the tavern. He lived alone in an apartment in the upstairs of the building and spent a lot of time in the sprawling building after hours. When he began reporting that he was seeing and hearing bizarre things in the club, people around town first assumed that he was simply crazy. Later on though, when others started to see and hear the same things, Lawson didn’t seem so strange after all.

"I’d double check at the end of the night and make sure that everything was turned off. Then I’d come back down hours later and the bar lights would be on. The front doors would be unlocked, when I knew that I’d locked them. The jukebox would be playing the ‘Anniversary Waltz’ even though I’d unplugged it and the power was turned off," Lawson told author Doug Hensley, who has written extensively about the haunted tavern.

Soon, the strange events went from strange to downright frightening! The first ghost that Lawson spotted in the place was that of a dark, very angry men that he saw behind the bar. Even though others were present at the time of the sighting, they saw nothing. A short time later, Lawson began to experience visions of a spirit who called herself "Johanna". She would often speak to Lawson and he was able to answer her and carry on conversations. The rumors quickly started that Lawson was "talking to himself". Lawson claimed that Johanna was a tangible presence though, often leaving the scent of roses in her wake.

Odd sounds and noises often accompanied the sightings and Lawson soon realized that the spirits seemed to be the strongest in the basement, near an old-sealed up well that had been left from the days when there was a slaughterhouse at the location. The lore of the area, Carl knew, stated that the well had once been used for satanic rituals. Some of the local folks referred to it as "Hell’s Gate". Although he wasn’t a particularly religious man, Lawson decided to sprinkle some holy water on the old well one night, thinking that it might bring some relief from the spirits. Instead, it seemed to provoke them and the activity in the building began to escalate.

Soon, other employees and patrons of the place began to have their own weird experiences. They began to tell of objects that moved around on their own, lights that turned on an off, disembodied voices and laughter and more. Bobby Mackey was not happy about the ghostly rumors that were starting to spread around town. "Carl starting telling stories and I told him to keep quiet about it. I didn’t want it getting around, because I had everything I own stuck in this place. I had to make a success of it," he said. He was not one to believe in ghosts or the supernatural and he didn’t want his customers believing in it either. But when Janet Mackey revealed that she too had encountered the resident spirits, Mackey was no longer sure what to think!

Janet told him that she too had experienced the strange activity. She had seen the ghosts, had felt the overwhelming presences and had even smelled Johanna’s signature rose scent. She also had a very frightening encounter in the basement. While she was there, she was suddenly overcome by the scent of roses and felt something unseen swirl around her. "Something grabbed me by the waist," Janet later recalled. "It picked me up and threw me back down. I got away from it, and when I got to the top of the stairs there was pressure behind me, pushing me down the steps. I looked back up and a voice was screaming ’Get Out! Get Out!’"

At the time of this terrifying encounter, Janet was, like Johanna and Pearl Bryan before her, five months pregnant. A coincidence?

Once Janet admitted that she had seen the ghosts in the building, other people began to come forward. Roger Heath, who often worked odd jobs in the club remembered a summer morning when he and Carl Lawson were working alone in the building. Heath was removing some light fixtures from the dance floor and Lawson was carrying them down to the basement. Just before lunch, Lawson came up the stairs and Heath noticed that he had small handprints on the back of his shirt. It looked just like a woman had been hugging him!

Erin Fey, a hostess at the club, also confessed to encountering Johanna. She had laughed one day at Lawson when he was talking to the ghost. She stopped laughing when she also got a strong whiff of the rose perfume.

Once the stories starting making the rounds, they caught the attention of a writer named Doug Hensley. He decided to investigate the stories and started hanging around the club, striking up conversations with the regular customers. No one was anxious at first to talk about ghosts. "When I first talked to these people, almost every one of them refused to be interviewed," Hensley said. After he talked to Janet Mackey though, many other people came forward. Soon, Hensley had thirty sworn affidavits from people who experienced supernatural events at the club.

He continued to collect stories and sightings, intrigued by the various spirits who had been seen, including a headless ghost who was dressed in turn-of-the-century clothing. Strangely, independent witnesses provided matching descriptions of the phantom, never knowing that she had been seen by others. That was when Hensley turned to historic records to shed some light on the building’s past. He was stunned to discover that events of the past were closely connected to the hauntings of the present. In old newspaper accounts, he found the story of Pearl Bryan and photos of Buck Brady that matched the description of an often seen ghost. None of the witnesses to the present-day paranormal activity were even vaguely aware of who these people had been or what connections they had to the building!

Hensley has since compiled his stories into a book and has been a part of many of the investigations at the club, including a 1994 exorcism of the place that failed miserably. The activity continues to occur and several individuals have even been physically assaulted by spirits. One customer even tried to sue Bobby Mackey in 1994, claiming that he was attacked in the restroom by a ghost wearing a cowboy hat! The case was later dismissed.

Bobby Mackey’s Music World remains perhaps one of the strangest haunted sites in the Midwest and one that has proven to be a major attraction for ghost hunters and enthusiasts alike. Few go away disappointed from a tavern where "spirits served" has another meaning altogether!

Return to Dead Men Do Tell Tales

SUMMERWIND WISCONSIN'S MOST HAUNTED HOUSE

SUMMERWIND

WISCONSIN'S MOST HAUNTED HOUSE

If a person was forced to choose what the greatest ghost story in Wisconsin might be, it would almost undoubtedly be the legend of Summerwind. This haunted mansion has spawned more strange tales and stories that any other location in the state. What dark secrets remain hidden in the ruins of this once grand estate? Were the stories of ghostly encounters and messages from beyond really true ... or were they part of an elaborate publicity hoax?

Summerwind (Photo Courtesy of Todd Roll)

Located on the shores of West Bay Lake, in the far northeast regions of Wisconsin, are the ruins of a once grand mansion that was called Summerwind. The house is long gone now, but the memories remain ... as do the stories and legends of the inexplicable events that once took place there. Summerwind is perhaps Wisconsin’s most haunted house, or at least it was, before fire and the elements of nature destroyed her. Regardless, even the ravages of time cannot destroy the haunted history of the house.

The mansion was built in 1916 by Robert P. Lamont as a summer home for he and his family. Nestled on the shores of the lake, the house caught the cool breezes of northern Wisconsin and provided a comfortable place for Lamont to escape the pressures of everyday life in Washington D.C., as he would later go on to serve as the Secretary of Commerce under President Herbert Hoover.

But life was not always sublime at Summerwind during the years of the Lamont family. For those who claim that the ghost stories of the house were "created" in later years, they forget the original tale of Robert Lamont’s encounter with a spirit. Legends of the house say that Lamont actually fired a pistol at a ghost that he believed was an intruder. The bullet holes in the basement door from the kitchen remained for many years.

Two photos taken at Summerwind the bullet holes that were fired into the basement door by Robert Lamont! The legends say that he was shooting at a ghost at the time!
(Photos courtesy of Todd Roll)

Upon the death of Robert Lamont, the house was sold ... and sold again. It seemed that nothing out of the ordinary really happened there, save for Lamont’s encounter with the phantom intruder, until the early 1970's. It was in this period that the family living in the house was nearly destroyed ... supposedly by ghosts.

Arnold Hinshaw, his wife Ginger, and their six children, moved into Summerwind in the early part of the 1970's. They would only reside in the house for six months, but it would be an eventful period of time.

From the day that they moved in, they knew strange things were going on in the house. It had been vacant for some time ... but it had apparently been occupied by otherworldly visitors. The Hinshaws, and their children, immediately started to report vague shapes and shadows flickering down the hallways. They also claimed to hear mumbled voices in darkened, empty rooms. When they would walk inside, the sounds would quickly stop. Most alarming was the ghost of the woman who was often seen floating back and forth just past some French doors that led off from the dining room.

The family wondered if they were simply imagining things but continued events convinced them otherwise. Appliances, a hot water heater and a water pump would mysteriously break down and then repair themselves before a serviceman could be called.

Windows and doors that were closed would reopen on their own. One particular window, which proved especially stubborn, would raise and lower itself at all hours. Out of desperation, Arnold drove a heavy nail through the window casing and it finally stayed closed.

On one occasion, Arnold walked out to his car to go to work and the vehicle suddenly burst into flames. No one was near it and it is unknown whether the source of the fire was supernatural in origin or not, but regardless, no cause was ever found for it.

Despite the strange activity, the Hinshaws wanted to make the best of the historic house so they decided to hire some men to make a few renovations. It was most common for the workers to not show up for work, usually claiming illness, although a few of them simply told her that they refused to work on Summerwind ... which was reputed to be haunted. That was when the Hinshaws gave up and decided to try and do all of the work themselves.

One day they began painting a closet in one of the bedrooms. A large shoe drawer was installed in the closet’s back wall and Arnold pulled it out so that he could paint around the edges of the frame. When he did, he noticed that there seemed to be a large, dark space behind the drawer.

Ginger brought him a flashlight and he wedged himself into the narrow opening as far as his shoulders. He looked around with the flashlight and then suddenly jumped back, scrambling away from the opening. He was both frightened and disgusted ... there was some sort of corpse jammed into the secret compartment!

Believing that an animal had crawled in there and died many years ago, Arnold tried to squeeze back in for a closer look. He couldn’t make out much of anything, so when the children came home from school, he recruited his daughter Mary to get a better look. Mary took the flashlight and crawled inside. Moments later, she let out a scream ... it was a human corpse! She uncovered a skull, still bearing dirty black hair, a brown arm and a portion of a leg.

Why the Hinshaws never contacted the authorities about this body is unknown. Was the story concocted later to fit into the tales of "haunted" Summerwind? Or was their reasoning the truth ... that the body had been the result of a crime that took place many years ago, far too long for the police to do anything about it now.

Had they been thinking things through, they might have realized that this body might have been the cause of much of the supernatural activity in the house ... removing it might have laid the ghost to rest, so to speak.

Regardless, they left the corpse where they found it ... but it will figure into our story once again.

Shortly after the discovery of the body in the hidden compartment, things started to take a turn for the worse at Summerwind.

Arnold began staying up very late at night and playing a Hammond organ that the couple had purchased before moving into the house. He had always enjoyed playing the organ, using it as a form of relaxation, but his playing now was different. His playing became a frenzied mixture of melodies that seemed to make no sense, and grew louder as the night wore on. 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.

Arnold had a complete mental breakdown and at the same time, Ginger attempted suicide.

Were the stories of strange events at Summerwind merely the result of two disturbed minds? It might seem so ... but what about the children? They also reported the ghostly encounters. Were they simply influenced by their parents questionable sanity ... or were the stories real? The family’s connection with the house would continue for years to come.

While Arnold was sent away for treatment, Ginger and the children moved to Granton, Wisconsin to live with Ginger’s parents. Ginger and Arnold would eventually be divorced when it looked as though Arnold’s hopes for recovery were failing. Ginger later recovered her health, away from Summerwind at last, and she married a man named George Olsen.

Things seemed to be going quite well for her in her new peaceful life, until a few years later, when her father announced that he was going to buy Summerwind.

Raymond Bober was a popcorn vendor and businessman who with his wife Marie, planned to turn the old mansion into a restaurant and an inn. He believed that the house would attract many guests to the scenic location on the lake.

They had no idea what had happened to their daughter in the house.

Ginger was horrified at her parent’s decision. She had never given them all of the details about what had happened during the six months that she had lived in the house and she refused to do so now. What she did do was to beg them not to buy Summerwind.

Bober’s mind was made up however. He announced that he realized the house was haunted, but this would not deter him. He claimed that he had spent time at the house and knew the identity of the ghost that was haunting the place.

According to Bober, the ghost was a man named Jonathan Carver, an eighteenth century British explorer who was haunting the house and searching for an old deed that had been given to him by the Sioux Indians. In the document, he supposedly had the rights to the northern third of Wisconsin. The deed had supposedly been placed in a box and sealed into the foundation of Summerwind. Bober claimed that Carver had asked his help in finding it.

Bober wrote a book about his experiences at Summerwind and his communications with Carver through dreams, trances and a Ouija board. The book was published in 1979 under the name of Wolffgang von Bober and was called THE CARVER EFFECT. It is currently out-of-print and very hard to find.

Shortly after Bober bought the house, he, his son Karl, Ginger and her new husband, George, spent a day exploring and looking over the house. The group had wandered through the place and as they were leaving the second floor, George spotted the closet where the secret compartment was hidden. He began pulling out the drawers and looking behind them, although Ginger begged for him to stop. George was confused. He had simply been curious as to what might be in the drawers. Up until then, Ginger had never told anyone about finding the body behind the closet. Sitting in the kitchen later, she would tell them everything.

After hearing the story, the men rushed back upstairs and returned to the closet. Ginger’s brother, Karl, climbed into the space with a light and looked around. In a few moments, he climbed back out ... it was empty!

Bober and George also inspected the small space and found nothing. Where had the corpse gone? Had it been removed, either by natural or supernatural forces? Or, most importantly, had it ever really been there at all?

Toward the end of that Summer, Karl traveled alone to the old house. He had gone to get a repair estimate on some work to be done on the house and to check with someone about getting rid of the bats which were inhabiting the place. He also planned to do some yard work and to get the place cleaned up a little.

It started to rain the first day that he was there and he began closing some of the windows. He was upstairs, in the dark hallway, and heard a voice call his name. He looked around but there was no one there. Karl closed the window and went downstairs. He walked into the front room and heard what sounded like two pistol shots! He ran into the kitchen and found the room filled with smoke and the acrid smell of gunpowder ... apparently someone had fired a gun inside of the house!

Karl searched the place, finding the doors locked and undisturbed. There appeared to be no one inside and he returned to the kitchen. He began looking around the room and discovered two bullet holes in the door leading down to the basement. He examined them closely and realized that they were not new holes at all ... but old bullet holes that had worn smooth around the edges.

They were apparently holes left behind from Robert Lamont’s encounter with a ghost in the kitchen. Perhaps events from the past were replaying themselves at Summerwind! No matter what the explanation, it was enough for Karl and he left the house that afternoon.

The plans to turn the house into a restaurant did not go smoothly. Workmen refused to stay on the job, complaining of tools disappearing and feelings as if they were being watched. Marie Bober agreed with their complaints. She was always uneasy in the house and frequently told people that she felt as if she was followed from place to place whenever she was inside.

Most disturbing to Bober however was the apparent shrinkage and expansion of the house. Bober would measure rooms one day and then find that they were a different size the next day. Usually, his measurements were larger than those given in the blueprints of the house ... sometime greatly larger. At one point, Bober estimated that he could seat 150 people in his restaurant but after laying out his plans on the blueprints of Summerwind, he realized that the place could seat half that many.

Photographs that were taken of the house, using the same camera and taken only seconds apart, also displayed the variations of space. The living room was said to show the greatest enlargement.
Bober compared his photos of the living room with those that Ginger had taken when she and Arnold moved in. Ginger’s photos showed curtains on the windows that she took with her when she moved out. The curtains were physically absent in the room that Bober photographed ... but somehow they appeared in his photos!

Like the incident involving Karl and the pistol shots, could Summerwind be a place where time inexplicably repeats itself? Perhaps the place wasn’t haunted at all, but instead, was a mysterious site where time was distorted in ways that we cannot understand. Perhaps the shadows and figures that were seen could have been people or images from the past (or the future) and perhaps the sound of someone calling Karl’s name would happen in reality ... several months later. We will never know for sure now, but the idea is something worth considering.

Eventually, the project was abandoned and Bober would never see the dream of his restaurant and inn. Strangely though, despite his claims that he was an earthly companion of the ghostly Jonathan Carver, the Bobers never spent the night inside of the house. They chose instead to sleep in an RV that they parked on the grounds. Also strange was the fact that Carver (if the ghost existed) chose to manifest himself in such malevolent ways ... especially if he was looking for help in finding his deed.

Bober’s explanation for this was that Carver resented anyone living in the house or trying to renovate the place, at least until the deed was found. Bober spent many days searching the basement for where the deed might be hidden, chipping the foundation and peering into dark holes and crevices.

To this day, the mysterious deed has never been found.

Summerwind (Photo Courtesy of Todd Roll)

In the years that followed Bober’s abandonment of Summerwind, a number of skeptics came forward to poke holes in some of Bober’s claims. Many of their counter-claims, however, have been nearly as easy to discredit as some of Bober’s original ones.

Obviously, we are never going to know for sure if Summerwind was really haunted. The house is gone now and we are left with only the claims, reports and witness accounts of Bober and his family.
We can examine the claims of the family, and the skeptics, and try to make sense of it all.

In 1983, a freelance writer named Will Pooley set out to gather the facts behind the story and discredit it. His research claimed that even if Bober had found Carver’s deed, it would have been worthless. He based these findings on the fact that the British government ruled against an individual’s purchase of Indian land and also that the Sioux had never claimed land west of the Mississippi River.

First of all, the land was not sold to Carver, it was given to him in return for assistance that he had given to the Indians, so British law would not have ruled against this. On the other subject, the Sioux Indians were not a single tribe, they were an entire nation, made up of many different tribes. It is possible, and very likely, that one tribe that belonged to the Sioux nation could have lived in Wisconsin. The white settlers pushed the Indians further and further west and as this particular tribe abandoned their lands, they could have deeded them to Carver.

Pooley also argued that the deed to the property had been located in the old land office in Wausau, Wisconsin in the 1930's and that it is unlikely that Carver even journeyed as far north as West Bay Lake.
But would he have had to have traveled to northern Wisconsin to hold a deed to the land? And why would there not have been another deed filed for that piece of land? Someone could have claimed it many years later, not even realizing that Carver already held the title to it.

He also argued that the deed could have never been placed in the foundation of the house anyway ... Summerwind had been built more than 130 years after Carver died. To this, it can only be argued that many events of the supernatural world go unexplained.

One man that Pooley did talk to however, was Herb Dickman of Land 'O Lakes, Wisconsin. He had helped pour the foundation for the house in 1916 and recalled that nothing had been placed in the foundation ... a box containing a deed or anything else. So, who really knows?

Apparently, Bober was not always the most credible person either. Residents who lived close to Summerwind said that Bober spent less than two summers at the estate. After abandoning plans for the restaurant, he tried to get a permit to operate a concession stand near the house but local ordinances prohibited this. Perhaps he was planning the idea of tours of the "haunted" house ... and idea that would come along a little later.

There was even some uncertainty as to whether or not Bober even owned Summerwind. One area resident told Pooley that Bober had tried to buy the house on a contract-for-deed but the deal had fallen through. The house had been abandoned and no one laid claim to it, save for the bank, and they never realized what Bober was up to out there. This story has never been verified however and it cannot be proven that Bober did not own the place.

So how much of the story that Bober wrote about in his book is true? Was the house really haunted, or was the story of the haunting merely a part of a scheme by Raymond Bober to draw crowds to a haunted restaurant?

Those who live near the house claim that the idea that it is haunted has all come from the fact that the mansion was abandoned and from Bober’s wild claims. But what else would they say?

These neighbors have often made it very clear that they resent the strangers who have come to the property, tramping over their lawns and knocking on their doors. They say that the chartered buses that once came and dumped would-be ghost hunters onto the grounds of Summerwind were also unwelcome. These are the last people to ask for an objective opinion on whether this house is actually haunted. So there remains the mystery ... was Summerwind really haunted? No one knows and if they do, they aren’t saying.

The house was completely abandoned in the early 1980's and fell deeper and deeper into ruin. Bats had already taken up residence years before and the house became a virtual shell, resting there in a grove of pines. The windows were shattered and the doors hung open, inviting nature’s destructive force inside.

In 1986, the house was purchased by three investors who apparently thought that they could make a go of the place again. But it was not to be ... forces greater than man had other ideas. Summerwind was struck by lightning during a terrible storm in June of 1988 and burned to the ground.

Today, only the foundations, the stone chimneys and perhaps the ghosts remain ...

© Copyright 2001 by Troy Taylor. All Rights Reserved.

Wikipedia Time Line:

Origins

Summerwind was originally 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 Jonathan Carver.

1940s-1960s

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 payment. During this period there were no specific paranormal incidents recorded, but purchasers reported unease about the property, and it remained largely unoccupied.

1970s

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 being 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 due to problems with local ordinance.

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.

1980s – present

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 on the land and the ruins was sold to a Canadian family. They presently live in Richmond Hill, ON 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.

In June 1988 Summerwind was struck by lightning several times, resulting in a fire that destroyed much of the mansion. Oddly, lightning struck the house, not the taller trees around it. Today, only the house's chimney stacks, foundations, and stone steps remain.

Jonathan Carver

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

In his 1979 book, Bober claims 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 had been granted to him by Sioux Indians as a gift for settling a fight between two Sioux tribes that nearly led to war, and which were built into the footing of Summerwind 130 years after his death. 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 somebody 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 claimed to have no knowledge of any foreign objects being built into the mansion's footings, or of any anomalies surrounding them.

Photos:

Ruins of Summerwind (Photo Courtesy of Stacy McArdle)

 
Summerwind circa 1925

Summerwind circa 1980

These three images are circa 1985

These 10 photos circa 1981

Circa 1980 something

 
Circa 2006

Sources:
http://www.summerwindmansion.com/Photos.html
http://www.prairieghosts.com/summer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerwind

Abortions: Should the father have some say?

People love to go on about how abortion is a women’s issue and it’s solely her choice because it’s her body. There are two fundamental facts that destroy that argument. First, abortion is a HUMAN RIGHTS issue, not a women’s issue. One sperm and egg meet, a human life is formed. That’s a fact of science, not a fact of religion. Second, excluding rape or incest, a woman made her choice once she decided to have sex with a man.

The consequence of the choice is that future decisions, including abortion, need to include the father. After all, it’s his sperm that helped make the baby she’s looking to abort. The law needs to acknowledge abortion as a human rights issue and grant fathers a legal standing in the decision making process. An unborn human child should be afforded the same rights as a born human child.

Many women in today’s society believe that abortion is merely another birth control option. Why? Because sex ed in public schools teaches them that. They give girls condoms and if they end up pregnant anyway, abortion is always discussed as an option. Planned parenthoods, for example, will help a girl get an abortion without her family or the father knowing anything about it. They’re taking advantage of a scared child who doesn’t want to get in trouble. Planned Parenthood workers have been caught on tape telling girls to lie about their age and to say they don’t know who the father is. This isn’t in one area of the country. It’s all over.

There is a double standard in play. A woman has an unconditional right to have an abortion, whether she’s being vain, wants to get even with the father or is trying to hide the fact that she is irresponsible. So, off she goes to the clinic and the poor father has zero say in the matter. It’s her body and she can do with it what she wants. No, sorry. I don’t agree with that. Whether you see it as a baby or a sack of cells, it is not hers exclusively. It took two people to create that life, it should take two people to destroy it. If a father is willing to take complete control of the child and raise it on his own, he should have the legal recourse to take her to court and stop her from getting an abortion. There of course needs to be the legal binding contract that he will pay for the child and after it’s born assume all responsibility for it.

I have seen time and time again the following scenario. A woman gets pregnant and decides she wants to have the baby. The father decides otherwise and makes his feelings known. She has the child, sues him for child support AND WINS. Where is HIS right not to be a parent? Why can the woman number one get an abortion over the father’s objections yet the woman in number two can force the father to pay support for a child he never wanted?

The system needs to change to accommodate BOTH parents. Procedures need be implemented to protect the rights of men who want to be fathers as well as protecting women from men who merely are trying to make their lives miserable by taking advantage of the situation. Legal procedures can establish the future of the child, and make sure that the fathers keep their words. The current system can not go on unchecked. It might be a woman’s body, but when she willingly has sex with a man, she already made her choice.

Are you concerned that governments may use climate change policy to limit your lifestyle choices?

For years there has been a movement spear headed by Al Gore and his following urging the government to pass all sorts of “environmental” laws. They are pushing the government to draft and pass laws that control the behaviour of and limit the choices of Americans. The best part, as was demonstrated on the night the world went dark for an hour, is that Al Gore does NOT practice what he preaches. His Tennessee home was brightly lit with excessive lighting while the rest of the state went dark.

There is a movement to rid the country of incandescent bulbs in favour of the new “green bulb”. That might not be so bad if we replaced them with the green bulbs that are being produced in KY. Instead, we are to use the mercury filled bulbs that are being imported from China. If you think these bulbs are so much better, look at this government drafted guide to handling these bulbs if they break and when they blow. No more tossing the bulb in the trash!!

http://www.energystar.gov/ia/products/lighting/cfls/downloads/CFL_Cleanup_and_Disposal.pdf

Parts of the nation have bans on dish detergent. How sad is it when you have to smuggle detergent in from another state. There’s a movement to ban plastic bags from the grocery. For people like me who have secondary uses for the bags after bringing them home, that’s going to be a burden trying to find a substitute.

It seems that the government is encroaching in our lives more and more every day. They uses taxes and laws to control what we can and can’t do. You want to smoke? You have to pay taxes on tobacco. You want to send a letter or a card? The cost of postage stamps keeps going up. Energy costs are rising while simultaneous “cost saving tips” are drummed into our heads to get us to only set our heating and cooling between certain levels. I’m tired of paying through the nose to make the choices I have a right to make.

The thing that angers me the most is how Al Gore, the schools, and the media are scaring the hell out of our children over “Global Warming”. Children are TERRIFIED that they either won’t grow up or if they do they will be alone because their families will be dead. British, Canadian, and even American scientists are among the outspoken who have been saying for some time that Global Warming is a farce and that we are in fact moving into another ice age. ANY changes to the climate will not be apparent for thousands of years. Yet starting at a young age, our children are being brainwashed by the Government that it knows best how they should live in order to protect the earth.

I support recycling and cutting down on unnecessary waste. conserving electricity, not wasting paper to save trees. But the government needs to stop taking advantage of the alleged “Global Climate Crisis” to make money and brainwash the people.

Is the death penalty just or unjust?

The death penalty is not only just, but practical. Since the bleeding heart do-gooders have been getting their way, the crime rate in America has skyrocketed. The perception that human life is valuable has fallen by the wayside as pro choice activists brainwash the youth of America into thinking that Abortion is a women’s issue when it is in fact a human rights issue.

It seems that there are a lot more people in the media, in Hollywood, and in our school systems who are making more and more excuses for bad behaviour rather then punishing it. More and more criminals are being made to look like victims themselves rather then the monsters they are. As a result, countless groups have popped up all over that are anti capital punishment. It doesn’t matter what these monsters do because it’s not their fault. It was their upbringing, their childhood experiences, the company they keep, the victim’s fault. Everyone else is to blame but them.

The death penalty used to serve two main purposes. It was used as a deterrent and it brought a sense of justice and closure to the victim’s families. Now it seems to be another political tool in the tool box, to be used when they think it will help their chances of winning.

Let’s take a practical look at the prison systems today. For starters, the punishments rarely seem to fit the crime. In the case of murderers, they are often far to lenient. Someone who takes the life of another is sentenced to prison where he gets three nutritious meals a day, can exercise and do weight training, often has telly and internet, can have visitors come to see them, has the best healthcare around at no cost to them (because they’re not paying taxes while they’re in jail not working), has free education (high school and college/vocational) and (because he’s a murderer) is typically left alone. Do you know the cost of all these “benefits”? Gone are the days of people losing their rights while they were serving their sentences. Now they practically have more rights then the people who behave.

The shift from “Prisons” and “Penitentiaries” to “Correctional Facilities” has cost the tax payers a ton of money. Sadly, most of the offenders soon become repeat offenders, often evolving into more violent and dangerous individuals. A good many of the more “minor” offenders are often given early release due to over crowding. If the death sentences were carried out a little quicker and the states that didn’t have the death penalty adopted it, it would certainly help to clear out the prisons some.

It sounds absolutely harsh but it’s the logical conclusion. Why pay to support a vile, violent criminal who isn’t the least bit remorseful for the lives (s)he’s destroyed be supported by the tax payers for the rest of his/her natural born days? The only life these people see as valuable is their own. If there is overwhelming forensic evidence that says without a doubt that this person committed first degree murder, they should be sentenced to death and that sentence should be carried out in a more reasonable time. Twenty years on death row is unacceptable.

It’s utterly disgusting to see these people fighting so hard to preserve their own lives when they often didn’t just murder, but raped and or tortured their victims. Ted Bundy did unspeakable things to his victims, as did the Green River Killer. yet when it came to them, all of a sudden life had value.

I think we need to start bringing back the old forms of punishment a bit. Prison shouldn’t be a vacation. When you’re in prison, you lose your rights. You cannot vote, you do not get cable or the internet, you do not get free higher education, you do not get rushed to the hospital over a splinter. (True story as told to me by my cousin, a prison guard. They’d rather risk the expense of an ambulance trip to the emergency room then be sued in a frivolous lawsuit that the criminal will probably win.)

People who callously take the lives of others should pay with their own lives. They should not be allowed to live while their victims are dead and their victim’s families are broken. More over, I don’t think the tax payers should be supporting these criminals indefinitely! That money can go toward something useful like education and children’s programmes. Perhaps the money saved by executing 1st degree murders can be used to prevent another youth from ending up in the criminal justice system.

Should DNA paternity testing be mandatory?

This is like a tricky essay question. There is ample information to sustain either argument but you have to be able to look at the big picture and see the potential disaster that lies ahead. The short answer is I feel It would be counter productive and costly, not to mention a violation of privacy. Who you have sex with is your business unless your a child (making it your parents and the DAs business) or married (making it your spouses and probably they’re divorce solicitor’s business).

Imagine the cost to test multiple suspects if the woman is “unsure who the father is but has a pretty good idea”. We’ve all heard of those women who find themselves in the unlucky position of having two or more viable candidates and having to figure out how to handle the situation tactfully. And what if the woman was a victim of rape and didn’t know her attacker? Believe it or not there are women who become pregnant after a rape and keep the baby.

I am against mandatory testing because I see the bigger picture of where this will inevitably lead. Aside from it being a privacy issue, once the government has that DNA sample, they’re never going to let it go. There are multitudes of different ways that information can be misused. Supposing there is a very good reason a woman does not want the father of her child to know he has a child? A survivor of domestic abuse who got away before she found out she was pregnant is probably not going to want her abuser to be able to use that child to control and hurt her.

I am against the government having anymore control over my life then they already have. If they have your DNA on file, they will know if you’re predisposed to have any health conditions and can use that information to control the health care industry. The government is already looking to socialize health care. With DNA testing, they can charge or tax certain people more because their genes say they may have a predisposition to heart disease or diabetes.

How would we like it if in the future the government use the DNA information to limit who can have children and who can’t? How would we like it if they started doing the sorts of experiments Hitler’s people once did to come up with a supreme race of human? It sounds far fetched but Hitler already did such experiments once. Another Hitler type who comes along will have all this DNA information that the former didn’t have access too? History has show that under the right conditions, people can be duped into doing all sorts of things they wouldn’t normally do.

The government already tells us where we can and can’t smoke and then taxes the hell out of smokers to get them to quit because THEY want them to. They tell us what kind of light bulbs we should buy and what kinds of cars we should drive. They preach at us to be tolerant of the views they approve of and criticize anything that conflicts with their agenda. They don’t want to represent us, they want to dominate us.

Mandatory paternity testing sounds great on the surface, but we need to look at the long term precedent that will be set. We cannot willingly hand over our rights because we are too focused on the small picture. Paternity is an issue that needs to be dealt with by the concerned parties and if need be their solicitors. The government needs to mind their own business.

Is the US government responding appropriately to the swine flu outbreak?

The government is in no way responding appropriately to the swine flu outbreak. Between Joe Biden saying that he wouldn't be in any crowded places and Janet Naploitano REFUSING to allow Border Control Officers to wear masks because they may "look intimidating" it's pretty clear that the administration is not on the same page, or even in the same book. They need to get their act together and send out a strong, consistant, honest message about what's really going on. They also need to put the politics and image management aside and put the citizens of out country first. After all, isn't that what they take an oath to do?

This out break has brought to mind the immigration problems that have been, for all intents and purposes, swept under the rug. The bottom line is simple—Immigration laws exist to protect the citizens of America. Part of the immigration process is a health screening. If an immigrant has a disease, such as swine flu, they would be quarantined and treated. This helps to prevents the disease from being brought into our country and spread to our citizens. In the late 1800s and early 1900s when immigrants flocked to the US, they were required to apply for citizenship, have a health screening, learn English, and pass a citizenship test.

Those who were found to be unhealthy were quarantined, or in extreme cases, refused entry and sent back to where ever they came from. That was back in the days when the government was still more concerned with the welfare of its citizens then its image in the eyes of foreign leaders.

While I don’t want to see people, especially children, get sick and possibly die, I do hope this opens the eyes of the extreme leftists who think we should have completely open borders with no restrictions whatsoever. Maybe they will now see the potential, unintended danger of letting illegal aliens from ANY country run unchecked in America.

France has limited entry to their country, especially air planes that are coming from countries with infected people. Our government won't even close the border down to keep unnecessary traffic from passing through. Why? Because the MEXICAN government relies on our commerce. Last time I checked, Mexico wasn't one of the 50 United States or it's possessions. So why are we putting their welfare before our own?

Janet Napolitano has gone as far as to prohibit border agents from wearing protective masks because it makes them look intimidating. Intimidating to WHO?? The Mexican Army is wearing masks and are managing not to intimidate the people. So they should get sick and bring it home to their families and friends because the masks don't coordinate with their uniforms? That would be akin to firefighters not wearing oxygen masks because they might scare any little children who might be in a burning building. It defies common sense and shows us how little the government cares about the safety and welfare of it's citizens.

It seems that this administration has been more concerned with what the world thinks of them then what the people of their own country thinks of them. They've changed the name from "Swine Flu" to "H1N1 Flu". Like we're a better class of people because we have "H1N1" instead of "Swine Flu".

The government hasn't done anything constructive to remedy the situation. The media, especially Fox News, has done a far better job of keeping people informed on the state of the illness then the administration. Kudos to the local governments for taking the needed actions such as closing schools and setting up special healthcare facilities as not to create new cases.

I hope this outbreak is a real wake up call for the powers that be. Someone in Obama's cabinet is suspected of having the flu. Maybe after they see first hand, up close how bad the illness is, they’ll stop being so superficial. Maybe after all these “sanctuary cities get flooded with new cases that are spread by the undocumented, illegal immigrants and the still-open borders, they’ll wise up and appreciate the laws a little more. It’s terrible that things are in the state they’re in because personal politics, appearance, and superficial decisions are prevailing.

Many thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by the flu, wherever they may be.