The Summerwind Mansion in northern Wisconsin had been planned for a summer get away place by its owner, Robert P. Lamont. Lamont, who would become the Secretary of Commerce for President Herbert Hoover, had a stressful job and a place at the edge of beautiful West Bay Lake was just what he needed…but was it? 

 

The original buildings on the property consisted of a lodge and a few cabins overlooking the bay. In 1917, Lamont hired a famous architectural firm from Chicago to extensively renovate the lodge and enlarge it. The renovations were so extensive, that it took over two years for them to be completed.  

 

In less than fifteen years of being a summer home, the Lamont family suddenly abandoned the property in the mid 1930’s leaving the beautiful house and all their possessions behind. It was around this time that stories of the hauntings began, however no specific tales still exist, save for one. Supposedly Robert Lamont had encountered a ghost in his kitchen and had taken two shots at it with his hand gun and this is what had caused the family to flee… 

 

The house remained abandoned until 1941 when the Keefer family purchased the property. They restored the home, yet never took up full time residence in the home. When Mr. Keefer passed, Mrs. Keefer began to sell of pieces of the property, but never seemed to be able to get rid of the tract containing Summerwind. According to claims on Karl von Bober’s website, van Bober who was later directly involved with Summerwind claimed, “To my knowledge, there were at least five separate ownership transfers between 1941 and today’s current owner.”  Von Bober claims that every owner had some disaster befell them, financial woes, mental illness or some other calamity. 

 

Von Bober’s sister and her husband purchased the home and soon moved in with their six children. Ginger and her husband Arnold began to renovate and paint the home and the strange things began to happen almost immediately.  

 

Arnold was painting a set of drawers that were built into a closet and as he pulled out one of the drawers he noticed a large empty space behind it. Upon looking behind it, he noticed that there was a fairly large space so he pulled out the drawers and was able to wiggle back to see what was there…and he came out screaming…there was a body stuffed behind the drawers! An old dried body! 

 

According to von Bober, Ginger and Arnold didn’t think that any one would believe them, especially with the large numbers of ghost stories circulating about the house, so they left it there and told no one about it. 

 

They began to see the figure of a woman floating back and forth near a set of French doors as they would eat dinner in the living room. Was this the ghost of the body behind the drawers?  

 

It was after the discovery of the body that the activity in the home escalated. From disembodied voices to items in the home that would break, then would be found in working order only a short time later. Windows and doors would open and close themselves. One particular window refused to stay closed until it was nailed shut.  

 

Before moving to Summerwind, Arnold and Ginger had purchased an organ for Arnold to play as a way to relax. Now that they were living at Summerwind, he became maniacal about his playing and as time went on, the music became more and more bizarre. He would play throughout the night and his bizarre behavior frightened his wife and children. Shortly thereafter, Arnold suffered a complete mental breakdown and Ginger attempted suicide. 

 

Arnold received treatment for a long time with no signs of improvement. Ginger got well after she and the children moved in with her family. Eventually she divorced Arnold and married a man named George. But was Summerwind abandoned, yet again? No. 

 

Because of the mental illness and tragic events that occurred at the end of their six month stay, Ginger had never told her family the full truth concerning what happened at the home.  A few years later, much to Ginger’s shock and dismay, her father purchased the property! 

 

Raymond von Bober became obsessed with finding the deed box of the original owner, Jonathan Carver. It was claimed that Carver had a claim to owning a large section of Wisconsin and supposedly had hidden the deed box somewhere in the house. During the search, Karl, Ginger and her new husband George went searching the house. George came upon the closet where years before Arnold had found the corpse. 

 

Ginger screamed not to open it, but of course, they did. The corpse was gone! The corpse had been seen by two people just a few years before…so where did it go? 

 

As Raymond had planned to open Summerwind as a restaurant, the family began to spend time on the property to restore it and ready it for opening. Curiously, they never stayed IN Summerwind, instead they chose to stay in an RV in the yard. May be some of the following events could explain it. 

 

There was a lace curtain in one of the rooms near the kitchen. It was old, tattered and torn. Karl took it down and threw it into a fireplace where they were burning trash. The next morning, the scrap was back. He took it down and WATCHED it burn. The next morning it was back. This happened several more times before Ginger informed him that when she had lived in the house she would hang up the new curtains she had chosen, only to find them on the floor the next morning and the scrap would be hanging yet again! 

 

The size of the house also seemed to change. Raymond would take measurements of the rooms and find out the next day that they were different than the ones he had just taken and were also different from the dimentions on the blueprints. Consecutive pictures taken only seconds apart would actually show the distortion of the size of the rooms! 

 

Additionally, one of the windows in the master bedroom would not stay closed. Once, while Karl was staying on the property alone, he noticed the window open and closed it. He went outside to mow the lawn, only to look up and see that same window open again. He went back into the house and closed the window again.  

 

The next morning it rained. Karl awoke and went into the house to work and the window was open again! He closed it and mopped up the rain that had come in. He moved into the hallway and began to sweep. As he moved down the hall he heard his name called.  He couldn’t figure out where the voice was coming from, it called his name again, and as he moved through the house, he noticed that the window in the master bedroom was open yet again! 

 

As he stood there looking confounded at the window, two gunshots rang out! He ran downstairs to the kitchen and was startled by the smell of fresh gunpowder. He looked around the house and there was no one else there. Karl turned and as he looked at basement door, he noticed two bullet holes! The oddest part was that these were two old holes that had been presumedly put in the door by the original owner, Robert Lamont who had supposedly seen a ghost in the kitchen and had taken two shots at it! As Karl was examining the door, he was hit by a cold blast of air. He took a step back and as he did a misty form began to take shape! Karl ran from the house and went straight home. 

 

Soon after wards, they abandonded the project and Summerwind lay abandonded. Then, in 1988, Summerwind was struck by lightning and burned. All that was left was the stonework and chimneys of what was possibly one of the most haunted houses in America.