Final Destruction and Legacy

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Hello, it's Richard McClain Smith here with some more events news. I'm delighted to say I'll be performing at this year's Edinburgh Festival fringe. Unexplained has beguiled listeners for over a decade with real life tales of the strange and mysterious. But now for the first time, I'll be taking the podcast to the fringe, where I'll be giving a live interpretation of the Flanen and Isle's lighthouse mystery. The year is 1900. Three lighthouse keepers stand watch on a desolate island far from home. Until one day. They completely vanish from the face of the earth. So if you'd like to see me tell that story in person, I'll be performing from August 7th to the 29th. ten PM in theater three of the space at the Surgeons Hall. I would dearly love you all to come. Tickets are on sale now. Just sear Unexplained Live at the Fringe, or you can go to unexplained podcast.com forward slash events and find the link there. Or if you like, you can go to thespaceuk.com forward slash shows, forward slash twenty twenty six, forward slash unexplained hyphen live. I look forward to seeing you there. Balmy Day in the summer of 1969, a classic low-sprung station wagon bumps gingerly along a dirt road through the backwoods of Villas County. In north eastern Wisconsin. woodland suddenly gives way to a clearing, revealing the placid waters of West Bay Lake beyond. something else comes into view too. Rambling Clapboard Mansion. Partially hidden within the trees. complete hodgepodge of styles. Part for Georgian. Greek revival. With hints of classic New England here and there. Thirty year old Ginger Hinshaw. A straight mouse brown hair. Hanging just below her shoulders. Leans out of the passenger window. Utterly captivated by it. property and its outbuildings had been vacant for years and were in desperate need of some TLC. Windows were broken. Roof sack. While inside was a mess of peeling paint and wallpaper. But Ginger didn't care. She fell in love the moment she saw the pictures of it. Seeing it now in the flesh as it were. Only strengthened her desire to buy it. Ginger had recently remarried. And her husband Arnold owned a construction company. Together they could restore the place into a marvelous family home and build a new life together. Arnold is almost as excited as his wife, as they pull up outside. Squeezing Ginger's hand as they trade excited looks. But in the back seat. Changes nine year old daughter April. One of six that she and Arnold share between them. is less enthused. as she gets out of the car and stares up at the property's eerily dark gable windows. She feels a sudden coldness come over her. Without any of her mother's optimism. She sees nothing but a decrepit. Oversized cabin. with a low slung porch that was far darker than it had any right to be under the warm midday sun. So she can't quite articulate exactly how it makes her feel. What she does know. is that she absolutely doesn't want to live here. But the hinshores will ignore April's reservations. And within weeks. The place has had many names over the years. Lilac Hills. The Lamont Mansion. Most recently. Summer wind. And over the course of the next few months. It will completely and utterly Tear the family apart. You're listening to Unexplained. And I'm Richard McClain. Smith. According to most accounts. Some win. was built in the early 1900s as a fishing launch. In nineteen sixteen. Then called Lilac Hills. It was apparently purchased by Robert Lamont. Later he would serve as the Secretary of Commerce for President Herbert Hoover. is rumored to have employed a firm of Chicago-based architects to remodel the mansion. Allegedly, the work took two years to complete. during which time there were bizarre stories, that some of the rooms appeared inexplicably to change their dimensions from day to day. Then Sometime in the nineteen thirties. A number of strange stories from the family's servants began to surface. It was said that doors opened and closed on their own. Sometimes disembodied voices were heard. Including a translucent woman milling about the property's driveway. The Lamont apparently didn't believe any of it. Until one night. Robert Lamont and his wife Helen. We're home alone, having dinner. Robert looked up. to see a strange, shadow-like figure standing in the doorway that led to the basement stairs. He was alleged so startled that he grabbed a pistol from a kitchen drawer. And fired twice at the shadowy figure. only for the bullets to go straight into the door, and the figure vanish moments later. The family is said to have abandoned the house soon after. which was completely unknown to Ginger and Arnold Hinshaw when they moved in. In those first few weeks, flush with the effervescent enthusiasm of a new homeowner. Ginger got started on all the much needed renovations. Beginning with repainting and wallpapering. But things soon became difficult. When the Hinshaws tried to find local contractors to help with the more complicated work, The responses were initially enthusiastic. But as soon as they mentioned the name Summerwind. The contractors suddenly found they were too busy or were lacking the required materials. Ginger couldn't understand why exactly. but assumed it was simply to do with the sheer amount of work that was needed. And so in the meantime. They pressed on with the renovations alone. One day. Ginger was rummaging through a bedroom closet. When she found a roll of musty old papers. Opening them up. She was surprised to find that they were the original plans for the house. But even more surprising was what she found in them. As she continued to unroll the papers. Along wooden object. Slip out from inside them. That's weird, she thought. Holding the item up to the light. Though she couldn't be sure what it was exactly. It appeared to be an old Native American peace pipe. For some strange reason, Ginger felt more driven than ever to restore Summer Wind to its former glory. All wrapped up in those old papers. Holding them in her hands. She felt momentarily transported, right back in time to when the house was first built. She began to feel sorry for how it had been so mercilessly abandoned. And left to rot all these years. And she had the sudden burning urge to make it whole again. Ginger's restoration efforts became obsessive. At one point, she even tried out eleven different colours for the interior woodwork. But while Ginger's passions for the renovations grew. Almost as if the two were inversely proportional to each other. Arnold. Just as suddenly began to wane. So the story goes, it all started when Arnold apparently discovered a crawl space behind a closet in one of the bedrooms. peered inside it, he saw what appeared to be the carcass of some kind of animal. But he didn't quite have the angle to see what it was exactly. Too small to fit in the space himself. He asked one of his daughters to go inside and find out what was in there. The girl dutifully took a torch and squeezed into the space, only to let out a horrified scream moments later. The strange shape it turned out. apparently a human skull, still covered in thick strands of dark hair. Rather remove it, Arnold is said to have made the questionable decision to simply plaster over the wall. Leaving the skull in there. It was supposedly his belief that the remains had been placed there for a reason and shouldn't be disturbed. It was around this time. that Arnold began to notice something strange. Sometimes he would leave a room and come back. Only to find her chair had been moved. Other times it seemed he only needed to turn his back for a moment. and a chair would be swiftly positioned a different way by invisible hands. Ginger had noticed it too. More than that. Times with the kids at school and Arnold out for work. Ginger had the distinct sense that she wasn't entirely alone in the house. As time went by. Arnold became increasingly distracted. And seemed incapable of completing any household task that he began. Instead, he spent most of his free time somberly playing an electric organ that he'd bought himself as a moving in present. And as the months went by. Arnold just became more and more withdrawn. First he stopped helping with the renovations. Then he stopped his own construction work too. He began sleeping through the day. Seeming to wake only to play the organ. And if he woke in the middle of the night. filling the house with its mournful tones. As Arnold's despondency grew worse. He became uncharacteristically angry. And began shouting at the children and Ginger at the slightest provocation. One evening, he berated Ginger for leaving their bedroom window open. Even though she distinctly remembered closing it. Yeah. Each time the enraged Arnold would accuse Ginger of deliberately leaving the window open to provoke him. In the end, Ginger decided just to nail the window shut. Soon. Arnold stopped talking altogether. Much to Ginger and the children's distress. When he wasn't lying in bed. He spent his time wandering around the mansion's rooms as if looking for something. Or just standing silently on the veranda, staring out over the lake. Minutes at a time. At some point. The children managed to domesticate a local raccoon. Arnold again became inexplicably angry. and ordered them all outside in the middle of the night to go and look for it. Couldn't find it. He revealed the sickening truth. He had killed it. To teach them a lesson, he said. One day Ginger was at home alone. When she became convinced, she could hear a deep and strong male voice calling out to her from the floor above. Ginger. Ginger. Co Floorboards gently creaking at each step. Ginger slowly walked up the stairs then along the upstairs corridor. Turning a corner. Shadowy figure. Ginger was convinced she was just hallucinating from all the stress and tiredness of the last few months. So she decided to take a break and invited some friends over to show them what she'd been working on all this time. After giving them a tour of the house, Ginger and her friends retired to the lounge, where they had some drinks and chatted amiably together. Later, as Ginger was getting more drinks from the kitchen, She heard a piercing scream coming from the lounge. Ginger rushed in, only to find her friends in a state of abject horror. According to them, they'd just seen a ghostly form walk in and out of the room. Without even giving Ginger time to digest it all. They grabbed their things and left. It was only after the apparent incident with her friends that Ginger is said to have begun to think a little deeper about everything that had been going on. The moving chairs. Arnold strange moods. The unrelenting sense that her family were not the only inhabitants of the house. And the shadowy figure she was almost certain she'd seen days before. She couldn't believe she was even thinking it. But was it completely out of the realms of possibility? Summer wind. Want it. Meanwhile, as Arnold's mood grew ever darker, His organ playing grew increasingly dissonant and ominous. Disturbed by the strange tonal shift. Ginger asked if he could play something else instead. But Arnold refused, claiming that it was the only thing that gave him pleasure in life. Now he had lost his construction business. seemingly his entire sense of self. So Arnold's children were more forgiving of his behaviour. But ginger's children. Arnold was a relative stranger. His presence was starting to feel deeply threatening. That's Winterfell. The Henshaw family's life at Summerwin. Reached a crisis point. Struggling to pay the fuel bills, the whole family hauled their mattresses downstairs and took to sleeping together in the living room to keep warm. After several months of unpaid bills, the utility companies disconnected the heating and electricity altogether. Then the water pump. leaving the family with the only option of having to get their water from the lake. The grand dream of their luxury lakeshore life. had turned into a nightmare of fear. And a struggle for survival. Ginger knew that something had to change. Having finally admitted defeat. She walked to a neighbor's house and phoned her father. To her and the children's immense relief. He arrived a few hours later in his campervan and took them all away. According to some reports, Arnold didn't go with them. having apparently succumbed to a full on mental breakdown. He was instead admitted to a psychiatric hospital. By the spring of nineteen seventy two. Ginger and her and Arnold's children had moved to Canada. Determined to start a new life. But she couldn't stop thinking about summer wind. While vowing never to return to the house. However Events were about to summon her back. When Ginger is said to have first described everything that happened at Summerwind to her father. He simply didn't believe her. But over time, like his daughter. Boba found that he, too, had begun to think obsessively about the house. So much so. That after some months he arranged a viewing of the property. Accompanying Raymond on the journey was his son Ray, recently home from the American Vietnam War. As father and son toward the partially restored mansion, Much like Ginger had done all those months before. They couldn't help thinking just how perfect the place could be, if given the right attention. They wouldn't even need much help, they reasoned. Since Raymond had carpentry skills. Ray was a dab hand at plastering. A few weeks later. Raymond Boba became the latest owner of Summerwin. When he told Ginger, she was distraught. Not only was she angry that her father had brought the house back into her life, knowing how it had destroy her family, He was at risk to After much pleading from his daughter, Raymond agreed that while he was working on the house, it'd stay in his motorhome, rather than the property itself. In the meantime. An undaunted Ray got to work. Later in the evening of that first day, As night began to fall. Ray appeared at his father's motorhome, clearly having been unsettled by something. When Raymond asked what the matter was, Ray denied that there was anything wrong, but still told his father that with regret. He wouldn't be able to work on the house for a few days, because he'd broken some equipment. And needed to replace it. But Raymond was unconvinced. He knew his son was hiding something. That night in its motor home, in the shadow of summer wind. He began to wonder if Ginger's stories about all the strange goings on And so he apparently asked her back to the property. When Ginger arrived, it was immediately clear to her that Ray, for whatever reason, was hiding something. So she devised a plan to try and coax it out of him. Since leaving the property, Ginger had apparently been studying techniques for hypnosis and asked her brother if he'd let her try it out on him. Ray reluctantly agreed, and before long, Ginger had put him in a deep trance. When Ginger began to question Ray about the house, his legs started shaking. Then he started speaking. As Raymond told it later. It wasn't Ray's normal voice that came out. You are weak. I am strong. he said in a spiteful and angry tone. Bazali. He claimed to be very old and had seven children. which he despised. Ray didn't have any children. Terrified that she'd somehow connected with a demonic entity through her brother's body. Ginger commanded whatever was speaking to her to leave. Ray then went. And eventually came round. Ginger played him back a recording she'd made of the session. He was stunned. Ray then apparently agreed to tell his sister and father what he'd experienced the day before at the mansion. He said that he was upstairs in the hallway alone when he suddenly felt like there was someone else there. Then he heard two voices followed by gunshots that seemed to come from the kitchen. He raced downstairs, expecting to confront someone. But found no one there at all. But in the air was the faint odour of what he took to be gunpowder. Hurrily he opened the back door to see if anyone was outside. again there was nobody there. Heading back into the kitchen. He apparently found himself being drawn to the door that led from the kitchen to the basement. That had clearly been there for years. They look to him like bullet holes. Then the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. As though he could sense someone. claimed that he turned to see a dark spectral figure. Radiating nothing but pure evil. Ray said he then turn. Ran on pure instinct. All the way to his truck. Before driving off at speed. After hearing Ray's story, his father Raymond was reminded of how Robert Lamont had apparently reported seeing a ghost and fired two shots at it, many years before. Without knowing why exactly. Raymond asked his daughter if she could hypnotize him too. Perhaps they might learn something else, he thought. Though he was a bit less suggestible than his son. Ginger is said to have eventually succeeded in putting Raymond in a trance. as Raymond would later detail in a book. He described descending into the basement of summer window. And moving toward a back wall. There he found a hidden chamber behind the wall. Inside which was an old wooden box. And inside the box was a land grant. Written in seventeen sixty seven. Bottom of the document. What's the name Jonathan Carver? Raymond claimed to have come out of the trance with no recollection of this apparent vision, and no idea who Jonathan Carver was. The following day, Raymond is then said to have gone to the local library, where after some research, he was amazed to discover there was a man of some note named Jonathan Carver. Been alive in seventeen sixty seven. Jonathan Carver, who absolutely was a real person, was essentially a British citizen born in Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1710. After teaching himself surveying and cartography, he joined the Massachusetts Colonial Militia and fought in the French and Indian War, as it was known. In seventeen sixty one. He became captain of a regiment, but decided to quit the army two years later. Over the next few years, he travelled along the northern coast of Lake Michigan. And up the Fox River and the Mississippi. Into what is now Minnesota. keeping detailed logs of everything he saw, including his many encounters with indigenous tribes. W Carver finally returned home. He expected to receive acclaim and financial rewards for his explorations. from the British King George III, whom he believed had commissioned his trip. But George and his court. Weren't interested in his achievements. Carver travelled to England to press his claims for remuneration. Unfortunately for him, he had apparently been labouring under a misapprehension. The British government and the King had no interest in rewarding him for his expedition. In the end, Carver was left only with his maps. Journals. Along with significant debts and simmering resentment. Determined to salvage something from his efforts, Carver spent the next nine years preparing the story of his travels for publication. was finally published in London in seventeen seventy eight. With the rather dry title of travels through the interior parts of North America. In the years seventeen sixty six to seventeen sixty eight. Nondetheless. It gave readers a vivid description of the rich lands and native inhabitants of the upper Mississippi River Valley. And after some months proved to be a big success. In the end, more than 30 editions would be printed. But sadly, Jonathan Carver didn't live long enough to enjoy the success or reap the financial rewards for his efforts. and died, still impoverished, in Paris, France. In january seventeen eighty. Before the book sales began to take off. Carver was buried in a potter's field, a term for a pauper's grave on unconsecrated ground. A fate of the destitute. And those with no social status. Carver's misfortunes didn't end after his death. By eighteen forty four. popularity of travels to the interior had greatly declined. And some historians began to claim that it consisted of made up stories written while Carver was living in London. wasn't until 1909 that a letter written by Carver back in 1767 came to light. Were most likely true after all. Then Raymond Boba reached what was for him. The most exciting part of Jonathan Carver's story. The third edition of Carver's book Two Dakota so Native American chiefs. granted Carver a large tract of land in eastern Wisconsin. Estimated around twelve thousand miles. for helping to resolve a dispute between them and a neighboring tribal group. If it were true. could lay claim to being some of the wealthiest people in the world. If only they could find the proof. As it happened. Carver's descendants very much pursued the claim. But since verifying it was ever found, Nothing could be done to help them. It said that when Raymond relayed everything he'd learned about John Carver back to his daughter Ginger. She couldn't help but think back to that strange pipe she'd found, wrapped up in the original blueprints for the mansion. Might that have had something to do with it all, she wondered. And so Despite everything the place had done to them. Ginger. Raymond and Ray. Courage. And went back to Summerwin. As Raymond later wrote The three of them are said to have carefully retraced the steps, which Raymond apparently took in his trance, and Beginning with the stairs leading into the basement. As they descended into the dark with their torches. Everything was eerily quiet. as they carried on toward the back wall. To where Raymond said he saw the hidden chamber. With nothing else. With nothing else. For it. Ray began to chip away at the wall. Until some of the brickwork fell away. Revealing much to their astonishment. But to their intense disappointment. There was nothing there. and nor was the apparent box to be found anywhere else in the house. In the end, the family had little choice but to give up looking for it. In nineteen seventy nine. Raymond Boba published a book called The Carver Effect. Paranormal experience. In which he detailed all the strange occurrences that are claimed to have befallen his family. Theorised that it was none other than the bitter spirit of Jonathan Carver, who was responsible for it. Whatever the truth. At the very least, Boba's book. In nineteen eighty, Life magazine published a photo essay titled Terrifying Tales of Nine Haunted Houses, which included the Wisconsin Mansion. Then on the night in june nineteen eighty eight, Amid a violent storm. It said that a thunderous clap split the sky, and a bolt of lightning shot out of it. Striking the mansion. By the following afternoon. Burned completely to the ground. Today Summerwin's reputation as one of America's most haunted houses has faded. Its remote location on private property, with hardly any standing remains, has discouraged all but the most determined ghost hunters from visiting. But locals still call it the Lamont Mansion. Ghost stories continue to linger. From time to time. It said that the smell of fire can be sensed. Ghostly figure is glimpsed. And that the murmur of disembodied voices can be heard. Yeah. Could it be that Jonathan Carver's spirit is still restlessly seeking to claim what he always felt he was owed. Either way. Whether the alleged hauntings really happened. Carver was ever granted a large tract of land around Summerwind. Still haun the ruined mansion. Continues to remain. Unexplained. This episode was written by Diane Hope. And Richard McClain Smith. Thank you as ever for listening. Unexplained is an AV Club production podcast created by Richard McLean Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music. are also produced by me. Richard McClain Smith. Unexplained the book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble. Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts. and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story of your own you'd like to share. You can find out more at unexplained podcast.com and reaches online through X and Blue Sky, but unexplained pod. And Facebook at facebook.com Forward slash. Unexplained podcast.