Stage coach ghosts in Wisconsin
Submitted by Liz Snow, who lives in Salmon Creek:
The year was 2001. I had just married my husband and moved into his home in rural Wisconsin.
After settling in, I started being awakened by ghosts. I would suddenly wake up in the middle of my slumber and see a ghostly figure standing in the bedroom doorway.
The first night I saw a figure, I thought it was my deceased father. After seeing the figure on a few other nights, I realized it was not my Dad, but a fur trapper, possibly from the early 1900s.
He was a big burly man that filled the entire space of the doorway, with a scraggly beard and a coonskin cap. He wasn’t frightening, just present, so I wasn’t too bothered.
On another night, I awoke to a different figure in the doorway. He was a jolly sort. A hobo from off a train. A black man with round cheeks and a brimmed hat in dark clothes. He too, did not frighten me.
I saw both figures each a few times over a span of weeks. Always in the deep of my sleep and always standing in the doorway. I would acknowledge them, sometimes tell them to go away and I’d go back to sleep.
Then one night, she came. She scared the crap out of me. She was mean and foul and her eyes stared into my soul with menace.
I sat right up in bed and smacked my husband to wake up. He woke up, saw nothing and told me I was nuts and went back to sleep. She came again on several other nights. After she started coming, the other two figures didn’t anymore. Like her presence was too strong to allow the others.
I hated when she would come. She was evil and menacing. Fortunately, none of the spirits had ever crossed the bedroom threshold.
I don’t know why, but I always thought it was because I carried the Lord’s Holy Spirit with me, so they couldn’t come closer.
Nevertheless, that old dark Indian matron taunted me. I would sit up and blink my eyes, making sure I wasn’t “seeing” things, but I’d still see her.
The last straw though was the night she crossed into the bedroom. She got right up to the side of my bed and I had to aggressively shoe her away while I prayed for her to stay gone.
After that I had had enough and I needed help to get rid of her.
Luckily, my brother married a Cree Indian and she said she could bless our house and get rid of the spirits.
Desiree came and we did the smudging and burning of the sage throughout the house, while Desiree chanted some Proverbial Indian words.
All was being blessed and as we walked down the hallway to my bedroom, the sage jumped out of the bowl it was in and burned the carpet at our feet. We freaked a little and Des said that that Indian spirit was very angry, but I kinda already knew that.
Anyway, we retraced our steps and Desiree chanted more profoundly and was able to finish blessing the whole house.
None of the spirits came again. I did learn later that our home was the sight of an old stage coach stop. That could be why I had three such different spirits come as if they were trying to go somewhere, but were stuck at my house.
