Alexander Noble House

An 1875 home in Fish Creek that's now part of a Door County museum complex and a regular stop on the peninsula's ghost tours.

The Alexander Noble House, built in 1875, is the oldest wood-framed structure still in its original location in Fish Creek, Door County. Alexander Noble was born November 29, 1829 in Edinburgh, Scotland, emigrated to Canada at age eight, lived in New York and on Chambers Island before settling in Fish Creek around 1862. He established himself as the community's blacksmith, postmaster, farmer, and town chairman, eventually controlling 300 acres and representing Gibraltar Township on the Door County Board from 1872 to 1884. He married Emily Vaughn, born 1831, and together they had three children, the eldest being Ula, born in 1853, who would later design the floor plans for the house that stands today.

Tragedy struck the Noble family twice in rapid succession. Emily died in 1873, and the following year their original log cabin burned to the ground, destroying all of Emily's belongings and objects of memory. In 1875, 22-year-old Ula drew up the plans for a new Greek Revival farmhouse on the same spot, and Alexander built it with the help of the community. He married Maria Campbell, a friend Ula had brought home for a visit, and together they had six more children. During restoration work, the Gibraltar Historical Association discovered a charred cedar board beneath the house, physical evidence confirming the original cabin had stood on the very same site.

The haunting began almost immediately after the new house was completed. A ghostly fog in the shape of a woman in white carrying a baby started appearing in the backyard near where the cabin had burned. The figure would walk from the site of the old house across the property to the back kitchen door and stop there. At first the family was frightened, but as the sightings became frequent between 1875 and 1876, they came to believe it was Emily returning to check on her children. The phenomenon persists today. A couple walking their dog near the property photographed the figure surrounded by a cold white fog, and Gibraltar Historical Association Director Laurie Buske describes the recurring pattern: the mist forms near the gazebo where the original house burned, then comes across the property and goes onto the back porch.

When Alexander's granddaughter Dr. Gertrude Howe, a pioneering pediatrician who flew her own plane across Wisconsin delivering the newly developed polio vaccine, vacated the house in 1990, it sat boarded up for six years. During this period, passersby reported faces staring out of the windows and a woman in white lace visible through the glass, her 1800s-style dress matching descriptions of the backyard ghost. Many concluded it was Emily, still watching over the home.

The most spiritually active room is Alexander Noble's bedroom, where visitors frequently photograph themselves in front of a mirror and discover strange figures in their images. One visitor captured what appeared to be a skeleton's face instead of her own reflection. Katelaine Buske, who worked as a nighttime docent during the summer of 2014 wearing authentic Victorian clothing for the Door County Trolley's Haunted Tour, reported seeing a bearded male figure in one of the upstairs mirrors standing behind her. During her first night, while discussing Emily's death, she felt a cold hand patting her back as if to console her. Over the summer she experienced a child tugging her skirt, the sound of children crying upstairs, doors slamming independently, flickering lights, and falling picture frames. She characterized the spirits as non-hostile: "They're just making sure everyone still knows that they're alive and chilling in the home."

Alexander Noble himself may also linger. During a Gibraltar Historical Association funeral reenactment, a photograph of Alexander's casket revealed a floating orb of light suspended above it. In another image taken in his bedroom, hovering flames appeared rimming the top of his old rocking chair, though the chair itself was undamaged. The Door County Trolley reports receiving 50 to 100 ghost photos annually from visitors to the property. Alexander died October 7, 1905 at age 75 and is buried at Ephraim Moravian Cemetery.

The Alexander Noble House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 1996. The Gibraltar Historical Association operates it as a museum with seasonal tours, and Director Laurie Buske describes the activity with affection: "It's just a family that never wants to move out." The Door County Trolley's flagship Trolley of the Doomed ghost tour, featured in USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, and Midwest Living Magazine, makes the Noble House a regular stop on its two-hour evening route through Fish Creek's haunted landmarks.