Dartford Cemetery

Chief Highknocker, the last Winnebago chief who drowned in 1911, haunts this pioneer cemetery near Green Lake alongside ghost children, while visitors who sit on the cracked Jackson Walker mausoleum report being pushed off by an unseen force. The cemetery was featured on Discovery Channel's "A Haunting" in 2007.

Sit on the Jackson Walker mausoleum and something pushes you off. That's the dare, anyway, and it's been drawing teenagers to Dartford Cemetery in Green Lake, Wisconsin for decades. The mausoleum has a crack in its roof, and local legend says the ghosts of children buried inside don't appreciate visitors climbing up.

The Discovery Channel thought the story was good enough for television. In November 2007, "A Haunting" aired an episode called "Legend Trippers" about a group of teenagers who spent a night in the cemetery after reading about it on paranormal researcher Chad Lewis's website. The episode documented encounters with a figure in Native American dress, headstone inscriptions that appeared to change, and scratches on the visitors' skin with no clear source.

The cemetery sits at 431 North Street in a town that used to be called Dartford before it became Green Lake. It's a pioneer burial ground, one of the oldest in the region, full of settlers' children who died young from disease and hard living. But the ghost that gets the most attention belonged to someone who arrived long before any of them.

Chief Highknocker was the last Winnebago chief to lead the Green Lake area. He was born around 1820 on the lake's east shore, and the Winnebago (now Ho-Chunk) considered the lake sacred. They called it Daycholah and believed a Water Spirit lived beneath its surface. According to Robert W. and Emma B. Heiple's 1977 book "A Heritage History of Beautiful Green Lake," every Winnebago was expected to visit at least once in their lifetime to worship that spirit.

Highknocker got his nickname from the stovepipe hat he always wore. He drowned on August 12, 1911, in the Puchyan River. The circumstances are murky. Official records call it a swimming accident. Other accounts say he was trying to cross the Fox River on a dare. His body was first buried near the riverbank, but in the 1930s his son Henry Dick moved him to Dartford Cemetery so he could rest near the lake he'd loved.

His grave is easy to find. There's a boulder pulled from the lake beside an unusual headstone carved with his likeness. Visitors have described seeing a figure in full ceremonial dress walking between the headstones, then vanishing over Highknocker's grave.

The cemetery has layers of ghost stories stacked on top of each other. The children's laughter that visitors describe hearing at dusk. The dark shapes between headstones. The orbs that photographers capture without trying. But the mausoleum dare and Chief Highknocker's ghost are the stories that keep bringing people back, and the stories that landed Dartford on lists of the most haunted cemeteries in Wisconsin.

Green Lake is tiny. The cemetery is right at the edge of town. There's no gate, no admission, no tour guide. You just walk in. The Jackson Walker mausoleum is on the south side, cracked roof and all. Nobody's going to stop you from climbing up. The question is how fast you'll come back down.