Schenck Mansion

A grand Italianate mansion built in 1874 for Benjamin Franklin Schenck in the Ohio River town of Vevay. The mansion now operates as a bed and breakfast and is said to be one of the most haunted houses in Indiana.

The Schenck Mansion in Vevay, Indiana, is a 12,000-square-foot Second Empire-style mansion built in 1874 for steamboat captain Benjamin Franklin Schenck, designed by Cincinnati architect George P. Humphries at a cost of $67,000. The thirty-five-room brick mansion features a striking four-story tower crowned by a widow's watch attic with three round dormer windows -- built so that Schenck's wife Celestine and their daughters Justine and Eugenia could watch his steamboat coming and going on the Ohio River below. The house boasts a mansard French roof, four porches, seven balconies, eight chimneys, and elaborate Italianate details. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The mansion's ghost story begins with tragedy. Captain Schenck died of tuberculosis just two years after moving into the magnificent home he had built for his family. Celestine and the girls, unable to maintain the vast house on their own, left it largely vacant for decades. The mansion passed through various hands over the following century before reopening in 2000 as the Benjamin Schenck Mansion Bed and Breakfast. It was during its operation as a B&B that the ghosts made themselves known.

The most frequently encountered spirit is the Victorian Lady in White, a female apparition dressed in period clothing who wanders the second floor of the mansion. She has become particularly famous for her habit of kissing male guests lightly on the cheek while they sleep -- a startling but ultimately gentle manifestation that has been reported by numerous men staying in the upstairs rooms. A number of male guests have woken to the soft pressure of phantom lips on their face, only to find the room empty. Innkeeper Michelle Thompson has stated: "We do have friendly spirits, four or five. One gets a little frisky with the guys."

In 2011, a team of seven paranormal investigators spent a full day in the mansion and encountered at least two distinct female ghosts. The investigation confirmed what staff and guests had been reporting for years: the mansion is home to multiple spirits. Current and past owners have identified the presences as including a young woman, a soldier, an elderly woman, and members of the original Schenck family. All are described as friendly -- unlike many spirits portrayed in popular culture, the Schenck Mansion ghosts appear more curious about the living than threatening.

The range of paranormal activity reported at the mansion goes well beyond the kissing ghost. Staff and visitors have experienced full-body apparitions, footsteps echoing through empty rooms, music playing with no radio or instrument present, lights turning on by themselves, doors shutting without being touched, and disembodied voices carrying conversations in rooms that are unoccupied. Thompson has described hearing doors open and shut when she is the only person in the building, and recent reports include thermostat manipulation by unseen entities -- temperatures adjusted to settings that no living person selected.

The Schenck Mansion continues to operate as a bed and breakfast, offering overnight stays in one of southern Indiana's most beautiful and most haunted historic homes. Visit Indiana has featured the mansion as one of the state's premier haunted destinations, and the combination of its tragic origin story -- a captain who built a dream home he barely lived to enjoy -- with its unusually affectionate ghosts makes it one of the most charming haunted locations in the Midwest.