Summerwind Mansion

Robert Patterson Lamont built this elegant summer home in 1916, and it became one of America's most talked-about haunted houses before a lightning strike burned it to the ground in 1988.

Summerwind, originally called Lilac Hills, began as a fishing lodge on the shores of West Bay Lake in Vilas County before Robert Patterson Lamont purchased the property in 1916 and hired the Chicago architectural firm Tallmadge and Watson to transform it into an imposing two-story, twenty-room summer mansion with a large stone terrace overlooking the lake. The renovation cost approximately one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, nearly three million in modern currency. Lamont was an executive at American Steel Foundries Corporation who would go on to serve as United States Secretary of Commerce under President Herbert Hoover from 1929 to 1932. He and his wife Helen filled the mansion with valuable antiques collected during their travels.

According to legend, the haunting began during the Lamont era when household servants reported bizarre noises, strange smells, and a persistent feeling that the property was haunted. The most dramatic early incident allegedly occurred one evening when a tall black specter emerged from the basement door during dinner, causing Mrs. Lamont to hide behind her husband. Lamont drew a pistol and fired two shots at the figure, but the bullets reportedly passed through it and lodged in the basement door behind it, leaving permanent holes. The terrified family abandoned Lilac Hills and never returned, though Lamont maintained ownership until his death in 1948. None of these claims appear in Lamont's own writings.

After Lamont's death, the Keefer family purchased the mansion. Mr. Keefer died suddenly of a heart attack within months. His widow Lillian reportedly feared entering the home and gradually sold off parcels of the estate. Multiple prospective buyers allegedly experienced financial troubles that returned the property to her control. The mansion sat largely abandoned through the 1960s until Arnold and Ginger Hinshaw moved in with their children in the early 1970s and attempted extensive renovations after discovering the original blueprints.

What followed became Wisconsin's most infamous haunted house story. The Hinshaws reported whispering voices, strange presences, lights turning on and off at random, and the ghost of a man in eighteenth-century clothing wandering the house at night. Contractors refused to work on the property despite substantial financial incentives. Most disturbingly, rooms reportedly changed size and dimension during renovation, with measurements taken one day contradicting those from the previous day. Arnold and his daughter both claimed to have discovered a human corpse in a hidden space behind a closet drawer, though they never reported this to authorities and the remains were never recovered. Arnold's mental state deteriorated rapidly. He began staying awake through the night playing his Hammond organ for hours on end, the chilling music echoing across the lake, claiming demons in his head demanded that he play. Ginger attempted suicide. After only six months, the family fled.

Ginger's father, Raymond Bober, purchased the property with plans to convert it into a bed and breakfast, though according to neighbors he never spent a single night inside the mansion, instead living in a trailer on the grounds. In 1979, writing under the pen name Wolfgang von Bober, he published The Carver Effect: A Paranormal Experience, claiming the mansion was haunted by the spirit of eighteenth-century British explorer Jonathan Carver, who was supposedly searching for a deed granting him territorial rights to a vast tract of northern Wisconsin. The book brought the first widespread attention to the property. Then in November 1980, Life magazine featured Summerwind in its article "Terrifying Tales of Nine Haunted Houses," calling it one of the most terrifying sites in the United States and spreading the supernatural tales nationally.

Skepticism has always shadowed the legend. At least two previous residents denied the house was haunted, and locals consistently maintained that no ghost stories existed before Bober's book was published. A neighbor confirmed that Bober didn't live in the mansion and never spent the night inside it. Paranormal Milwaukee and other investigators have noted that Arnold's organ playing and insomnia are consistent with obsessive-compulsive disorder and severe sleep deprivation, which can produce hallucinations. Professional carpenters have pointed out that measurement inconsistencies during renovations are common in old buildings with settling foundations.

On June 19, 1988, lightning struck the abandoned mansion during a severe storm and set it ablaze. Neighbors were awakened by the fire but no rescue attempt was made. Some whispered arson, but the official cause remained the lightning strike. The Discovery Channel dramatized the Hinshaw family's experience in the A Haunting episode "The Haunting of Summerwind," which aired on November 4, 2005. Devon Bell further documented the property's history in her book Haunted Summerwind: A Ghostly History of a Wisconsin Mansion. Today only the fieldstone foundation, brick chimneys, and stone terrace remain, gradually being reclaimed by the Northwoods forest on monitored private property closed to the public.