Speaker 1: Hello, It's Richard mc cleinsmith here with some more events news.
Speaker 1: I'm delighted to say I'll be performing at this year's
Speaker 1: Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Unexplained has beguiled listeners for over a
Speaker 1: decade with real life tales at the strange and mysterious,
Speaker 1: but now, for the first time, I'll be taking the
Speaker 1: podcast to the Fringe, where I'll be giving a live
Speaker 1: interpretation of the Flannan Isles Lighthouse Mystery. The year is
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred three. Lighthouse keepers stand watch on a desolate
Speaker 1: island far from home until one day they completely vanish
Speaker 1: from the face of the earth. So if you'd like
Speaker 1: to see me tell that story in person, I'll be
Speaker 1: performing from August seventh to the twenty ninth at ten
Speaker 1: pm in Theater three of the Space at the Surgeons Hall.
Speaker 1: I would dearly love you all to come. Tickets are
Speaker 1: on sale now just search Unexplained Live at the Fringe,
Speaker 1: or you can go to Unexplained podcast dot com, Forward
Speaker 1: Slash Events and find the link there, or if you like,
Speaker 1: you can go to the SPACEUK dot com Forward Slash
Speaker 1: Shows Board Slash twenty twenty six Forward Slash Unexplained hyphen life.
Speaker 1: I look forward to seeing you there. On a barmie
Speaker 1: day in the summer of nineteen sixty nine, a classic
Speaker 1: low sprung station wagon bumps gingerly along a dirt road
Speaker 1: through the backwards of Villas County in northeastern Wisconsin. As
Speaker 1: the car rounds a corner, the woodland suddenly gives way
Speaker 1: to a clearing, revealing the placid waters of West Bay
Speaker 1: Lake beyond. But something else comes into view too, a
Speaker 1: rambling clapboard mansion partially hidden within the trees. It's a
Speaker 1: complete hodgepodge of styles, part faux Georgian, part Greek Revival,
Speaker 1: with hints of classic New England. Here and there, thirty
Speaker 1: year old Ginger Hinshaw, her straight mouse brown hair hanging
Speaker 1: just below her shoulders, leans out of the passenger window,
Speaker 1: utterly captivated by it. The property and its outbuildings had
Speaker 1: been vacant for years and were in desperate need of
Speaker 1: some TLC. The windows were broken, the roof sacked, while
Speaker 1: in sight was a mess of peeling paint and wallpaper.
Speaker 1: But Ginger didn't care. She fell in love the moment
Speaker 1: she saw the pictures of it. Seeing it now in
Speaker 1: the flesh as it were only strengthened her desire to
Speaker 1: buy it. Ginger had recently remarried, and her husband, Arnold,
Speaker 1: owned a construction company. Together they could restore the place
Speaker 1: into a marvelous family home and build a new life together.
Speaker 1: Arnold is almost as excited as his wife as they
Speaker 1: pull up outside, squeezing Ginger's hand as they trade excited looks.
Speaker 1: But in the back seat, Ginger's nine year old daughter, April,
Speaker 1: one of six that she and Arnold's share between them,
Speaker 1: is less enthused. As she gets out of the car
Speaker 1: and still up but the property's eerily dark gable windows,
Speaker 1: she feels as sudden coldness come over her. Without any
Speaker 1: of her mother's optimism, she sees nothing but a decrepit,
Speaker 1: oversized cabin with a low slung porch that was far
Speaker 1: darker than it had any right to be under the
Speaker 1: warm midday sun. Though she can't quite articulate exactly how
Speaker 1: it makes her feel, what she does know is that
Speaker 1: she absolutely doesn't want to live here. But the Hinshaws
Speaker 1: will ignore April's reservations and within weeks complete their purchase
Speaker 1: of the property. The place has had many names over
Speaker 1: the years, Lilac Hills, the Lamont Mansion and most recently
Speaker 1: Summer Wind, and over the course of the next few months,
Speaker 1: it will completely and utterly tear the family apart. You're
Speaker 1: listening to unexplained and I'm Richard McLean Smith. According to
Speaker 1: most accounts, Summer Wind, as it was most recently known,
Speaker 1: was built in the early nineteen hundreds as a fishing laudnche.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixteen, then called Lilac Hills, it was apparently
Speaker 1: purchased by Robert Lamont, who at the time was vice
Speaker 1: president of a company owned by American Steel Foundries. Later,
Speaker 1: he would serve as the Secretary of Commerce for President
Speaker 1: Herbert Hoover. Lamont is rumoured to have employed a firm
Speaker 1: of Chicago based architects to remodel the mansion. Allegedly, the
Speaker 1: work took two years to complete, during which time there
Speaker 1: were bizarre stories that some of the rooms appeared inexplicably
Speaker 1: to change their dimensions from day to day. Then, sometime
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties, a number of strange stories from
Speaker 1: the family's servants began to surface. It was said that
Speaker 1: DAWs opened and closed on their own. Sometimes, disembodied voices
Speaker 1: were heard, and apparitions had even been seen, including a
Speaker 1: translucent woman milling about the property's driveway. The la Monts
Speaker 1: apparently didn't believe any of it until one night Robert
Speaker 1: Lamont and his wife Helen were home alone having dinner.
Speaker 1: As they ate dessert, Robert looked up to see a
Speaker 1: strange shadow like figure standing in the doorway that led
Speaker 1: to the basement stairs. He was allegedly so startled that
Speaker 1: he grabbed a pistol from a kitchen drawer and fired
Speaker 1: twice at the shadowy figure, only for the bullets to
Speaker 1: go straight into the door and the figure vanish moments later.
Speaker 1: The family is said to have abandoned the house soon after,
Speaker 1: all of which was completely unknown to Ginger and Arnold
Speaker 1: Hinshaw when they moved in. In those first few weeks.
Speaker 1: Flushed with the effervescent enthusiasm of a new homeowner, Ginger
Speaker 1: got started on all the much needed renovations, beginning with
Speaker 1: repainting and wall papering, but things soon became difficult when
Speaker 1: the Hinshaws tried to find local contractors to help with
Speaker 1: the more complicated work. The responses were initially enthusiastic, but
Speaker 1: as soon as they mentioned the name Summer Wind the
Speaker 1: contractors suddenly found they were too busy or were lacking
Speaker 1: the required materials. Ginger couldn't understand why exactly, but assumed
Speaker 1: it was simply to do with the sheer amount of
Speaker 1: work that was needed, and so in the meantime, they
Speaker 1: pressed on with the renovations alone. One day, Ginger was
Speaker 1: rummaging through a bedroom closet when she found a roll
Speaker 1: of musty old papers. Opening them up, she was surprised
Speaker 1: to find that they were the original plans for the house.
Speaker 1: But even more surprising was what she found in them.
Speaker 1: As she continued to unroll the papers, a long, wooden
Speaker 1: object slipped out from inside them. That's weird, she thought,
Speaker 1: holding the item up to the light. Though she couldn't
Speaker 1: be sure what it was exactly, it appeared to be
Speaker 1: an old Native American peace pipe. After finding the pipe,
Speaker 1: for some strange reason, Ginger felt more driven than ever
Speaker 1: to restore Summer Wind to its former glory. Something about
Speaker 1: the physicality of it all wrapped up in those old papers.
Speaker 1: Holding them in her hands, she felt momentarily transported right
Speaker 1: back in time to when the house was first built.
Speaker 1: She began to feel sorry for how it had been
Speaker 1: so mercilessly abandoned and left to rot all these years,
Speaker 1: and she had the sudden burning urge to make it
Speaker 1: whole again. Ginger's restoration efforts became obsessive. At one point,
Speaker 1: she even tried out eleven different colors for the interior
Speaker 1: would work before a lighting on the right one. But
Speaker 1: while Ginger's passions for the renovations grew almost as if
Speaker 1: the two were inversely proportional to each other, her husband, Arnold's,
Speaker 1: just as suddenly began to wane. So the story goes,
Speaker 1: it all started when Arnold apparently discovered a crawl space
Speaker 1: behind a closet in one of the bedrooms. When he
Speaker 1: ap peered inside it, he saw what appeared to be
Speaker 1: the carcass of some kind of animal, but he didn't
Speaker 1: quite have the angle to see what it was exactly.
Speaker 1: Too small to fit in the space himself, he asked
Speaker 1: one of his daughters to go inside and find out
Speaker 1: what was in there. The girl dutifully took a torch
Speaker 1: and squeezed into the space, only to let out a
Speaker 1: horrified scream moments later. The strange shape, it turned out,
Speaker 1: was apparently a human skull, still covered in thick strands
Speaker 1: of dark hair. Rather than remove it, Arnold is said
Speaker 1: to have made the questionable decision to simply plaster over
Speaker 1: the wall, leaving the skull in there. It was supposedly
Speaker 1: his belief that the remains had been placed there for
Speaker 1: a reason and shouldn't be disturbed. It was around this
Speaker 1: time that Arnold began to notice something strange. Sometimes he
Speaker 1: would leave a room and come back only to find
Speaker 1: a chair had been moved. Other times, it seemed he
Speaker 1: only needed to turn his back for a moment and
Speaker 1: a chair would be swiftly positioned a different way by
Speaker 1: invisible hands. Ginger had noticed it too, more than that
Speaker 1: at times, with the kids at school and Arnold out
Speaker 1: for work, Ginger had the distinct sense that she wasn't
Speaker 1: entirely alone in the house. As time went by, Arnold
Speaker 1: became increasingly distracted and seemed incapable of completing any household
Speaker 1: task that he began. Instead, he spent most of his
Speaker 1: free time I'm sombly playing an electric organ that he'd
Speaker 1: bought himself as a moving impresent, And as the months
Speaker 1: went by, Arnold just became more and more withdrawn. First,
Speaker 1: he stopped helping with the renovations, claiming he didn't have
Speaker 1: the energy for it. Then he stopped his own construction
Speaker 1: work too. He began sleeping through the day, seeming to
Speaker 1: wake only to play the organ, and if he woke
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, he'd play it then too,
Speaker 1: filling the house with its mournful tones. As Arnold's despondency
Speaker 1: grew worse, he became uncharacteristically angry and began shouting at
Speaker 1: the children and Ginger at the slightest provocation. One evening,
Speaker 1: he berated Ginger for leaving their bedroom window open, even
Speaker 1: though she distinctly remembered closing. It happened again and again.
Speaker 1: Each time the enraged Arnold would accuse Ginger of deliberately
Speaker 1: leaving the window open to provoke him. In the end,
Speaker 1: Ginger decided just to nail the window shut. Soon, Arnold
Speaker 1: stopped talking altogether, much to Ginger and the children's distress.
Speaker 1: When he wasn't lying in bed, he spent his time
Speaker 1: wandering around the mansion's rooms as if looking for something,
Speaker 1: or just standing silently on the verandah staring out over
Speaker 1: the lake for minutes at a time. At some point,
Speaker 1: the children managed to domesticate a local raccoon when it
Speaker 1: escaped one day, Arnold again became inexplicably angry and ordered
Speaker 1: them all outside in the middle of the night to
Speaker 1: go and look for it. When they couldn't find it,
Speaker 1: he revealed the sickening truth he had killed it to
Speaker 1: teach them a lesson, he said. One day, Ginger was
Speaker 1: at home alone when she became convinced she could hear
Speaker 1: a deep and strong male voice calling out to her
Speaker 1: from the floor above Ginger. Ginger bit could, with the
Speaker 1: floorboards gently creaking at each step. Ginger slowly walked up
Speaker 1: the stairs, then along the upstairs corridor to where the
Speaker 1: sound appeared to be coming from. Turning a corner, she
Speaker 1: saw for the briefest moment, what she later described as
Speaker 1: a dark, shadowy figure. Ginger was convinced she was just
Speaker 1: hallucinating from all the stress and tiredness of the last
Speaker 1: few months, so she decided to take a break and
Speaker 1: invited some friends over to show them what she'd been
Speaker 1: working on all this time. After giving them a tour
Speaker 1: of the house, Ginger and her friends retired to the lounge,
Speaker 1: where they had some drinks and chatted amiably together. Later,
Speaker 1: as Ginger was getting more drinks from the kitchen, she
Speaker 1: heard a piercing scream coming from the lounge. Ginger rushed in,
Speaker 1: only to find her friends in a state of abject horror.
Speaker 1: According to them, they'd just seen a ghostly form walk
Speaker 1: in and out of the room without even giving Ginger
Speaker 1: time to digest it all, they grabbed their things and left.
Speaker 1: It was only after the apparent incident with her friends
Speaker 1: that Ginger is said to have begun to think a
Speaker 1: little deeper about everything that had been going on. The
Speaker 1: moving chairs, Arnold's strange moods, the unrelenting sense that her
Speaker 1: family were not the only inhabitants of the house, and
Speaker 1: the shadowy figure she was almost certain she'd seen days before.
Speaker 1: She couldn't believe she was even thinking it, But was
Speaker 1: it completely out of the realms of possibility that Summer
Speaker 1: Wind was haunted. Meanwhile, as Arnold's moods grew ever darker,
Speaker 1: its organ playing grew increasingly dissonant and ominous. Disturbed by
Speaker 1: the strange tonal shift, Ginger asked if he could play
Speaker 1: something else instead, but Arnold refused, claiming that it was
Speaker 1: the only thing that gave him pleasure in life. By now,
Speaker 1: he had lost his construction business and seemingly his entire
Speaker 1: sense of self. Though Arnold's children were more forgiving of
Speaker 1: his behavior for Ginger's children, for whom Arnold was a
Speaker 1: relative stranger, its presence was starting to feel deeply threatening.
Speaker 1: As winter fell, the Henshaw family's life at Summer Wind
Speaker 1: reached a crisis point. Struggling to pay the fuel bills,
Speaker 1: the whole family hauled their mattresses downstairs and took to
Speaker 1: sleeping together in the living room to keep warm. After
Speaker 1: several months of unpaid bills, the utility companies disconnected the
Speaker 1: heating and electricity altogether. Whether then the water pump supplying
Speaker 1: the house with fresh water broke, leaving the family with
Speaker 1: the only option of having to get their water from
Speaker 1: the lake. The grand dream of their luxury lake shore
Speaker 1: life had turned into a nightmare of fear, depression, and
Speaker 1: a struggle for survival. With things at breaking point, Ginger
Speaker 1: knew that something had to change. Having finally admitted defeat,
Speaker 1: she walked to a neighbor's house and phoned her father.
Speaker 1: To her and the children's immense relief, he arrived a
Speaker 1: few hours later in his caravan and took them all away.
Speaker 1: According to some reports, Arnold didn't go with them, having
Speaker 1: apparently succumbed to a full on mental breakdown. He was
Speaker 1: instead admitted to a psychiatric hospital. By the spring of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, Ginger and her and Arnold's children had
Speaker 1: moved to Canada, determined to start a new life, but
Speaker 1: she couldn't stop thinking about Summer Wind for the while,
Speaker 1: vowing never to return to the house. However, events were
Speaker 1: about to summon her back. When Ginger is said to
Speaker 1: have first described everything that happened at Summer Wind to
Speaker 1: her father, he simply didn't believe her. But over time,
Speaker 1: like his daughter, Raymond Boba found that he too had
Speaker 1: begun to think obsessively about the house, so much so
Speaker 1: that after some months he arranged a viewing of the property.
Speaker 1: Accompanying Raymond on the journey was his son, ray recently
Speaker 1: home from the American Vietnam War. As father and son
Speaker 1: toward the partially restored mansion, much like Ginger had done
Speaker 1: all those months before, they couldn't help thinking just how
Speaker 1: perfect the place could be if given the right attention.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't even need much, which help, they reasoned, since
Speaker 1: Raymond had carpentry skills and Ray was a dab hand
Speaker 1: at plastering. A few weeks later, Raymond Boba became the
Speaker 1: latest owner of Summer Wind. When he told Ginger, she
Speaker 1: was distraught. Not only was she angry that her father
Speaker 1: had brought the house back into her life, knowing how
Speaker 1: it had destroyed her family, now he was at risk too.
Speaker 1: After much pleading from his daughter, Raymond agreed that while
Speaker 1: he was working on the house, it'd stay in his
Speaker 1: motor home rather than the property itself. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: an undaunted ray got to work. Later in the evening
Speaker 1: of that first day, as night began to fall, ray
Speaker 1: appeared at his father's motor home, clearly having been unsettled
Speaker 1: by something. When Raymond asked what the matter was, Ray
Speaker 1: denied that there was anything wrong, but still told his
Speaker 1: father that, with regret, he wouldn't be able to work
Speaker 1: on that house for a few days because he'd broken
Speaker 1: some equipment and needed to replace it. But Raymond was
Speaker 1: unconvinced he knew his son was hiding something. That night
Speaker 1: in his motor home in the shadow of Summer Wind,
Speaker 1: he began to wonder if Ginger's stories about all the
Speaker 1: strange goings on were actually true, and so he apparently
Speaker 1: asked her back to the property to see if they
Speaker 1: could get to the bottom of it all. When Ginger arrived,
Speaker 1: it was immediately clear to her that Ray, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: was hiding something, so she devised a plan to try
Speaker 1: and coax it out of him. Since leaving the property,
Speaker 1: Ginger had apparently been studying techniques for hypnosis and asked
Speaker 1: her brother if he'd let her try it out on him.
Speaker 1: Ray reluctantly agreed, and before long Ginger had put him
Speaker 1: in a deep trance. When Ginger began to question Ray
Speaker 1: about the house, its legs started shaking. Then he started speaking,
Speaker 1: but as Raymond told it later, it wasn't Ray's normal
Speaker 1: voice that came out. You are weak. I am strong,
Speaker 1: he said, in a spiteful and angry tone. Then, bizarrely,
Speaker 1: he claimed to be very old and had seven children,
Speaker 1: which he despised, but Ray didn't have any children. Terrified
Speaker 1: that she'd somehow connected with a demonic entity through her
Speaker 1: brother's body, Ginger commanded whatever was speaking to her to leave.
Speaker 1: Ray then went quiet and eventually came round. When Ginger
Speaker 1: played him back a recording she'd made of the session.
Speaker 1: He was stunned and claimed not to remember any of it.
Speaker 1: Ray then apparently agreed to tell his sister and father
Speaker 1: what he'd experienced the day before at the mansion. He
Speaker 1: said that he was upstairs in the or way alone
Speaker 1: when he suddenly felt like there was someone else there.
Speaker 1: Then he heard two voices, followed by gunshots that seemed
Speaker 1: to come from the kitchen. He raced downstairs, expecting to
Speaker 1: confront someone, but found no one there at all, but
Speaker 1: in the air was the faint odor of what he
Speaker 1: took to be gunpowder. Hurriedly, he opened the back door
Speaker 1: to see if anyone was outside, but again there was
Speaker 1: nobody there. Heading back into the kitchen, he apparently found
Speaker 1: himself being drawn to the door that led from the
Speaker 1: kitchen to the basement. There were two strange holes in
Speaker 1: it that had clearly been there for years. They looked
Speaker 1: to him like bullet holes. Then the hairs on the
Speaker 1: back of his neck stood on end, as though he
Speaker 1: could sense someone standing right behind him. Ray claimed that
Speaker 1: he turned to see a dark spectral figure radiating nothing
Speaker 1: but pure evil. Ray said he then turned and ran
Speaker 1: on pure instinct all the way to his truck, before
Speaker 1: driving off at speed. After hearing Ray's story, his father
Speaker 1: Raymond was reminded of how Robert Lamont had apparently reported
Speaker 1: seeing a ghost and fired two shots at it many
Speaker 1: years before, without knowing why exactly. Raymond asked his daughter
Speaker 1: if she could hypnotize him too, perhaps they might learn
Speaker 1: something else, he thought, though he was a bit less
Speaker 1: suggestible than his son. Ginger is said to have eventually
Speaker 1: succeeded in putting Raymond in a trance. As Raymond would
Speaker 1: later detail in a book, he also began to talk.
Speaker 1: He described descending into the basement of Summer Wind and
Speaker 1: moving toward a back wall. There he found a hidden
Speaker 1: chamber behind the wall, inside which was an old wooden box,
Speaker 1: and inside the box was a land grant written in
Speaker 1: seventeen sixty seven, and at the bottom of the document
Speaker 1: was the name Jonathan Carver. Raymond claimed to have come
Speaker 1: out at the trance with no recollection of this apparent
Speaker 1: vision and no idea who Jonathan Carver was. The following day,
Speaker 1: Raymond is then said to have gone to the local library, where,
Speaker 1: after some research, he was amazed to discover there was
Speaker 1: a man of some note named Jonathan Carver who'd been
Speaker 1: alive in seventeen sixty seven. Jonathan Carver, who absolutely was
Speaker 1: a real person, was essentially a British citizen. Born in Weymouth, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: in seventeen ten, after teaching himself surveying in cartography, he
Speaker 1: joined the Massachusetts Colonial Militia and fought in the French
Speaker 1: and Indian War as it was known. In seventeen sixty one,
Speaker 1: he became captain of a regiment, but decided to quit
Speaker 1: the army two years later to go exploring instead. Over
Speaker 1: the next few years, he traveled along the northern coast
Speaker 1: of Lake Michigan and up the Fox River and the
Speaker 1: Mississippi into what is now Minnesota, keeping detailed logs of
Speaker 1: everything he saw, including his many encounters with indigenous tribes.
Speaker 1: When Carver finally returned home, he expected to receive acclaim
Speaker 1: and financial rewards for his explorations from the British King
Speaker 1: George the Third, whom he believed had commissioned his trip,
Speaker 1: but George and his court weren't interested in his achievements.
Speaker 1: In seventeen sixty nine, John Carver traveled to England to
Speaker 1: press his claims for remuneration. Unfortunately for him, he had
Speaker 1: apparently been laboring under a misapprehension the British government and
Speaker 1: the King had no interest in rewarding him for his expedition.
Speaker 1: In the end, Carver was left only with his maps,
Speaker 1: log books and journals, along with significant debts and simmering resentment.
Speaker 1: Determined to salvage something from his efforts, Carver spent the
Speaker 1: next nine years preparing the story of his travels for publication.
Speaker 1: A book was finally published in London in seventeen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: with the rather dry title of Travels through the Interior
Speaker 1: Parts of North America in the years seventeen sixty six
Speaker 1: to seventeen sixty eight. Nonetheless, it gave readers a vivid
Speaker 1: description of the rich lands and native inhabitants of the
Speaker 1: Upper Mississippi River Valley, and after some months, proved to
Speaker 1: be a big success. In the end, more than thirty
Speaker 1: editions would be printed, but sadly, Jonathan Carver didn't live
Speaker 1: long enough to enjoy the success or reap the financial
Speaker 1: rewards for his efforts, and died still impoverished, in Paris, France,
Speaker 1: in January seventeen eighty, just before the book sales began
Speaker 1: to take off. Carver was buried in a potter's field,
Speaker 1: a term for a pauper's grave on unconsecrated ground, a
Speaker 1: fate of the destitute and those with no social status.
Speaker 1: Carver's misfortunes didn't end after his death. By eighteen forty four,
Speaker 1: the popularity of Travels to the Interior had greatly declined,
Speaker 1: and some historians began to claim that it consisted of
Speaker 1: made up stories written while Carver was living in London.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until nineteen o nine that a letter written
Speaker 1: by Carver back in seventeen sixty seven came to light
Speaker 1: that proved the details in Carver's book were most likely
Speaker 1: true after all. Then, Raymond Bober reached what was for him,
Speaker 1: the most exciting part of Jonathan Carver's story. The third
Speaker 1: edition of Carver's book contained a con troversial claim that
Speaker 1: two Dakota so Native American chiefs had granted Carver a
Speaker 1: large tract of land in eastern Wisconsin, estimated around twelve
Speaker 1: thousand miles for helping to resolve a dispute between them
Speaker 1: and a neighboring tribal group. If it were true, Carver
Speaker 1: and his descendants could lay claim to being some of
Speaker 1: the wealthiest people in the world if only they could
Speaker 1: find the proof. As it happened, Carver's descendants very much
Speaker 1: pursued the claim, but since no document verifying it was
Speaker 1: ever found, nothing could be done to help them. It
Speaker 1: said that when Raymond relayed everything he'd learned about John
Speaker 1: Carver back to his daughter, Ginger, she couldn't help but
Speaker 1: think back to that strange pipe she'd found wrapped up
Speaker 1: in the original blueprints for the mansion. Might that have
Speaker 1: had something to do with it all, she wondered, And so,
Speaker 1: despite everything the place had done to them, Ginger, Raymond,
Speaker 1: and ray plucked up their courage and went back to
Speaker 1: Summer Wind. As Raymond later wrote, the three of them
Speaker 1: are said to have carefully retraced the steps which Raymond
Speaker 1: apparently took in his trance, beginning with the stairs leading
Speaker 1: into the basement. As they descended into the dark with
Speaker 1: their torches, everything was eerily quiet as they carried on
Speaker 1: toward the back wall, to where Raymond said he saw
Speaker 1: the hidden chamber with nothing else. With nothing else for it,
Speaker 1: ray began to chip away at the wall until some
Speaker 1: of the brickwork fell away, revealing, much to their astonishment,
Speaker 1: a cavity in the space behind, But to their intense disappointment,
Speaker 1: there was nothing there, and nor was the apparent box
Speaker 1: to be found anywhere else in the house. In the end,
Speaker 1: the family had little choice but to give up looking
Speaker 1: for it. In nineteen seventy nine, Raymond Bober published a
Speaker 1: book called The Carver Effect, A Paranormal Experience, in which
Speaker 1: he detailed all the strange occurrences that a claimed to
Speaker 1: have befallen his family and theorized that it was none
Speaker 1: other than the bitter spirit of Jonathan Carver who was
Speaker 1: responsible for it. Whatever the truth, at the very least,
Speaker 1: Bober's book helped to keep the paranormal stories about Summer
Speaker 1: Wind alive. In nineteen eighty, Life magazine published a photo
Speaker 1: essay titled Terrifying Tales of Nine Haunted Houses, which included
Speaker 1: the Wisconsin Mansion. Then, on a night in June nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, amid of violent storm, it said that a
Speaker 1: thunderous clap split the sky and a bolt of lightning
Speaker 1: shot out of it, striking the mansion and setting it ablaze.
Speaker 1: By the following afternoon, it had burned completely to the ground.
Speaker 1: To day, Summerwind's reputation as one of America's most haunted
Speaker 1: houses has faded. Its remote location on private property with
Speaker 1: hardly any standing remains has discouraged all but the most
Speaker 1: determined ghost hunters from visiting, but locals still call it
Speaker 1: the Lamont Mansion and ghost stories continue to linger from
Speaker 1: time to time. It said that the smell of fire
Speaker 1: can be sensed, that a ghostly figure is glimpsed, and
Speaker 1: that the murmuring of disembodied voices can be heard wafting
Speaker 1: among the ruins. Could it be that Jonathan Carver's spirit
Speaker 1: is still restlessly seeking to claim what he always felt
Speaker 1: he was owed? Either way, whether the alleged hauntings really happened,
Speaker 1: whether Carver was ever granted a large tract of land
Speaker 1: around summer winter, and whether his resentful spirit still haunts
Speaker 1: the ruined mansion continues to remain unexplained. This episode was
Speaker 1: written by Diane Hope and Richard McLain Smith. Thank you
Speaker 1: as ever for listening. Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions
Speaker 1: podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All other elements of
Speaker 1: the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me
Speaker 1: Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook is now
Speaker 1: available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes
Speaker 1: and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and
Speaker 1: rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel
Speaker 1: free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas
Speaker 1: regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you
Speaker 1: have an explanation or a story of your own you'd
Speaker 1: like to share. You can find out more at Unexplained
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