ELY—In 2001, I moved to Ely from Hayward, Wis. with my son who was four years old at the time. I was single back then and had rented a house for us on James St. With the help of a girlfriend, we moved in on Halloween, timing that certainly set the tone for the next 16 years I lived in the house with my son and, later, with a man from Robinson Lake who I married.
I was lying down to rest in an extra upstairs bedroom when one the first unsettling events occurred. I was facing the wall, just beginning to relax when there was a hard slap on the mattress right behind my head and I immediately jolted up only to find nobody was there.
On another occasion, my husband was awakened from sleep upstairs when he heard his name loudly spoken, prompting him to get up and search for whoever was there, only to find the place empty.
Events continued over the years, perhaps the most frightening at around 11 p.m. one night. My husband and I were lying in bed and he had gone to sleep when all of a sudden I could hear slow scratching at the foot of the bed on the box spring. I knew the cats were all downstairs with the door of the stairwell closed to keep them from disturbing us as we all slept on the second floor. I laid still and quiet, unnerved, when I began feeling the sensation of energy or light pressure moving up over the blankets across my feet, traveling up my legs. ‘Oh God” I thought and having been a fan of psychic, Sylvia Brown, sat up and in my loudest voice invoked the entire holy family! I told whatever it was that it was MY house and that it had to leave. My hollering caused my husband to jolt up in bed nearly having a heart attack, wondering what the heck was going on. My command didn’t seem to convince the stubborn house guest and these antics kept occurring.
Another annoying event was when I brought in tall branches for Easter decorating and had them anchored in a heavy floor vase in a corner of the upstairs hallway. I hung the needlework eggs my mother had made on the branches by their delicate thread loops. All of the eggs were hung up high and yet I kept finding them on the floor but the hanging loops were always intact. If it were cat play, the entire scene would have been a mess so what was gently lifting them down off the branches? Finally, I just took the ornament tree down because it got too creepy.
Strange occurrences happened on the main floor too. Both me and my son’s friend had a similar experience in the living room on separate occasions when we had been sleeping on the couch. We each awoke in a very groggy state, unable to move our bodies or speak for several moments while we rode out this temporary frightening paralysis. Another spooky encounter took place in the kitchen one morning. My son who was about ten by that time, had his breakfast interrupted when he became aware of a transparent figure in the doorway on the other side of the room that immediately disappeared when he looked at it. Over the course of the years there were also sightings of another quickly moving, wispy transparent figure in the house on the main level. On one such occasion after coming out of the bathroom, my husband stepped into very cold air in the short hallway to the kitchen and as he rounded the corner the string of beads hanging from the doorway started moving back and forth upon his approach as if someone had rushed by ahead of him.
At one point, after the haunting experiences began I asked a neighbor about the history of the house and if he knew if anyone had died there, but he said he hadn’t heard of any such event. I later learned the house had been moved from Spaulding Mine Location years prior and was occupied by one family for many years but who knows what the house had witnessed prior to that. It was unsettling and annoying to me because at that time in my life I just wanted a peaceful place to raise my son. I don’t miss that house, except for its lovely flower gardens.