Independence Family Bothered by ‘Ghosts’.
Independence ‘Haunted’ House – Would you live there? Ruth Rogers photo.
Independence, Wis. – (Special) – People who don’t believe in ghost stories and haunted houses may discredit the story of there being a “haunted house” in Burnside township north of here. But a young farm couple, Mr and Mrs Lawrence Hoff, who live five miles north of Independence on highway 121, seem to be visited by some unseen spirit that has been tapping, rapping in their house for three months. The gentle rapping – six knocks, a pause, six knocks, a pause – has continued daily except for two weeks’ respite in October.
The 50-year-old two-story frame structure has been checked for building defects that might rattle or allow animals to enter. However, the Hoffs have not been able to locate the source of the rapping and tapping despite a search inside and outside the house, during and between the noises.
Before the death of the former owner, Arthur Cripps, in the summer of 1950, Cripps let it be known that upon his death he wished the Hoffs to purchase the farm at a nominal figure. In November, 1950, the couple took possession and Mrs Cripps left for her former home in Stonington, Ill. After redecorating the Hoffs moved in in May, 1951. Mrs Hoff, not yet 19 years old, gave birth to a son July 30, 1951, and it was about the middle of August, when she returned from the hospital, that the rapping, tapping started. It came by day, it came by night.
At first Mrs Hoff alone heard it as her husband was out in the fields. She thought it was due to a nervous condition as she was weak after her hospitalisation. But soon Mr Hoff heard it too. There were five or six gentle knocks in a row, then a pause, then a repetition. The sounds were heard either in the kitchen walls or from beneath the floor. Once Mr Hoff heard a pounding on his bedroom wall. This continued every day for two months. One night when Mr and Mrs Hoff were eating supper, the kitchen floor shook with the reverberations and the windows rattled. Feeling foolish about the whole thing, Mr and Mrs Hoff kept the story to themselves and their immediate relatives as long as they could, but a hired man at their place heard it too one day, and the story leaked out.
A couple of nights the pounding got so bad that in terror against unseen forces, Mr and Mrs Hoff bundled off to the home of his parents a quarter-mile away. Lawrence’s father and his brother Lyle went to the “haunted house” and Lyle, gun in hand, fired a couple of shots into the air. Then he began pounding on the outside wall, but the harder he pounded, the harder came the knocking – or so it seemed.
The Hoffs searched the house from cellar to garret, finding nothing and seeing no signs of flying squirrels, mice or any other animls that could gently pound five or six times, then pause, then resume. The outside walls and roof are insulated, leaving no room for little animals to house themselves. Furthermore it is not a scratching sound, it is a gentle rapping, the Hoffs relate. The plumbing has been examined and the noise does not come from the water pipes. Once when Mrs Hoff felt a tapping directly beneath her chair in the kitchen, Mr Hoff hurried to the basement but could neither see nor hear anything, although the rapping continued under Mrs Hoff while he was there. There is a basement under the entire house with cement floor except in the fruit cellar.
There are several theories as to the cause of the tapping. A fortune teller’s explanation would probably be that there are real spirits haunting the house, for it is said by some that Arthur Cripps during his lifetime had also heard rappings at the window, coming from an unknown source, and that a law officer, once called there, found not a clue. Some theorise that Hoff got too good a deal on his farm price to suit some people, and somebody is trying to frighten the Hoffs away so that they can in turn buy the farm.
Oters guess that somebody has rigged an electrical device in the wall some way that, at intervals, goes into motion, perhaps by a switch that can be turned on at a distance from the house. Maybe they even use radar. There is a theory that there is buried treasure either in the basement of the house or under a tree outside so the Hoffs are being scared away so that someone can dig. In fact, someone broke into their house on one occasion and dug around in the basement. The Crippses were people of some means so some opine that there is gold in th ehouse. Furthermore, the house isn’t far from Chimney Rock where Jesse James is supposed to have buried the loot he took during the Northfield, Minn., bank robbery, for it is history that he and his men came back via Eleva and spent the ninght at a farm house near Chimney Rock.
Mrs Hoff’s parents, Mr and Mrs Roy Rebarchek, who live on a farm near Whitehall, declare that one night when they came home from visiting a neighbour and had retired upstairs, they heard a man open the door, walk up the stirs and come to the bedroom door. As soon as they saw him there, he vanished. It wouldn’t be so credible that the Hoffs had been hearing these noises if his parents, brother, their hired man and Mrs Hoff’s sister Helen hadn’t heard them too. The rappings stopped about the middle of October and then started again a couple of weeks later.
One night two or three cars drove up to the place and there was rapping at the windows and commotion around the house. License numbers taken from the cars disclosed that occupants were youngsters from Independence out on Halloween pranks after they had heard the stories.