👻 HAUNTED PLACE · EXP. Nº9478
ACTIVE
Summerwind
Summerwind is a location reputed to be haunted in Wisconsin, US. Its reputation comes from reported apparitions, unexplained phenomena and eyewitness accounts gathered over time.
Where is Summerwind?
- Location
- Wisconsin, US
- Type
- House / mansion
- Coordinates
- 46.204, -89.426
- Testimonies
- 0
- Last updated
LOCATION
Why is Summerwind said to be haunted?
Summerwind was not a famous haunted house until a book made it one. The mansion stood on the shore of West Bay Lake, in Vilas County, Wisconsin, where the Chicago industrialist Robert Patterson Lamont bought the land in 1916 and had an existing wooden fishing lodge rebuilt as a summer residence; Lamont went on to serve as Herbert Hoover's Secretary of Commerce from 1929 to 1932. The ghost stories arrived half a century later, and they arrived from one man. Raymond Bober was a tour guide, the father-in-law of the family who lived in the house in the early 1970s, and someone who planned to reopen it as a restaurant with lodging. In 1979, writing as Wolfgang von Bober, he published The Carver Effect, which claimed the house was haunted by the eighteenth-century explorer Jonathan Carver, searching for a land deed sealed in its foundation. The name Summerwind comes from that book; locals had always called it the Lamont mansion. Lightning burned the empty house in June 1988. Stone chimneys and porches remain, on private land, closed to the public.
What is the history of Summerwind?
West Bay Lake is a small inland lake straddling the Wisconsin–Michigan border, in the far north of Vilas County, and by the early twentieth century its shoreline was the kind of place wealthy Chicagoans went to fish. On one of those lots stood a wooden lodge. In 1916 it was bought by Robert Patterson Lamont, a Chicago industrialist, who had it rebuilt into a summer house. Michael Norman, the most careful of the writers who have gone over the story, records that the mansion went up in 1916 and was "reputedly built on the site of an earlier fishing camp"; Beth Scott and Michael Norman found a local man who said he had helped pour the foundation that year.
Lamont was not a minor figure, and the record on him is unusually clear. On 2 March 1929 the Associated Press reported from Washington that Herbert Hoover had completed his cabinet: "Secretary of Commerce — ROBERT P. LAMONT of Illinois." The same dispatch sketched him as a "civil engineer, manufacturer and capitalist," born in Detroit on 1 December 1867, a graduate in civil engineering from the University of Michigan, a director of Armour, International Harvester, Montgomery Ward and others — and noted, pointedly, that "he never held public office." He served as Secretary of Commerce, a full cabinet post, until August 1932. He was never an assistant secretary, and his middle initial was P, not W.
After Lamont the house changed hands repeatedly and spent long stretches empty. In the early 1970s Arnold and Ginger Hinshaw moved in with six children, and it is from their tenancy that every ghost story about the place is dated. But the stories did not come from the Hinshaws. They came from Ginger's father.
Raymond Bober was a tour guide, and he had a plan for the house: he intended to buy it and open a restaurant and lodging there. Norman records his announcement that he would purchase Summerwind and "with his wife, open a restaurant"; Joanne Austin writes that Bober "believed the stately old house would make a perfect hotel and restaurant." In 1979, writing under the pen name Wolfgang von Bober, he published The Carver Effect: A Paranormal Experience (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 187 pages). In it he claimed to be in contact with the spirit of Jonathan Carver, the eighteenth-century English explorer, who — as Hugh Bishop summarises the book — "haunted Summerwind because he was searching" for a deed to a vast tract of Indian land, sealed, Bober said, in the foundation of the house. The box was never found.
The rest is amplification. A Life magazine photo essay in November 1980 put Summerwind among nine terrifying American haunted houses. Regional ghost anthologies picked it up. The name "Summerwind" itself — locals had always called it the Lamont mansion — comes from Bober's book. In June 1988 lightning struck the empty house during a storm and it burned. Businessmen later bought the ruin for $20,000 hoping to open a haunted bed and breakfast; every one of them backed out, and one, Roger "Skip" Pfohl, told the columnist Bill Wundram in 1995 that his life had been "a nightmare since buying an interest in that place."
Timeline: the documented record of Summerwind
- 1 May 1767 Jonathan Carver attends the great council of the Dakota bands at the Great Cave, on the Mississippi below the Falls of St. Anthony. In his own account he is "installed or adopted a chief of their bands" and prints the speech he gave that day. He never mentions receiving any land.
- 1778 Carver publishes Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America in London. It runs to thirty editions or more; he dies in the city, destitute, in 1780. The only land grant discussed in the book is a 1629 patent in New England.
- January 1825 After four decades of touting by the Reverend Samuel Peters and rival claimants, the House committee on private land claims reports on the Carver grant, in Milo Quaife's words "effectually disposing for all time of any possibility that the government would ever validate any claims based upon it."
- 1916 Robert Patterson Lamont, a Chicago industrialist, buys the land on West Bay Lake and has an existing wooden fishing lodge rebuilt as a summer residence. Locals call it the Lamont mansion.
- 2 March 1929 The Associated Press reports that Hoover has completed his cabinet with "Secretary of Commerce — ROBERT P. LAMONT of Illinois," describing him as a "civil engineer, manufacturer and capitalist" who "never held public office." He holds the post until August 1932.
- Early 1970s Arnold and Ginger Hinshaw move into the long-empty house with six children. Every ghost story attached to the property is dated to their brief tenancy — but none of it is published by them.
- 1979 Raymond Bober — tour guide, Ginger Hinshaw's father, and a man who intended to open a restaurant and lodging in the house — publishes The Carver Effect under the pen name Wolfgang von Bober. He claims contact with Jonathan Carver's spirit, searching for a deed sealed in the foundation. The name "Summerwind" dates from this book.
- November 1980 A Life magazine photo essay includes Summerwind among nine terrifying American haunted houses, carrying Bober's version to a national audience. Regional ghost anthologies follow.
- June 1988 Lightning strikes the empty house during a storm and it burns. The building had been standing derelict for years.
- October 1995 Bill Wundram of the Quad-City Times finds "wasted stone ruins" with walls and chimney still standing. Businessmen who bought the site for $20,000 to open a haunted bed and breakfast have all withdrawn. The local banker Jerry Olk tells him: "In everyone's mind around here, it's still a haunted place."
- October 2007 Jerry Olk, of the Headwaters State Bank, tells the Quad-City Times that all that is left is "mostly tall stone fireplace chimneys and the stone porches." The estate agent Brett Miller adds that neighbours regard the ruins as a nuisance "because ghost-chasers come tramping around the woods to the place."
Is there a rational explanation for Summerwind?
Summerwind is not a hard case. It is one of the clearest examples on record of a haunted house with a birth certificate.
Every element of the legend — the name, the ghost, the hidden deed, the explorer — first appears in one book, published in 1979 by a man with a direct commercial interest in the house being famous. Locals had called the place the Lamont mansion; Bober called it Summerwind. Marv Balousek reports that locals never believed the house was haunted and were dismayed when it became a tourist attraction. Ryan Jacobson notes that members of the family spent their nights at Summerwind "in an RV, rather than sleeping inside" — which is a difficult habit to reconcile with a house whose reputation the same family was publicising.
The Carver material collapses on contact with Carver himself. Bober placed the explorer's ghost at Summerwind because of a supposed deed to some ten thousand square miles of Dakota land, signed at a place called the Great Cave. That grant is a genuine, well-documented historical episode — and it was demolished long before the house existed. Milo Quaife, in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review in 1920, traced the whole affair: the deed dated "Great Cave, May the 1st, 1767"; the decades of touting by the Reverend Samuel Peters and rival claimants; the Philadelphia investors who realised "it was evident to all that a fraud had been committed by someone"; and finally the report of the House committee on private land claims in January 1825, "effectually disposing for all time of any possibility that the government would ever validate any claims based upon it." Quaife, who was inclined to believe some transaction did take place, was blunt about its worth: British recognition "was never gained and the deed, consequently, was never valid."
And Carver's own book settles the rest. Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America (London, 1778) describes the great council at the Great Cave and prints the speech Carver delivered there, dated "the first day of May 1767" — the very date on the deed. He records that he was "installed or adopted a chief of their bands." He says nothing whatever about being given land. The only grant discussed anywhere in the book is the 1629 Plymouth Company patent for the Province of Laconia, in New England. Quaife noticed the silence too, and asked why Carver would "remain silent about it."
The geography does not work either. The Great Cave was on the Mississippi about thirty miles below the Falls of St. Anthony, in what is now St. Paul, Minnesota — more than 350 km from West Bay Lake. The territory in the deed, by Quaife's reading, "comprised most of the northwestern quarter of the present state of Wisconsin." Summerwind stood in the far northeast, on the Michigan line. There is no version of the Carver grant that reaches it.
Two smaller claims should also be set aside. Some retellings say the building began as a coast guard station; nothing in the sources consulted here supports that, and West Bay Lake is a small inland lake, nowhere near navigable water that a coast guard station would serve. And the widely circulated assertions about the Hinshaws' mental health are claims about identifiable private people, sourced to the ghost literature and to Bober's own book rather than to any medical or public record. This entry does not repeat them.
What is left is real enough: a fine lakeside house that emptied out, a family that lived there briefly in the early 1970s, and a relative who saw a business in it.
Can you visit Summerwind?
Summerwind cannot be visited. This is not a question of opening hours: the ruins stand on private land near West Bay Lake, in the town of Land O' Lakes, Vilas County, Wisconsin, and they are closed to the public. There is no car park, no path, no ticket and no owner offering tours.
What survives is modest. In 2007 Jerry Olk, of the Headwaters State Bank in Land O' Lakes, described the site to the Quad-City Times: "What's left of Summerwind is still there, mostly tall stone fireplace chimneys and the stone porches that were left when the place burned a dozen or so years ago. Nothing has been done since the last time you were here. It's a beautiful spot that no one wants."
The warning is worth stating plainly, because trespassing here is a documented, recurring problem rather than a hypothetical one. The Land O' Lakes estate agent Brett Miller told the same newspaper in 2007: "The ruins stay the same. Neighbours look upon them a nuisance because ghost-chasers come tramping around the woods to the place." Walking in to look is a trespass on someone's property and a nuisance to people who live there year-round, and the fabric that is left — burnt masonry that has stood untended since 1988 — is not safe to climb on.
There is a better way to visit this story, and it costs nothing. Jonathan Carver's Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America (1778) is in the public domain and freely readable at the Internet Archive, including his own account of the Great Cave council of 1 May 1767. Milo Quaife's 1920 article on the Carver grant is free there too. Between them they contain everything the legend claims to be about, and rather more that it leaves out.
Sources consulted
- Jonathan Carver, «Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America, in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768» — J. Walter & S. Crowder, London, 1778 book
- Milo M. Quaife, «Jonathan Carver and the Carver Grant» — The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. VII, n.º 1, pp. 3-25, 1920 academic
- Associated Press, «Engineer Capitalist Gets Commerce Post (Associated Press)» — The Daily Alaska Empire (Juneau), 2 March 1929, p. 1, 1929 newspaper archive
- Wolfgang von Bober (Raymond Bober), «The Carver Effect: A Paranormal Experience» — Stackpole Books, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 187 pp., 1979 book
- Bill Wundram, «Summerwind: More ghostly than ever» — Quad-City Times, 29 October 1995, 1995 newspaper archive
- Bill Wundram, «Haunted house keeps visitors wondering» — Quad-City Times, 28 October 2007, 2007 newspaper archive
- Michael Norman, «Haunted Wisconsin» — Trails Books, Black Earth, Wisconsin, 2001 book
- Beth Scott y Michael Norman, «Haunted Heartland» — Stanton & Lee, Madison, Wisconsin, 1985 book
- Marv Balousek, «101 Wisconsin Unsolved Mysteries» — Badger Books, Wisconsin, pp. 17-19, 2000 book
- Joanne Austin, «Weird Hauntings: True Tales of Ghostly Places» — Sterling Publishing, Nueva York, 2006 book
- Ryan Jacobson, «Ghostly Tales of Wisconsin» — Adventure Publications, Minnesota, 2009 book
Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-08-11 · How we verify our content
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