Haunted Wisconsin

Mrs. Courtney’s Return

Mr. and Mrs. William Courtney had never gotten along. Mrs. Courtney had left her moody Irish-Canadian husband at least once, but she always returned to him and their small farm in Brooks’ Corners, a section of Vinland about seven miles north of Oshkosh. The uneasy truce between the bickering pair ended on November 4, 1873, when Mrs. Courtney died of natural causes. Not long after William Courtney discovered his wife’s body in her bedroom, he moved out of the house and into the home of his mother-in-law about a mile away. He returned only to plant and harvest crops and do the farm chores. William continued to employ a girl they had hired to keep up with the housework, but she soon decided a new job elsewhere would be better for her health. That’s because several days after Mrs. Courtney’s funeral, the girl heard sharp raps on the windowpanes in a room adjoining the bedroom where her mistress had died. The girl lifted a corner of the window curtain and peered out. Although she could see no one, the girl was badly shaken and fled to a neighbor’s house. She quit that same day. Hiram Mericle and his family lived on an adjoining farm only a few hundred feet from the Courtney’s. Shortly after the hired girl quit, Hiram noticed a light burning in the Courtney house. He knew the place was empty, so with two of his older children he walked over to investigate. From the front yard, they could see that the light was in Mrs. Courtney’s old bedroom. As they got closer, the 160 Mrs. Courtney’s Return light dimmed and finally went out. Mericle and his children went home quite puzzled. But then before dawn the next morning as Mericle prepared for his morning farm chores, he saw the light again shining from next door as brightly as before. Other neighbors soon noticed lights in the Courtney house. When several of the neighbors investigated, they claimed to have seen a shadowy form pass in front of the light. “Look, it’s Mrs. Courtney!” one of them screamed. From then on everyone in Brooks’ Corners said Mrs. Courtney haunted her old house. Lights of varying shapes and forms continued to appear regularly. Sometimes they were circles about six or seven inches in diameter, with smaller lights circling the larger ones. At other times, the lights were ovular in shape. Unnervingly, the light most frequently seen was a flame with clearly defined edges, surrounded by inky darkness. The light came from all parts of the main house as well as the one-story rear addition that housed the kitchen. On November 20, 1873, the Oshkosh Weekly Times dispatched a reporter to check out the rapidly spreading ghost story. The reporter reached the house of one Jacob Whitacre by nightfall, about half a mile from Courtney’s. The newspaperman dined with the Whitacres and listened to their stories; each family member had seen the lights at one time or another. The Whitacres seemed to him to be intelligent, straightforward people who had seen something for which they had no explanation. After supper, Jacob Whitacre led his guest down the road to the mysterious house. There a group of about a hundred men and boys had already gathered in the late-autumn snow, stamping their feet to keep warm and comparing notes on what each claimed to have seen. A bright light suddenly blazed in one of the windows and just as quickly vanished, again plunging the house into darkness. Gusts of wind churned the loose snow and finally the reporter grew cold and disappointed at not witnessing further manifestations. He and Whitacre walked over to the Mericles’ farm to warm up. They returned a few hours later, arriving in time to see a series of bright lights in the house exploding like, as the reporter termed it, flashes of lightning. On November 21 and 22, large crowds again converged on the haunted house but no lights appeared. The Oshkosh newsman speculated that since a family was planning to move into the house no more lights of a ghostly nature would be seen. He didn’t explain how he had arrived at this conclusion. The reporter continued to try to solve the mystery lights puzzle. He interviewed William Courtney, who claimed the lights were the work of a prankster who had gained access to the house through an unlocked cellar...