Haunted Wisconsin

The Hille Curse

Mrs. Dorothy Ransome had a very clear idea of who the phantom was that approached her farmhouse near Waukesha and then vanished at the kitchen door. The ghost was John Hille, the man who built the house over a century ago. What the ghost of John Hille may not have known is that those appearances were just another chapter in a saga of bizarre, and often tragic, events, including the untimely deaths of a half dozen or more people associated with the farm, that led many to believe the farm known as Ravensholme was cursed. Dorothy Ransome and her husband, Ralph, purchased the property in 1948. The ghost of John Hille made regular trips to their back door starting in the early 1970s. It was after the ghost’s first appearance that Mrs. Ransome began delving into the history of the farm. What she found was chilling. The history of the farmstead began in 1848, the year Wisconsin was admitted to the Union. John Hille, thirty-seven years old at the time, brought his young wife, Magdelena, and their several children to settle the 146 acres of virgin wilderness bordering the Fox River, six miles southwest of Waukesha. Hille had been born in Hanover, Germany, and immigrated to America in 1837 following the death of both of his parents. He had been apprenticed to a cabinetmaker in Hanover and utilized his skill in New York, where he worked until his move to the Wisconsin frontier. Magdelena Jaquiltard Hille was also an immigrant . She married John in 1837, five years after her own family reached the East Coast from France. 177 The Hille Curse The Hilles began their new life in a log cabin near Waukesha. Gradually they built their holdings into a prosperous 215-acre farm with several granaries, barns, sheds, and a spacious stone farmhouse erected from the granite boulders Hille had cleared from nearby fields. The curse claimed its first victim in 1898 when the Hille family numbered eight. Magdelena Hille became ill and a doctor was summoned. No one knows precisely what happened, but somehow the family physician mistakenly gave Mrs. Hille a fatal dose of poison. A short time later John Hille, the immigrant who had turned a Wisconsin forest into thriving farmland, died at nearly ninety years of age. His death was attributed to natural causes. Shortly thereafter a son, who had been an invalid for some time, followed his parents in death. Two of his brothers had died many years before. The family, which had been eight, was now five. Two Hille sons, Oscar and William, and their sister Hulda inherited the large estate. Several other children had moved away and showed no interest in farming. By all accounts, the trio that remained on the farm was well respected by their neighbors and thrifty in their financial affairs, making the farm one of the most profitable in the county. Nearly a decade passed before tragedy again struck the Hille family. Oscar Hille died unexpectedly in 1916. He had taken a bull to a water trough early one morning. The animal had been led back to its stall and tethered to a post when it suddenly bolted and crushed Oscar against a wall. He died of internal injuries two days later. The strangest of all deaths attributed to the “curse” was the macabre scenario played out at the Hille farm two years after Oscar’s death. The war in Europe had reached into America’s heartland as young men marched off to battle the armies of Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm. At home, sewing circles formed to make warm woolen clothing for the forces overseas, the Red Cross and YMCA asked for donations, and the purchase of Liberty Bonds and War Stamps were seen as marks of patriotism. William and Hulda were particularly touched by the war. Both their parents had been born in the land now being torn asunder by battle. They still had many Old World customs; as with other German-heritage families, their hearts must have ached at the suffering and loss on both sides. William didn’t like to discuss the war. “It’s useless to argue,” he often said. That hesitancy to engage his neighbors in talk about the war because of his Germanic background may have led some of his neighbors to suspect him of disloyalty, although members of his family later convincingly rebutted such speculation. The suspicions stalked William and Hulda with tragic consequences. 178 Part II: Southern...