SUMMERWIND:

SUMMERWIND: THE HOUSE THAT DROVE ITS OWNERS AWAY

Wisconsin's Haunted Mansion, Where the Walls Held Secrets and the Living Couldn't Stay

By Miss Lil | Lily Writes

There are houses that creak when the wind blows.

There are houses that settle into the earth, groaning beneath the weight of their own age.

And then there are houses like Summerwind.

A mansion tucked along the shoreline of West Bay Lake in Wisconsin's Northwoods, surrounded by trees, water, and the kind of silence that can make a person feel as though the entire world has disappeared.

Summerwind was once a beautiful vacation home. A place where families could escape the noise of everyday life, spend their summers fishing, and enjoy the peaceful wilderness.

But somewhere along the way, the story changed.

The peaceful retreat became a place associated with strange voices, unexplained apparitions, sudden cold, and stories of things hiding where they had no business being.

And according to the legends, some of the people who lived there eventually wanted nothing more than to get out.

The mansion was abandoned.

It deteriorated.

And in 1988, lightning struck the building, leaving the infamous house in ashes.

But the stories?

Those never really burned away.

So grab yourself a cup of tea, settle in, and let's travel into the Wisconsin woods.

Because today, we're visiting Summerwind.

And if the stories are to be believed, the house was never particularly interested in welcoming its guests.

A HOUSE IN THE NORTHWOODS

Summerwind's story begins long before anyone started calling it haunted.

The building was originally constructed in the early twentieth century as a fishing lodge along West Bay Lake in Vilas County, Wisconsin.

In 1916, Robert Patterson Lamont purchased the property.

Lamont was a wealthy businessman who would later serve as Secretary of Commerce under President Herbert Hoover.

The building was renovated and enlarged, transforming it into a family summer residence.

Imagine the place in its earlier days.

The lake stretching beyond the property.

The surrounding forest thick with trees.

The mansion standing near the water, offering its occupants a private escape from the rest of the world.

It was the sort of place where the wealthy could spend their summers enjoying the Northwoods.

And for a while, that's exactly what it was.

Then came the stories.

According to the haunting legend, servants working for the Lamont family began reporting strange voices inside the mansion.

Not the ordinary sounds of people talking in another room.

Not the familiar noises of a house full of people.

Something else.

The reports allegedly became disturbing enough that the family began questioning what was happening inside their own home.

And then came the incident that would become one of Summerwind's most infamous stories.

A figure.

A kitchen.

A basement door.

And a man who allegedly reached the point where he was willing to fire a gun at whatever he believed was standing inside his house.

But before we get to that, let's talk about the first family who supposedly couldn't stand living there.

Because Summerwind's haunting didn't begin with the people who eventually became most closely associated with its paranormal reputation.

It began with the Lamonts.

THE APPARITION IN THE KITCHEN

According to the Summerwind haunting legend, the Lamont family experienced an encounter with an apparition inside the mansion.

The stories describe a ghostly figure appearing in the kitchen area.

And this wasn't supposedly a harmless little shadow slipping across the wall.

The legend claims the encounter frightened Lamont so badly that he fired two shots into the basement door.

Think about that for a moment.

You are standing inside your own home.

A place where you should feel safe.

You have family members nearby.

You know the building.

You know its rooms, its doors, and its ordinary noises.

And suddenly, something appears that you cannot explain.

Something that doesn't belong.

Something that makes you question whether the house you thought you knew is actually the house you're standing in.

According to the story, Lamont believed he was confronting something frightening enough to justify pulling a weapon.

The alleged apparition became one of the defining moments of the Summerwind legend.

And the story doesn't end with the gunshots.

The Lamont family supposedly fled the mansion afterward.

They never returned.

Now, here's where we need to separate the haunting story from the historical record.

The account of the apparition and the gunshots is part of Summerwind's folklore.

Historian Gary Entz, writing for WXPR, notes that the haunting stories surrounding the mansion are uncorroborated.

Lamont's own writings do not establish that the alleged encounter happened.

That doesn't mean the legend isn't fascinating.

It means the story belongs in the realm of reported paranormal folklore rather than confirmed history.

And honestly?

The uncertainty makes the story even more unsettling.

Because the mansion was real.

The family was real.

The property was real.

But the thing supposedly standing in that kitchen?

That remains part of the mystery.

THE HOUSE THAT COULDN'T KEEP ITS OWNERS

After the Lamont family left, Summerwind did not immediately become the abandoned horror story we know today.

The mansion remained standing.

It passed through another chapter of its life.

In 1941, the property was sold to the Keefer family.

The Keefers used Summerwind as a vacation home rather than a permanent residence.

And according to the haunting stories, the property was not exactly a place everyone wanted to spend time inside.

Mrs. Keefer was reportedly afraid to enter the mansion.

The accounts describe her as avoiding the house whenever possible.

Now, imagine owning a vacation property in the Northwoods.

You have the lake.

You have the trees.

You have the beautiful surroundings.

You have a mansion that should be the perfect escape.

But you don't want to go inside.

You don't want to spend time in the rooms.

You don't want to be alone in the building.

You don't want to deal with whatever you believe is waiting behind the doors.

That is the kind of detail that makes Summerwind's story stick.

The mansion wasn't simply described as an old building that occasionally made strange noises.

The legends made it sound like a place people actively avoided.

Attempts were reportedly made to sell the property.

But the mansion remained in the Keefer family's hands until the 1960s.

And then came the family whose experiences would become the foundation of much of Summerwind's modern paranormal reputation.

The Hinshaws.

ENTER THE HINSHAWS

By the 1970s, Summerwind had entered another chapter.

Arnold Hinshaw and his wife, Ginger, lived in the mansion.

Ginger's father later became involved in the property's story as well.

And according to the haunting accounts associated with the family, this was when the strange activity supposedly became much more intense.

The stories surrounding the Hinshaws are responsible for many of the details that have made Summerwind famous.

Disembodied voices.

Unexplained cold.

Strange sounds inside the house.

And the unsettling feeling that something was happening in rooms where nobody should have been.

The mansion was no longer simply a place with an old ghost story attached to it.

It became a house surrounded by reports of repeated paranormal experiences.

And some of those stories were downright disturbing.

THE VOICES THAT DIDN'T BELONG

One of the most frequently repeated elements of the Summerwind haunting is the claim that people heard voices inside the mansion.

Not everyone was supposedly speaking.

Not every room was occupied.

Yet the stories describe voices coming from places where nobody could be found.

Imagine walking through a house with several rooms.

You hear someone speaking.

You turn toward the sound.

You expect to find a family member.

Maybe someone calling your name.

Maybe a conversation taking place in the next room.

But when you arrive?

Nothing.

The room is empty.

You check the next one.

Still nothing.

And then you hear it again.

Some of the Summerwind stories describe this kind of unexplained vocal activity.

The voices became part of the mansion's reputation.

And the question that always hangs over the story is the same.

Who was supposedly speaking?

Was it an ordinary sound misinterpreted in an old building?

Was it a story that grew more elaborate with every retelling?

Or did the people who experienced it believe they were hearing something they genuinely could not explain?

There is no independent evidence establishing that supernatural voices were present.

But the reports became part of the haunting's mythology.

And once the mansion acquired that reputation, every strange sound had the potential to become another piece of the story.

THE COLD THAT CAME FROM NOWHERE

Another detail associated with Summerwind is the alleged presence of sudden cold spots.

The stories describe cold gusts of air appearing inside the mansion.

Not simply the ordinary chill of a Wisconsin winter.

Not the kind of cold you expect when a door opens or a draft slips through an old window.

The paranormal accounts describe unexpected cold inside the building.

Imagine standing in a room during a summer afternoon.

The sunlight is coming through the windows.

The forest outside is warm.

The lake is nearby.

You move through the house, and suddenly the temperature seems to change.

A cold patch.

A strange draft.

A sensation that something has passed close enough to make the air feel different.

You look around.

Nothing.

You check the windows.

You check the doors.

You cannot immediately explain what happened.

That's the kind of experience paranormal investigators often describe as a cold spot.

But cold spots are not proof of ghosts.

Old buildings can have drafts, uneven temperatures, and differences in air circulation.

And Summerwind was an aging mansion surrounded by the Wisconsin wilderness.

Still, the cold became another element of the haunting story.

Because the mansion's reputation was no longer built around one alleged apparition.

It was built around a collection of strange experiences.

And every new report seemed to add another layer to the legend.

THE ORGAN MUSIC

Now let's talk about one of the details that makes Summerwind particularly creepy.

The alleged music.

Stories surrounding the mansion include reports of eerie organ music.

And there is something about the idea of hearing music inside an abandoned house that makes the imagination immediately start working.

Picture the mansion after dark.

The windows are black.

The rooms are empty.

The furniture is gone or deteriorating.

The building has been left to the elements.

And somewhere inside?

According to the legend, music.

Not a radio playing in a neighboring room.

Not someone practicing an instrument.

The kind of mysterious sound that makes a person stop and wonder where it is coming from.

The organ music became part of Summerwind's paranormal reputation.

And when you combine it with the reports of voices, cold spots, and the alleged apparition in the kitchen, the mansion begins to sound less like a vacation home and more like a place people were afraid to occupy.

But again, the stories are not independently verified.

The mansion's reputation is built largely on accounts associated with its former occupants and later paranormal folklore.

The music belongs to that legend.

And the legend has survived long after the house itself disappeared.

WHAT WAS HIDING BEHIND THE WALLS?

Now we get to one of the darkest details associated with Summerwind.

The stories about hidden bodies.

Some accounts claim that corpses were discovered concealed behind the mansion's walls.

It is a horrifying allegation.

And it is one of the details that has helped turn Summerwind into a house of nightmares.

But here's the important part.

The reports of bodies hidden inside the walls are not corroborated by reliable independent evidence.

WXPR's historical account specifically identifies these stories as part of the unverified haunting lore associated with the Hinshaw family.

There is no established historical record confirming that the mansion contained hidden corpses.

So we're not going to pretend that somebody discovered a room full of bodies or that a murder mystery was solved inside the house.

That would be turning folklore into fake history.

But the rumor itself is worth examining.

Because it reveals how Summerwind's reputation changed.

The house was no longer merely associated with ghostly voices.

It became associated with the possibility that something terrible had happened there.

Something hidden.

Something that had never been discovered.

Something that might explain why the mansion felt so wrong to the people who believed they were experiencing paranormal activity.

And that is where the story becomes particularly dark.

Because the idea of a haunting is frightening.

But the idea that a house might be concealing a real human tragedy?

That is something else entirely.

The hidden-body story remains an unverified part of Summerwind's mythology.

And it should be treated as such.

THE GHOST OF JONATHON CARVER

Summerwind's haunting legend also reaches beyond the people who actually lived in the mansion.

One of its strangest elements involves eighteenth-century English explorer Jonathan Carver.

Carver was a real historical figure.

He explored parts of North America during the eighteenth century and became associated with accounts of the region's geography and Indigenous communities.

But Summerwind's paranormal lore took his name and carried it into something much stranger.

The mansion became associated with stories involving Carver's alleged supernatural connection to the Northwoods.

Some versions of the legend describe him as having made otherworldly claims over the region.

And those stories became part of the mansion's larger mythology.

Now, let's be clear.

There is no verified evidence that Jonathan Carver haunted Summerwind.

There is no established historical connection demonstrating that the explorer's spirit occupied the property.

The Carver element belongs to the folklore surrounding the mansion.

But it adds a strange dimension to the story.

Because Summerwind was already associated with unexplained voices, alleged apparitions, and disturbing experiences.

The idea that its haunting somehow reached back into the eighteenth century made the legend feel even older.

And in a place surrounded by forests, lakes, and centuries of history, that kind of story practically writes itself.

A FAMILY'S NIGHTMARE?

One of the reasons Summerwind continues to attract attention is the story of the Hinshaw family's experiences.

The accounts associated with them describe a household dealing with increasingly disturbing events.

The mansion was reportedly filled with strange noises.

The family allegedly experienced unexplained phenomena.

And the property became associated with a reputation that was difficult to escape.

But the historical record is more complicated than the paranormal stories suggest.

The experiences attributed to the Hinshaws are not independently corroborated.

The details have been repeated through paranormal accounts and local folklore.

That distinction matters.

Because Summerwind's story has been told so many times that it can be difficult to separate what was actually documented from what was added later.

The mansion's history is real.

The alleged haunting remains unproven.

And that is exactly why the story deserves a closer look.

Not because we can prove a ghost lived there.

But because the mansion became a place where the boundary between history and legend began to blur.

THE MANSION THAT STOOD EMPTY

By the 1980s, Summerwind had become abandoned.

The once-beautiful property was deteriorating.

The mansion that had originally been constructed as a fishing lodge and transformed into a family vacation home had become a decaying structure surrounded by the Northwoods.

The windows.

The rooms.

The walls.

The property that had once been filled with the ordinary sounds of family life was now empty.

And empty buildings have a way of changing how we experience them.

A house that once felt warm can become unsettling when nobody lives there.

A room that once held furniture can feel strangely exposed.

A hallway that once carried conversation can become a place where every sound seems louder than it should.

And Summerwind had something most abandoned houses do not.

A reputation.

People knew the stories.

They knew about the alleged apparition.

They knew about the voices.

They knew about the organ music.

They knew about the cold spots.

They knew about the hidden-body rumors.

And when people visited the property, they were not simply looking at an old mansion.

They were looking at a place they had already been told was haunted.

That kind of expectation can change how a person interprets every creak, shadow, and gust of wind.

Summerwind had become a legend before it was completely gone.

1988: THE NIGHT SUMMERWIND BURNED

Then came the end.

In 1988, Summerwind Mansion was struck by lightning.

The building burned to the ground.

The mansion that had once stood along West Bay Lake was destroyed.

And with it went the physical structure that had become one of Wisconsin's most recognizable haunted-house legends.

The official explanation for the destruction is lightning.

There have also been claims that the fire was deliberately set to prevent vandalism and trespassing.

But those claims are not established.

The lightning strike remains the best-supported explanation in the historical account.

And yet, the destruction only added to Summerwind's reputation.

Because the house was already surrounded by stories of things that supposedly happened inside it.

Now it was gone.

The rooms were gone.

The walls were gone.

The alleged apparition's kitchen was gone.

The basement door associated with the gunfire legend was gone.

The mansion itself had disappeared.

And the stories were left behind.

There is something unsettling about that ending.

A house with a reputation for being haunted.

A building that had allegedly frightened the people who lived there.

A mansion that eventually stood abandoned.

And then a lightning strike that reduced it to ruins.

The physical evidence of the house's former life was largely erased.

But the legend continued.

WHAT REMAINS OF SUMMERWIND?

Today, Summerwind is remembered as one of Wisconsin's most famous haunted-house legends.

The mansion itself no longer stands.

The property remains associated with its history and the stories surrounding it.

But the old building is gone.

And that changes the way we experience the mystery.

We cannot walk through the mansion's rooms.

We cannot stand in the kitchen where the alleged apparition supposedly appeared.

We cannot examine the basement door associated with the gunshots.

We cannot listen for the organ music.

We cannot enter the rooms where the Hinshaw family reportedly experienced strange activity.

All we have are the historical accounts, the paranormal stories, and the photographs of a mansion that once stood beside a Wisconsin lake.

And perhaps that is part of what makes Summerwind so fascinating.

The house is gone.

The mystery is not.

WAS SUMMERWIND REALLY HAUNTED?

Let's sit with that question for a moment.

Was Summerwind haunted?

There is no independently verified evidence proving that the mansion was occupied by supernatural entities.

The stories of apparitions, voices, cold spots, organ music, and hidden bodies remain uncorroborated.

The historical record does establish that Summerwind was a real property with a fascinating history.

It began as a fishing lodge.

It was purchased by Robert Patterson Lamont.

It became a family vacation home.

It passed through the hands of the Keefer family.

It was later occupied by the Hinshaws.

And it was eventually abandoned before being destroyed by lightning in 1988.

The haunting stories are a separate part of that history.

And they are the reason Summerwind became famous.

But the real question isn't simply whether a ghost lived there.

The real question is why the mansion became associated with so many frightening stories in the first place.

Was it the isolation?

The age of the building?

The experiences reported by its former occupants?

The way the stories grew over time?

Or something that remains unexplained?

We may never know.

And because the house no longer exists, there is no way to return to the building and investigate the alleged experiences firsthand.

Summerwind has become a place that exists partly in history and partly in the imagination.

A mansion that once stood beside a lake.

A house surrounded by stories.

A building that disappeared.

And a haunting that never quite went away.

THE HOUSE THAT LEFT ITS OWN LEGEND BEHIND

There are plenty of haunted places in Wisconsin.

Some are old hotels.

Some are abandoned buildings.

Some are historic properties with stories that have been passed down for generations.

But Summerwind is different.

Its story contains a little of everything.

A wealthy family.

A beautiful vacation property.

An alleged apparition.

Gunshots into a basement door.

A family that supposedly fled.

A later family associated with reports of voices and strange activity.

Rumors of hidden bodies.

A historical explorer woven into the paranormal mythology.

And a mansion that eventually burned to the ground.

It is a story that feels like it should have ended when the building disappeared.

But it didn't.

Because Summerwind's reputation had already escaped the walls.

The mansion became a piece of Wisconsin folklore.

And folklore has a way of surviving long after the places that inspired it have vanished.

So the next time you're driving through the Wisconsin Northwoods, surrounded by trees and lakes and the kind of quiet that makes you feel very small, remember Summerwind.

Remember the mansion that once stood beside West Bay Lake.

Remember the stories of the voices.

Remember the alleged apparition in the kitchen.

Remember the house that became associated with strange experiences and unexplained activity.

And remember that the building is gone.

But the legend remains.

Because sometimes the most frightening thing about a haunted house isn't what supposedly happened inside.

It's what happens after the house is gone.

When the rooms disappear.

When the walls collapse.

When the windows are nothing more than memories.

And when the stories are all that remain.

Summerwind: The House That Drove Its Owners Away.

A Wisconsin mansion.

A haunting that cannot be verified.

And a legend that refuses to die.

Until next time, keep your tea warm, your doors locked, and your eyes on the shadows.

You never know what might be waiting in the next room.

Miss Lil has left the tea table.

But Summerwind?

Summerwind is still waiting.

SOURCES & HISTORICAL NOTE

The historical background and reported haunting accounts in this article are based primarily on:

• Gary Entz and Mackenzie Martin, “Vilas Co.'s Haunted Summerwind Mansion,” WXPR, October 31, 2018.

• Summerwind's widely circulated paranormal folklore and reported experiences attributed to former occupants.

The mansion's history is documented, but the paranormal claims, including the apparition, gunshots, voices, cold spots, organ music, and alleged hidden bodies, have not been independently verified. The 1988 fire is attributed to lightning in the historical account.

This article distinguishes documented history from folklore and does not present the alleged haunting as proven fact.