Unlock the Unknown: Keys to the Paranormal

By Heather Bourget and Kristin Menth

In 2015, a world hidden from view came into sudden, sharp focus for Heather and Kristin as they began their pursuit of the paranormal; this is the extraordinary beginning of their quest to Unlock the Unknown.

Join them as they take you into a world that has silently coexisted and patiently waited to be explored.

“Heather and Kristin have done a fantastic job of offering readers the change to go behind the scenes of paranormal investigations and letting them see first-hand what it’s like to search out the haunted history of the sites. In this book, they take us on the hunt for ghostly evidence and provide the real stories that created the hauntings in the first place. I recommend this one and know you’re going to want to add it to your collection of spirited books!”
Troy Taylor
American Haunting Inc

Each investigation, each brush with the unknown, becomes a stepping stone on their path to knowledge as they confront their fears, preconceptions, and limitations. Unlock the Unknown is more than just the tale of a paranormal investigator; it's an ode to the human spirit's relentless pursuit of truth.

Through countless hours of online research, Unlock the Unknown meticulously unveils history and personal interpretation into each location, piecing together the fragmented accounts of the past.

“I’d say this is the best writing on the school I’ve seen so far.”
Justin Libigs
Owner of First Ward School

Journey into uncharted territories and unveil the mysteries of locations, both occupied and abandoned. From First Ward School, Bobby Mackey’s Music World, and Vaile Mansion, to the Sheboygan County Hospital, Stone Mansion, and Morse Mill.

In a world that prefers the comfort of the known, join them on their journey that defies the boundaries of traditional understanding. Heather and Kristin push the boundaries of conventional wisdom as they chart a course and begin to Unlock the Unknown.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798369403136

Heather Bourget

N/A

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 by Heather Bourget and Kristin Menth.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 08/24/2023

Xlibris

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www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

Heather’s Acknowledgments

Kristin’s Acknowledgements

Chapter 1Introduction

Chapter 2Biographies

Chapter 3First Ward School

Chapter 4Fox Hollow Farm

Chapter 5Vaile Mansion

Chapter 6Morse Mill Hotel

Chapter 7Stone Mansion

Chapter 8Bobby Mackey’s Music World

Chapter 9Boyd House

Chapter 10Sheboygan County Hospital: History

Chapter 11Sheboygan County Hospital: Experiences

Chapter 12Billie Creek Village

Chapter 13Jericho Convent, School, and Church

Chapter 14Ashmore Estates (Coles County Poor Farm)

Chapter 15Leopolis

Chapter 16Twin Oaks Llama Farm

Chapter 17James J. Eldred House

Chapter 18Adventures Along the Way

Rolling Acres Farm

Whitnall Park

Sunnyhill Cemetery

Airtight Bridge

Bell Witch Cave

Timber Lake Road (Colfax Cemetery)

Glossary of Terms

Endnotes

HEATHER’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to

• My parents for always being there, providing love and guidance, teaching me life lessons, and demonstrating acts of love and selflessness I have tried to mirror as I conduct myself through life.

• My husband, Darren, for his unwavering love, support of my writing endeavors, investigative pursuits, and overall life journey together.

• My daughter, Koralyn, whose resilience knows no bounds. Her achievements and dedication are constant inspirations for me to strive to be a better mother and individual.

• My sister Heidi, brother-in-law Scott, and nephews Avery and Isaac, for their love and support.

• American Hauntings (https://www.americanhauntingsink.com/), where we booked our first-ever investigation. Loren Hamilton, who has become a close friend of mine and is quoted in this book, is a valuable resource on all things paranormal. I have stayed connected with the founder of American Hauntings, Troy Taylor, who is also quoted in this book and is the author of over one hundred books. We thank them for their invaluable contributions and professional investigations.

• Justin Libigs, a friend and owner of First Ward, who provided his time for an interview and opened his location to us.

• Jill Shelley, a friend and owner of Boyd House, who assisted with the history and opened her location to us.

• Richard, friend and owner of Leopolis and Shawano Farm, who provided his time for an interview, and opened his locations to us.

• Joel, friend and owner of Jericho, who provided his time for an interview and opened his location to us.

• Kate with Save the Old Properties, who provided a tour and offered additional history at Stone Mansion.

• Cayla Gregory, a friend and team member, for her narrative at Vaile Mansion.

• Cayla Gregory Media, for our biography photos (https://caylagregorymedia.smugmug.com).

• Kara Barclaw, a friend and team member, for her narrative at Twin Oaks Llama Farm.

• Paul, a friend and team member with Spirit Talker Paranormal, for his narrative at Vaile Mansion.

• Carin Hanson, a friend, for her narrative at Stone Mansion and Bobby Mackey’s.

• Brenda Manor, a friend, for her narrative at Boyd House.

• Elijah, a friend and team member with Apex Paranormal, who led our investigation at Vaile Mansion and is quoted in this book.

• Travis Clevenger, a friend and member of Fox Valley Ghost Hunters, for his narrative at Sheboygan County Hospital.

• Craig Nehring, a friend and founder of Fox Valley Ghost Hunters, and Melissa Clevenger, friend and Lead Investigator, who made many several of our investigations possible.

• Aaron, Diane, and Jenny, friends who allowed me to share our experiences.

• Nic Faber, a friend who took the photo of the Sheboygan County Hospital.

• To Kristin, my fellow adventurer, co-conspirator, and co-author. We embarked on this journey years ago, armed with little more than curiosity and a shared thirst for discovery. We were two best friends stepping off the edge of the known world, into a realm of questions unanswered and truths yet to be uncovered. Our path together has been nothing short of an epic adventure. From the soaring peaks of breakthroughs to the deepest valleys of setbacks, you’ve been there, steadfast and undeterred.

• Finally, we don’t know where we would be today without James and Mateo of MAPS (Missouri Alternative Paranormal Science). James and Mateo, you started it all for us when you allowed us to tag along during our first investigation. You gave us a K2 meter, our first official investigative equipment. James and Mateo, thank you for handing us our first paranormal key that unlocked a door to the unknown.

KRISTIN’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to

• I would like to express my gratitude to my late father, who consistently encouraged me to pursue my dreams. Although he is no longer physically present and unaware of my journey into writing a book, I strongly believe that his spirit lingers on, providing me with unwavering support and pushing me to achieve my dreams.

• I am incredibly grateful for my mom for matching my enthusiasm for my paranormal pursuits. She has encouraged me to enhance my empathetic skills and embrace the energies I feel around me. Although she has yet to join me, she looks forward to every recap of every detail of my investigations, almost as if she is living the experience vicariously through my words.

• I am grateful to my daughter, Charlie, for her contribution of the illustration on our cover and for patiently dedicating countless hours to listen to my experiences and reviewing evidence with me.

• I would like to express my gratitude to my son, JD, who also shares my enthusiasm for the paranormal. For every piece of equipment I own, he has taken the time to learn about them, analyze them, and even has been making plans to build our own equipment someday, even if the first build was a flop, resulting in a spark and a good jolt from miswiring a trigger object.

• I would like to thank Travis Clevenger for his recount of our experience at Fox Hollow Farm. I may have not had direct experience with the apparition, but the resulting reaction on my part would have not been complete without his story.

• I want to say thank you to Nina and Missy for our last-minute, late-night adventures to the secluded dirt road near New London. Without you to accompany me on our trip, I would have never been able to experience my first lady in white.

• I would like to extend my appreciation to Mike, who shares my deep interest in the historic buildings and properties I have explored and the ones we have explored together. While he is new to paranormal investigating, his passion has matched mine from day one, and I could not have asked for more in a partner.

• Lastly, I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to my co-author, Heather. My best friend of over 13 years, the one whom I was enjoying a beer with when we made the decision to embark on this exciting adventure. There are countless endeavors in life I would not have pursued or completed without her unwavering support and companionship.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

I originally wanted to write this book to share my experiences. I tried to describe events in detail to help explain how we felt, what we heard, and what we saw (or didn’t see). As I progressed in my writing and, more importantly, the historical research, something I had always known became even more explicit: it was the stories of the people who resided in the buildings. This history came to life through our investigations; those were the stories to be told.

The deeper I dug into the accounts of the inhabitants, those directly tied to or associated with these locations, along with the buildings themselves, the more the stories became real through history and my personal experiences. It’s not always about hearing an EVP or catching a movement out of the corner of my eye—those were my accounts. For the people who were there in the past—those who walked the hallways when the buildings were alive and in operation—those are the stories that matter.

Part of being a good investigator is accepting that often there is a valid, rational explanation for what initially seems unexplainable. Let’s say you’re sitting at home in your favorite recliner watching one of those ghost-hunting shows on TV. A familiar sound distracts you, the sound of drops of water slowing trickling into a stainless-steel sink. You get up and enter the kitchen, where your suspicion is confirmed: the faucet is dripping.

Now put yourself in total darkness, away from your TV and into an abandoned and supposedly haunted location, and take that same sound of dripping water. What was immediately recognizable in a day-to-day situation becomes an unknown, eerie sound of tapping or banging. Our experiences suggest that when you remove one sense—in this case, sight—all other senses seem to go into a type of hyperdrive; your sense of sound becomes amplified to compensate for your lack of sight. Have you ever tried falling asleep and heard a ticking clock? The sound becomes louder as you focus on the ticktock that echoes through your awareness. That said, sometimes we must acknowledge that what we see or hear cannot be discredited as paranormal.

I have entertained that entities like aliens, ghosts, or Bigfoot might not exist. I prefer pursuing the unknown, exploring beyond what is confirmed, rather than accepting only facts and dismissing unproven phenomena as false. Life is more interesting when I push the boundaries and pursue the unknown, even at the risk of proving its non-existence. I have looked beyond common sense and logic—I’ve sensed, felt, and experienced it. I no longer have reservations about the realness of this field, nor do I doubt my personal experiences.

Paranormal activity varies from place to place, sometimes night to night or hour to hour. Why wouldn’t there be activity if the location is haunted? I wish I knew the answer to that. However, I am reminded of a conversation with my husband several years ago while watching a fishing show on television. After a few minutes and without thinking, I said how unfair it was that he caught a fish with virtually every cast and that we never have that good of luck when fishing. I could feel my husband staring at me, so I turned to him and stared back. With a sigh, he finally said, You do know they probably film all day and cut out all the times he casts and doesn’t catch anything. Who wants to watch that?

That conversation resonated with me to this day, and I like to think that the paranormal, and investigations in general, is a lot like fishing. You can have all the right equipment, invest the time and effort, and still may not catch anything, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any fish. The universe expands beyond my comprehension. If there are still unidentified species swimming in the darkest depths of our oceans, I believe we haven’t scratched the surface of life beyond what we know here on Earth.

We only investigate with explicit permission from the property owner and never trespass on private property. Our techniques have evolved throughout the years as new equipment becomes available. This is where we leave it to you, the reader, and even those who experienced it firsthand, to conclude what fits your beliefs.

Shortly after signing the agreement to publish this book, I received a call from my dad, and he asked me how I would address the skeptics or those on the fence about the legitimacy of paranormal investigation. I initially thought the purchasers of this book would include those who wanted to read about the history of the locations, those who are interested in the paranormal, or those intrigued by both. I had not considered those who, like me throughout the years, either questioned the legitimacy of the unknown, thought their own experiences couldn’t truly be something paranormal, felt anything associated with the supernatural conflicted with their religious beliefs, or refused to trust in anything intangible.

Further contemplating my dad’s question, I realized that while my objective is not to change someone’s mind or convert a non-believer, it is important for you to understand that I have had my doubts and questions and acknowledge that I am still seeking answers. I believe in those genuinely invested in this field, who continue to explore, ask questions, develop new techniques, ideas, and equipment, and further study the endless possibilities of the things we don’t yet know or understand.

Once we started writing independent chapters, one of the biggest challenges we faced was how to keep the perspective consistent when we had overlapping experiences. Since most of our investigations included both of us, we wanted to put you, the reader, in the best position to understand what we experienced. Some encounters were best described as a witness, while others needed to be communicated as a firsthand account. By bringing in firsthand accounts of others with me, I hope to have written this in a way that makes sense to you and involves you as part of the investigation.

One of my favorite quotes is from the movie Contact, when Jody Foster’s character, Ellie, speaks with a group of kids and says, "I’ll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It’s bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So, if it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space ¹." While the movie was about extraterrestrials, the universe isn’t exclusive to stars, planets, and moons. It’s a never-ending expansion beyond what we know and see, pushing me to continue my exploration to Unlock the Unknown.

Heather’s Story

Do you have a bucket list? If so, how far have you gotten on it? The first and top of the list—something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember—is to be published. If you’re reading this, I got to cross that off my list. The second item was to do a paranormal investigation, which ultimately led to this publication. I didn’t know what a paranormal investigation included when it became a bucket list item. In April 2015, I discovered and realized I knew nothing about the paranormal or what it meant to investigate.

There were several instances as I was growing up that led me to believe there was something to the notion of ghosts and spirits and the things that go bump in the night. It all started in my early teenage years when a friend slept over and brought her Ouija board. (I’d like to insert a disclaimer here that I do not use Ouija boards for investigative purposes. The point of this story isn’t to confirm the validity of Ouija boards nor to debate the practice of using one. It is part of the past that pulled me into this field—two teenage girls who wanted to know who our next boyfriend would be or who we would marry someday.) It was after midnight, and we pulled our chairs up on opposite sides of the kitchen counter. I knew nothing about Ouija boards, let alone what to expect.

Feeling slightly nervous and silly, we put our fingers on the planchette and waited. It didn’t take long before it started to move, and we both accused each other of being the cause. In my mind, even if my friend was moving it, we could still have some fun, so we asked the questions mentioned earlier, whether a particular boy liked one of us or who our future husband was. The mood of our game changed when whomever we were communicating with identified himself as a little boy named Sami. He associated himself with the number six, so I assumed he was six years old. Our next question was how he died, and he spelled out my father.

The mover started going around the board, so we asked if he was trying to do a circle, and it went up to yes. Then it went to the lower corner of the board and stopped on the moon symbol. Circle moon, we asked, and the mover went back up to yes, then to the numbers 1-0-4-5. Our last communication from Sami that night was confirmation that the message was circle moon 10:45. As it was after midnight, we were intrigued by the final message, so the next night, my friend and I were on the phone, and she was using the board at her house.

After several minutes of silence, she picked up the phone after writing everything down. She relayed what Sami had communicated to her: I (Heather) had to look out my bedroom window at the full moon to avoid something terrible happening. This didn’t make sense to me, but I did as instructed. I set the phone down on my nightstand (back then, there were no cell phones, and the phone cord would not reach) and went to the only window in my bedroom, which faced our driveway, above our porch, and next to the garage. I had an ever-so-slight view of the front of our house, and to my surprise, I could see the edge of a giant oak tree. What I saw caused me to hold my breath. The brightly illuminated full moon was in the V of one of the branches. Shocked, I walked back to my nightstand to pick up the phone and tell my friend I just saw the circle moon, and my eye caught the time—10:45. We were both equally surprised the message we received the previous night had come to fruition.

That was not the last time, nor the only Ouija board, Sami communicated with me. He followed me to the second Ouija board I used at my friend Diane’s house. We decided it would be fun to do séance, at least like we had seen in the movies. After lighting many candles in her room, we looked at each other and started to laugh, as we had no idea what we were doing. She had an Ouija board, and we decided that was the next best thing. Sami came through right away, and Diane, being a skeptic, said she wanted him to stop a stream of black smoke from the flame of one of the candles. The Ouija board responded with 333, which we confirmed was the time of 3:33 p.m. It was just after 3:00 p.m., so we soon forgot about the candle and moved on to other things.

A short time later, I happened to look over and realized the candle Diane requested had stopped smoking, so I laughed as I told her that Sami was telling the truth and pointed to the candle. Our laughter quickly turned somber when we both looked at the clock. The time displayed was 3:33 p.m., and we both jumped as all the smoke alarms in her house went off. They shut off as quickly as they came on, but in fear, we grabbed the board and planchette, ran out of her room down the hallway, and threw them across the lawn as we ran out the front door.

After gaining our composure, we were once again laughing at how ridiculous we had reacted and went to retrieve the items. We immediately found the board, but the planchette was nowhere to be found. I carried the board over to the concrete steps leading off the side of the house into the kitchen and continued to look for the mover. After a few minutes, we cut our loss and retrieved the board. We stopped dead in our tracks, for when we got to the side door, the planchette was set perfectly in the center of the board.

Fast forward a couple more years. While this story doesn’t involve Sami, the evening resonated with me. I arrived at my friend Aaron’s house to hang out with him and one of his buddies. Aaron showed me around his house, and when we walked into his room, I turned and asked him if he had ever heard of cleaning, as the room was in complete disarray. Drawers were pulled out, and the contents were scattered everywhere. It looked like his room had been burglarized. Aaron looked shocked as he assured me it was picked up before I arrived, and his friend confirmed that.

Later that evening, the three of us were sitting in the living room—Aaron and I were on a chair, his friend on the floor with his back against the chair between our feet. A window was to our right, with vertical blinds slightly open. Outside the window was a sidewalk with a streetlamp that illuminated the wall we faced as narrow slivers of light through the vertical blinds. Sitting in the dark, we were talking about spooky experiences we had. Aaron was talking about a spirit he had encountered named Jiffy from the mid-1800s. We were joking about his name and what he may have looked like, perhaps Abraham Lincoln.

Suddenly the atmosphere of the room became unwelcoming as the silhouette of a man, from the neck up and wearing a top hat, slowly made its way across the slits of light on the wall we were facing left to right, slowly moving as if he were walking across the wall. My attention was diverted as I saw a dark shadow from the corner of my right eye come up from behind the side of our chair as the lamp on the end table next to us flew off and crashed onto the tile floor. We all were temporarily frozen, confused by what had just happened. We exchanged confused and scared looks, and I jumped to run out of the house. I tripped over the lamp cord, which was now stretched across the floor between the outlet and the overturned lamp, which caused the light to turn on for an unknown reason.

We dismissed what we saw as someone walking outside. We would have seen their shadow on the wall we were facing and the actual person outside the window through the blinds. On my drive home, still on edge, I received a call from Aaron. After I left, he went back into his room, and everything was as it was after he had cleaned it—the drawers were put back in the dresser, and nothing was out of place.

I met another paranormal investigator, Jenny, at a convention, and she and I hit it off immediately, almost as if we were drawn to each other. After much online chatting during the COVID-19 quarantine shutdown, her birthday was approaching, and she asked me if I wanted to spend her birthday weekend with her at the Palmer House, to which I jumped at the opportunity. While we met once about a year before this and had never talked on the phone nor hung out, when she picked me up, it felt like I was seeing an old friend.

After settling in at Palmer House, we ate, played pull tabs, and returned to the room. Between manicures and pedicures, we talked about what got us into the paranormal field. As I explained who Sami was and my first Ouija experience, I watched the color drain from her face, and she finally told me to stop, stop talking. I was initially a bit taken aback and did not understand what was happening. As she regained her composure, her voice was shaky as she proceeded to tell me about a little boy named Sami she knew in sixth grade. Sami took his own life that same night after getting in trouble for bullying her at school. It turned out his father had been less than kind to him, and getting turned in for bullying was the final straw for the little boy.

Jenny and I started to put the pieces together: Sami was in sixth grade, not six years old. His father technically did not end his life, but the acts of his father’s discipline drove him to take his own life, so one could say his father was responsible. We decided this was why my and Jenny’s paths crossed—something needed to be resolved for her and the accountability she felt for the circumstances leading up to Sami’s death.

The story does have a happy ending, as Jenny reached out to Sami’s mother and explained she was the one who turned Sami in all those years before, almost as a confession. They shared many hugs and tears and visited Sami’s final resting place. As previously stated, I no longer use an Ouija board. That said, I have not tried to contact Sami again as I feel his communication with me all those years prior was resolved when Jenny and I sat down at the Palmer House and shared our stories.

Kristin’s Story

As I sit here today, reminiscing about all that came before I became an official paranormal investigator, I cannot help but recall the sense of