A Small Collection of Stories (Part Two)
The Ridgeway ghost apparently took various human forms.
A young man named Jim Moore was visiting his sweetheart near Blue Mounds. The young lady lived in a large two-story frame house with an outside stairway leading to the girl's apartment on the top floor. It was dusk when the suitor climbed the steps to the apartment. He paused at the top landing to catch his breath before knocking on the door. From there he looked down and saw an old man perched atop a rusted stove lying in the yard. Moore had never seen the elderly man before and thought there was something strange about him. Moore went inside and told the story about the visitor in the yard. The girl was concerned and, as the night progressed, tried to persuade her beau to spend the night. Moore didn't think it was proper and declined.
Moore left and started home on foot. Suddenly the old gentleman was at his side matching Moore's stride step for step. The vaporous figure did not speak a work and stared straight ahead. As Moore neared his house he heard a small explosion and the old man vanished.
Moore broke into a run and made it safely into his house. As he leaned panting against the kitchen door, he realized the Ridgeway ghost had escorted him home.
Jim Moore never visited that girl again.
* * * *
In the era before automobiles, young couples would often walk short distances to visit friends. So it was that near Wakefield a young man and his new bride accepted an invitation to a party at a home a few miles away.
The night came dark and still. The only light blazed from their swinging lanterns, pointing the way though the heavy woods. The air had not yet cooled from an unusually hot day in early autumn. No breeze stirred the air. Freshly fallen leaves formed a dark carpet upon which their footsteps made a faint rustling sound.
Without warning, something stirred in the path a few yards ahead. Thinking it was a neighbor also walking to the party, the young man called out a greeting, but there was no answer. Abruptly the night air turned cold. Their lantern's glow reflected upon leaves fluttering in the air for no apparent reason. The sound of footsteps reached their ears, and looking down they could see the imprints of a man's shoes.
Although they saw nothing, the couple claimed to have felt a presence in the forest. The Ridgeway ghost out for evening stroll?
* * * *
Willy Powell passed a pleasant evening with his girlfriend in Ridgeway and was returning home in his buckboard hitched to a fine pair of coal black horses. The winter night was particularly cold with masses of swirling snow drifting across long stretches of the road.
Hurrying the animals, Powell turned in to the drive which led to the warmth and safety of his cabin. Without warning his horses reared suddenly and the cutter overturned, tossing Powell into a snowbank. As Powell looked up he saw the object of his horses' fright: a towering black figure stood in the doorway of the barn. Powell scrambled to his feet and raced for the cabin to rouse his sleeping brother.
The pair returned to the barn to find the door closed and no sign s of an intruder. The horses were not found for several days.
* * * *
An old man who lived by himself reported that the Ridgeway ghost visited him one night during chores.
The fellow had walked out to the pump to fill several buckets with water. On his way back into the house he turned and saw that the pump handle was still vigorously moving up and down. At once he realized the ghost was getting a drink. The terrified farmer ran into his kitchen and bolted the door.
* * * *
Country doctors were regularly called out at night to isolated farms to deliver babies or look after the sick. Doc Cutler, who tended the people of Ridgeway for years, took the ghost stories quite seriously.
Cutler would avoid the main Ridge Road if at all possible since the ghost was known to frequent the area. On those occasions when he had to travel the highway, the Ridgeway ghost would always keep him company. The phantom would spring from the brush and perch on one of the doctor's horses or stand on the tongue of his buggy. Cutler tried whipping his horses into a faster gait but the ghost would not be deterred. And, all the while, the ghost would stare up at the frightened physician with its hollow, vacant eyes.
After one late night call Cutler also claimed that he overtook a man walking beside the road. He asked the stranger if he wanted a ride and the man climbed into the doctor's buggy. for the entire journey to Dodgeville, the passenger did not utter a word and gazed directly ahead. He jumped out of the buggy near the edge of town and vanished into the night.
Doc Cutler was convinced that he gave a lift to the Ridgeway ghost.
The ghost, it is said, was particularly attracted to anyone who worked with blood.
* * * *
A man was riding home one afternoon in the hills near Ridgeway when he thought he saw movement in a deserted cabin. He dismounted and walked into the ruins. Sitting in a chair was a vague, white, humanlike form the visitor immediately recognized as the Ridgeway ghost. He struck at the phantom with his whip and the ghost vanished.
The next day, the man noticed there were clear impressions of his fingers in the handle of the whip. Fright had placed them there, he realized.
* * * *
Johnny Owens, a Welsh miner, was out for an evening stroll on the Ridge Road. Rounding a bend he saw several dark objects swinging from a limb of a tall oak tree. As he approached more closely, the moonlight clearly revealed three human bodies hanging by their necks. Owens ran all the way home.
The next day Owens returned to the spot with three stout friends. There were no bodies hanging in the tree.
* * * *
One day in the late 1840's, a lead miner encountered the Ridgeway ghost as he trudged along the road west of Ridgeway.
As the miner walked, the man realized he was being followed. He turned and saw a hazy form some distance behind. The miner said it was the specter of the Ridgeway ghost. He quickened his stride. So did the phantom. Always keeping the same distance behind the frightened miner, the ghost matched the striked step for step. Frightened badly, the miner began to run, and, yes, so did the ghost.
Finally, after severl hundred yards, the miner slumped exhausted on a log at the side of the road. The ghost sauntered up and sat down at the other end. For one of the few times in its history the ghost spoke.
"That was sone fine running you were doing back there," the spirit said.
"Yes," acknowledged the miner. "And I'm going to be doing some more in a minute." And off he sped with the phantom in pursuit.
What finally happened? It's not recorded.
* * * *
Late one evening, two men from Blue Mounds were walking along the old Military Ridge Road carrying a long plank on their shoulders. About halfway to their destination, a specter dressed in white sprang from a thicket and landed on the board. Badly frightened, the men began running, still carrying the board and its phantom rider. The ghost stood on the plank snapping a switch over the heads of the scampering men. The two hapless travelers finally collapsed in the road. When they gathered up the nerve to look at the plank lying some distance away, the specter had vanished.
* * * *
Three men were sitting in a Blue Mounds saloon, nearing the end of a stud poker game. The stakes were high and considerable sum of money was riding on this final deal. A miner with a full house won the pot. As he reached across the table to gather up the winnings, a man appeared in a vacant seat, grabbed up the cards, and began to deal. The uninvited stranger wore black clothing with wide-brimmed hat pulled down low over his eyes, obscuring his face.
The cards began flying from the stranger's fingers and seemed to dance across the room before floating down to the table.
The tavernkeeper dove behind his polished bar and hid for the duration of the stranger's visit. The poker players were thoroughly frightened at the card antics and stumbled over each other in their headlong rush for the door.
The money on the table vanished, along with the phantom in black.
When traffic declined on the Ridge Road following the completion of the railroad in 1857,the Ridgeway ghost also became less active. In fact, it is said that the phantom was seen leaving town on the cowcatcher freight train passing through Ridgeway. Others claim the ghost died in a fire that consumed nearly all of the Ridgeway business district in 1910.
But there are other, more skeptical believers, who say the ghost has never left.
Jeanie Lewis lives near Wakefield and has collected stories about the ghost for some time. She is not convinced the ghost has truly departed, citing several bizarre experiences that seem to defy explanation.
Shortly after the birth of her first child in 1959, Mrs. Lewis arose at 2 a.m. to give the baby an early feeding. As she sat rocking the child in the darkened living room, Mrs. Lewis heard the kitchen door open. Turning to look, she saw newspapers that been placed on the freshly waxed floor float through the air. The sound of footsteps echoed in the air, but no one was visible.
Mrs. Lewis ran to the bedroom to rouse her husband. Together they heard the footsteps and the kitchen door slam shut. And then silence. The couple walked cautiously into the kitchen but found nothing disturbed. The newspapers were still arranged neatly on the floor and the damp ground outside the door bore no impressions of footprints.
* * * *
This incident could be called The Case of the Wandering Jacket. Mrs. Lewis says her husband once owned a jacket given him by a former girlfriend. About three years after Mrs. Lewis and her husband married the coat disappeared from a clothes hook in the stairwell where it was always kept. Mr. Lewis insisted that his wife had destroyed it; she just as strenuously denied any involvment. Mrs. Lewis searched the house thoroughly but no sign of the coat could be found.
Several years passed. Then one afternoon as Mrs. Lewis walked down the stairs she saw the coat hung, as always, on the peg. But the garnment was nearly in shreds. It was as if someone had worn it nearly every day since its disappearance.
* * * *
An old schoolhouse in Wakefield has been converted into a recreation center. Along with the Folklore Village Farm, there is quite a complex for neighborhood youngsters. Some peculiar incidents have taken place there.
At about the time the school was undergoing its face lifting, Jeanie Lewis, who lives within sight of the place, happened to glance toward the sky one evening. On the eastern horizon she noticed a bright, colorful object directly over the Wakefield cheese factory. It hovered over the factory and began to descend. Then it took off to the north and stopped over the old schoolhouse. While Mrs. Lewis watched, the lights appeared to descend into the chimney of the old building.
Several times since that night, children and other visiting the schoolhouse have reported strange sounds from within that chimney. It is said the Ridgeway ghost visits there every so often.
Meanwhile, a bleak, abandoned farmhouse on the old Petra property is said to be the permanent residence of the Ridgeway ghost. It sits surrounded by weeds past the pioneer Ridgeway cemetery south of town and looks just like the sort of place a ghost would inhabit. Doors hang from their hinges, windows are broken--altogether an ideal haunted house!
Was there really a Ridgeway ghost? Or did the Old World settlers bring their superstitious ways to the new land, re-creating in slightly altered form the vampire, banshee, and werewolf? The Ridgeway tales and any truth upon which they might have been built are now lost in the mists of time. We will never know for sure, but the legends will live as long as there are listeners willing to believe.
Note:The information used for this and many of the other Ridgeway pages is borrowed from Haunted Wisconsin, by Beth Scott & Michael Norman.