First Published Oct. 26, 2006 

By Mollee Francisco, Mark Olson and Teri Kelsh 

Tales of hauntings sweep through every town this time of year. Urban legends of ghostly apparitions, strange noises and other inexplicable events abound, some for entertainment value, and some born of real-life happenings. And Carver County is no exception. Across the county, from Norwood Young America to Chanhassen, the Herald has collected tales from six "haunted" locations to celebrate the Halloween season.

The wafting scent of perfume in Carver, an invisible cat prone to jumping on beds in the middle of the night in Chaska, a man's face in a photograph in Norwood Young America - these are tales that are sure to cause goose bumps, or at least stir a swell of appreciation for newly constructed homes.

Meet the people who live with the creaks and groans of old homes - some who believe in the supernatural, some who merely tolerate the interruptions and others who are still skeptical.

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The Gables

Location: 201 Fourth Street East, Carver

Possible hauntings: Lights flipping on and off, smell of perfume, apparitions, photo falling off wall

A traditional haunt

If seeking a stereotypical ghost hangout, this home fits the bill.

"The Gables" is an ornate home decorated in an Eastlake/Queen Anne Victorian Revival style, with its ornamental woodwork covered with six different shades of paint, predominantly yellow.

The original part of the home dates back 150 years. The beautiful 16-room home welcomes visitors arriving in Carver via County Road 40.

The current occupants are local preservationists John and Kathleen von Walter. John is a Carver historian, who has penned a walking tour of the village, as well as "The Sheriffs of Carver County," which recounts 150 years of area law enforcement.

The home has worked its way into local lore to the point where people reply, "Oh, the haunted house," when John tells them where he lives.

The pair joke that their personalities dictate their receptiveness to ghosts, with John being the encyclopedia-reading type and Kathleen enjoying ghost stories.

On at least four occasions, Kathleen has said that she has smelled the inexplicable "very sweet" smell of perfume temporarily wafting through the air.

The first time she told John, who dismissed the scent. However, the second time, they were in his study when the scent appeared. "We both looked up and I went, 'OK, you smelled that didn't you? Didn't you?'"

However, John said he's more likely to think there's a logical explanation, like someone walking along the sidewalk, wearing perfume.

Kathleen also related moving the furniture around in an upstairs bedroom when a photo fell of the wall. The photo may be the mother of long-time occupant Sophia Hebeisen. While John thinks the nail was loose, Kathleen opined that, "Sophia's not happy with the way we laid the bedroom out."

Sophia, who died in 1949 at the age of 96, is allegedly behind most of the hauntings.

John took a photo of the Hebeisen family off the wall and showed it to a reporter. Sophia and her husband are surrounded by her children in the photo, taken in front of the house.

In 1997, a Herald article reported that Sandy Scheftner, who worked in the house when it served as an antique store, experienced the lights going on and off by themselves.

Another time, Scheftner said she saw the blue silhouette of a woman about five feet tall traveling from room to room in a long dress. "It was nothing like any rumblings or anything spooky, just happy spirits. (The house) was filled with the spirits of yesteryear," she told the paper.

Another occupant, Gary Roberts, recalled sitting in a room he used for a library, when he said he saw the reflection of a man in the book case door. He turned around and no one was standing behind him. The man was wearing clothing, "typical of the late 19th century," he said. (This was the same room where the von Walters smelled the perfume.)

The owners before the von Walters once heard a racket up the back stairway. "It very well could have been Sophia Hebeisen," Pat William said.

"If there are spirits in the house, they're happy with what we're doing," Kathleen said.

And that family photo that John took off the wall to show the reporter? It fell off shortly after he hung it back up.

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Chanhassen Dinner Theatres

Location: 501 West 78th Street, Chanhassen

Possible hauntings: Apparitions, feelings of a presence

Frighteningly good entertainment

Chanhassen is haunted, probably not be by actual ghosts, but by the lore of supernatural specters conceived through imagination and whimsy.

There are two such tales in Chanhassen that have manifested into urban legend. Of course the most popular is the Chanhassen Dinner Theatres ghost, which has circulated for years in the community. The story is even included in a book, "Ghost Stories of Minnesota," by Gina Teel.

There are actually different versions of the story and different ghosts, depending on whom you ask. One telling is the theater was built over the site of a house that burnt down with a woman still inside, and that woman now haunts the theater.

The other telling, and the one closer to the actual truth, is that the theater was built where the Kerber farmhouse once stood. The woman who resided in the farmhouse lived a long life and then died. Eventually the farmhouse was torn down and replaced with the theater.

The story of her haunting started during the production of "The Quilters," which opened in 1984, after an actor said she felt a presence on stage with her. There's also talk of a second ghost seen flittering about backstage. Supposedly, it's the ghost of an actor who was hit by a car as she was bicycling home from work.

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Mill House Gallery

Location: 516 Pine St. N., Chaska

Possible hauntings: Footsteps, missing items, televisions turned off and on

Lurking in the shadows

Sara Hanlon used to be a bit of a skeptic when it came to the supernatural. But that was before she moved into the William Scott House (now the Mill House Gallery in Chaska).

"I'm open to the possibilities now," she said.

Hanlon's is a case of one too many tools going missing, one too many televisions turning themselves off and on, and one too many footsteps unaccounted for.

"Old houses make eerie sounds," said Hanlon. "I know that. This is more than that."

In one case, Hanlon looked up from her gallery desk to notice a few ornaments swinging back and forth vigorously as they hung on a tension rod.

"Only three of the six were swinging," she wrote, in an account of her haunted house. "Two were next to each other and the third had one still ornament between it and the other two."

The swinging was too much to be attributed to normal truck traffic.

"What was stranger still was they continued to swing back and forth as much as ever, never slowing down, for approximately 15 minutes and then they suddenly stopped," she said.

Also strange is the shadow that passes by Hanlon's second floor office late at night. Often times it is just Hanlon's husband, but there are times when no one is there.

"I have sat in my office and in the hall, observing movements of the shadows present from streetlights shining through the windows," she wrote. "Those shadows do not account for the movement I see. I have found my cat sitting at alert and looking down the hall many times when I investigate movement going past my door."

Hanlon has tried to rationalize the reason for her haunted house and can come to one conclusion. William Scott's death certificate reads death by cyanide, but Hanlon has heard rumors that his death may have been an accident and not a suicide.

"I could understand him being upset with everyone thinking that he committed suicide," she said.

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The Flower Mill 

Location: 18 Third Street S.E., Norwood Young America

Possible hauntings: Photographic images of ghostly faces and orbs, items moved

The mysterious mill man

The women of The Flower Mill have embraced the man that haunts their floral and gift shop in Norwood Young America. The photo album they keep, detailing the building's transition from mill to store, has an entire section devoted to the ghost of Bill Fruetel, a former mill owner.

Sue Samuelson, building owner, came over to take photos of the renovation work one Sunday when no one else was there. But when she got her photos developed, she found curious orbs and a ghostly face inhabiting the pictures.

"I used two different cameras that day and the images showed up in both sets of prints," said Samuelson.

Since that day, The Flower Mill has had regular visits from Fruetel.

"Oh, he'll turn the crank on the candy machine and candy will come spilling out," said Samuelson. "He'll move teddy bears around and knock things off the wall. "It's just funny stuff he'll do."

Another time, Samuelson's husband was doing some repairs in the basement at the store when water began leaking down the wall. He thought it was the pipes but upon further investigation, the pipes and faucet were nowhere near the leak. Eventually, he found that someone had turned on the coffee pot, which promptly began leaking water down into the basement. "He was spooked," said Samuelson.

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The Peacock Inn

Location: 314 Walnut St. N., Chaska

Possible hauntings: Dancing apparitions, silverware moved, mirror falling off of wall

Bed, breakfast & bogey

Joyce Bohn isn't marketing the Peacock Inn as a haunted bed and breakfast, but that's not to say that she couldn't. "Oh I've got stories," she said.

After eight years in the renovated C.H. Klein mansion, Bohn has collected her fair share of unexplained occurrences in the 96-year-old house.

"There's the rocking chair that rocks by itself in Room 3," she said. "We can't figure out why.

"Then there's the cats that jump on the bed in the middle of the night," she added. "We don't have cats, we've never had cats. I'm allergic to them." Then there's the missing silverware.

"Invariably, after I set the table for breakfast the night before, the next day someone will always say 'I don't have a fork,' or 'I don't have a cup,'" said Bohn. "But when I look in the drawers, I'm not missing anything. It's just been put back."

Two incidents stand out among Bohn's collection of strange tales. Shortly after she and her husband took over the mansion, Bohn was attempting to hang a mirror on a wall in the hall near what used to be the maid's quarters. She hammered a heavy-duty nail into the wall, hung the mirror and walked away, believing her job to be finished.

"I set one foot on the carpet and heard a crash," she said. "I turned around to see the mirror lying on the floor."

Surprisingly, the mirror survived the fall without a scratch. The nail lay just a few feet away on the floor. Bohn picked it up and checked the wall, assuming it had ripped through the plaster, but was unable to find the hole.

"I'm not one to be deterred," she said. So Bohn went and retrieved a roofing nail to use instead. Again, she hammered a nail into the wall and hung the mirror. And again, as she set foot on the carpet, she heard a crash. The mirror was, yet again, lying face down on the floor with the nail lying next to it.

"Nail on the floor, mirror unbroken and no hole in the wall," she said shaking her head.

"Everyone has looked at that wall," she said. "There's no hole." Today, the mirror still sits in a plastic bag in the attic.

The second ghostly tale involves a retired teacher and her husband. The teacher was relaxing in the Jacuzzi tub reading a book in Room 5 when she saw, in her peripheral, a woman go by. When the teacher looked up, there was no one there. She ignored it and went back to her book only to see the woman go by again a moment later.

"She said the woman's skirt was swaying like she was dancing," recounted Bohn. "I got to thinking about it and Rooms 4 and 5 used to be the ballroom. But there's no way she could have known that."

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Treasure Chest Antiques

Location: 109 Third Street East, Carver

Purported hauntings: Footsteps, sounds of sweeping

Working stiffs

Another purported haunted location with a Heibeisen connection is the Hebeisen Hardware and Farm Implement Store.

Currently serving as Treasure Chest Antiques, the circa-1870 store has had a few unexplained incidents.

Antique store owner Dennis Vogt and restorer Lenny Bjerke said they've heard strange noises in the building, like footsteps and the sounds of sweeping.

Who is causing the sounds, "probably Heibeisen," Vogt said, of the family that owned the shop for decades. 

Bjerke, who works in a workshop adjoining the antique store, said he has heard footsteps in the early morning hours, walking the length of the store, stopping at the rear door leading to the shop. "I come back and look, and no one's there."

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Chanhassen Watertower

Location: W. 76th St. and Iroquois Ave

Possible hauntings: Apparitions, strange noises

Water-retaining spirit

Another legend floating around Chanhassen, perhaps less legendary and more obscure, is the water tower ghost. The story has popped up on a Web site, www.theshadowlands.net, listing haunted places.

According to the story on the Web, on any given night strange noises can be heard around the downtown water tower and a ghostly figure can be seen dancing around and on top of it. It's unknown who the ghostly figure is supposed to be.

When we asked a local amateur historian about the story, he had neither heard of the story, nor of any particular incidents that may have happened at the water tower over the years.

It's not to say there isn't the possibility that this ghost, as well as others, may actually lurk in the shadows of Chanhassen, for as long as the stories keep being told there's always the chance someone will see them.