Summerwind

The story

Summerwind was a villa on West Bay Lake near Land O' Lakes, in Vilas County, Wisconsin. It began early in the twentieth century as a fishing lodge and then a holiday camp, the West Bay Lake Resort, run by John H. Frank, according to a 2018 blog by an amateur preservation group. In 1916, or around 1917 depending on the source, Robert Patterson Lamont bought the property and made it a summer residence. Lamont led American Steel Foundries and later served as Herbert Hoover's Secretary of Commerce, from 5 March 1929 to 7 August 1932. His Wikipedia biography does not mention Summerwind, so the link between Lamont and this house rests on a local public radio story (WXPR, 2018) and the Wikipedia article on the house, with no primary document seen. The same blog says the family called the place Lilac Hills.

According to WXPR, the house was little used in the 1930s. In 1941 another family bought it as a holiday home, never as a permanent residence. It was sold in the 1960s after several attempts, and in the 1970s a couple moved in, followed by the wife's father. In February 1985 the town tried to have the house demolished and failed. A 1988 newspaper article, which we have not read, says an investor group bought it in 1986. On 19 June 1988 lightning destroyed the empty house. Fire officials did not suspect arson, although teenagers had held parties there, and rumours of arson circulate without proof.

The legend

The first known text to call the house haunted is a book, The Carver Effect, published at the end of 1979 and credited to Wolfgang von Bober, which English Wikipedia says is the pen name of Raymond Bober. That is the oldest dated trace we found. The amateur blog says the house was not known as Summerwind before that book. Nothing earlier turned up: our search of American newspapers from 1770 to 1963 found nothing about the house or about Lamont at West Bay Lake.

The book's account, as relayed by Wikipedia and the radio story, concerns a couple who lived there in the 1970s. They reported voices, cold drafts and bodies hidden behind walls; some versions told of the author add rooms that change shape. The book is said to tie these events to the eighteenth-century English explorer Jonathan Carver and to a land deed supposedly hidden in the foundations, a detail we have only from a blog cited in our notes and did not read. Carver's land title is described as an old historical hoax, and this strand belongs to legend. The couple are said, in accounts cited by Wikipedia, to have suffered serious distress; we could not check this.

A second layer is placed in the Lamont years: a spirit in the kitchen, servants hearing voices, and Lamont firing two shots at the cellar door before the family left for good. We found no source for this earlier than 1979, and WXPR notes that Lamont's own writings do not corroborate it.

The account has other problems. A neighbor quoted by Wikipedia says the author never lived in the house but in a trailer on the property. Two former residents deny any haunting, and local people say the stories began with the book. We found no violent death or crime at Summerwind documented.

The story then spread: a photo article in Life in November 1980 covering nine haunted houses, a Milwaukee Journal piece in October 1985, a 2005 brochure by von Bober, and an October 2005 episode of Discovery's A Haunting. We know these only through Wikipedia, and did not check them. The legend, in short, looks like a construction of the late 1970s, amplified by a national magazine and then by television.

What remains today

Only ruins remain, fireplace chimneys and foundations, on private land closed to the public. The 2018 blog mentions third-party talk of a rebuild, and we found no evidence of one. A 2023 TV report could not be opened.

Visiting

There is nothing to visit. The ruins sit on private property and are closed to the public, and we are not giving an address or any route. Please respect the owners and do not trespass. The local radio story and the Wikipedia article are the best way in for anyone curious.

Sources

1. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Iron River, MI 1958 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1958 · Public domain (USGS)
2. USGS 1:48000-scale Quadrangle for Star Lake, WI 1946 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1946 · Public domain (USGS)
3. Robert P. Lamont — Wikipedia (en)
4. Summerwind Restoration Society (blog) — Summerwind Restoration Society, 2018-01
5. Vilas Co.'s haunted Summerwind mansion — WXPR, 2018-10-31
6. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.