Editor’s note: The Pioneer Press first published this article in February 1969 as part of a series on haunted places around the Twin Cities metro area called ‘The Haunted Among Us.’

Three newsmen spent a sleepless night recently at 476 Summit Avenue to try to learn whether the dead do tread the halls of the former St. Paul Art Gallery.

The legends and eyewitness accounts of ghosts in the red sandstone structure were supported by St. Paul spiritualist-medium Roma Harris, who made an early-evening visit to the 24-room Victorian home of Carl L. Weschcke.

“There is a Charles Wade who worked here as a gardener,” she said in a seance the mansion’s dark-paneled library. “The yard was beautiful and he comes here he pulls the books out and uses them.

There has been much sorrow here, a lot of suffering things have been done that shouldn’t have happened.” She spoke with her eyes closed.

Roma – as she wants to be known – speaks in gushes of words. At times she prays. At other times she speaks of “vibrations” coming from a world beyond.

There was a general – or something – here,” she said. I see a blue uniform with lots of gold on it.”

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Roma was not told in advance about the house. She was told nothing of its bizarre past or of its present. Weschcke was introduced to her only as Carl.

Could the uniformed figure have been the late Col. Chauncey Griggs, who built the mansion in 1883? Or perhaps a “General Forsythe” mentioned by Roma as a visitor in the home? Griggs was an officer during the Civil War.

Roma also mentioned a servant, a young maid, as we walked through the huge hallways leading to the third floor.

Roma had not been told of the legend that a maid met a violent death in the mansion that now belongs to the 38-year-old bachelor who publishes books on astrology and the occult.

When Roma reached the foot of the main staircase, she said there had been an accident. “Someone was pushed and fell here the police were called the person was permanently injured but it was an accident.”

She spoke also of a blonde girl, about 17, who once played the piano in the house. She died at an early age, said Roma, and her name was Amy. Roma seemed taken momentarily aback by the wide staircase and the floors above. We took her up, accompanied by Weschcke.

“The house has a heaviness about it – like a ball and chain,” she said.

We reached the third floor and Weschcke led us into a vast room. “Here here the vibrations are very, very strong,” Roma said. Here is where you should stay the night.”

We then took Roma to her home on the other side of the city. She told us she would ask members of the spiritualist group to which she belongs to pray at the meeting that night that whatever spirits were in the mansion would make themselves known to us.

We returned to the mansion at 10 p.m. It stood dark and uninviting against a dark night sky. Weschcke met us at the door. We went up to his study.

He went over the legal history of the mansion. His records show the house was changing hands in the late 1800s and early 1900s like a hot coal instead of the huge investment it was for its buyers.

To replace it today would cost an estimated $390,000. It was selling even in those distant days for over $100,000. Yet the records show it was bought, held at times for one, two or three years, and then sold to the next buyer.

But the records fail to show why the house changed hands so often – and after such brief periods of occupancy by owners who spent fortunes to buy, furnish and staff it with servants.

While our host talked about the mansion where he lives alone, one of his three cats, a female Siamese, sat on his desk. She kept looking up at the high ceiling. There was nothing on the flat surface to attract her attention. There were no sounds we could hear. But she kept looking up toward the floors above us.

Weschcke again took us on a tour of the house from top to bottom. Just before midnight led us up the winding, narrow back stairs to the cavernous room with a wide skylight where Roma had said she felt the most “vibrations.”

Weschcke then retired to his bedroom on the second floor. It has its own bathroom and he said he would have no reason to leave the bedroom. He was tired, he said, after an 18-hour day.

Photographer Flynn Ell set up one camera with a special lens and loaded with infrared film capable of capturing heat changes that might be present if something invisible to the human eye appeared. He carried another camera with a wide-angle lens and regular film. A tape recorder we brought with us was turned on.

We sat down in a circle. There was one shaded light in the room. A bright light leading to the staircase allowed us to see anything that moved outside our room. As newsmen we have each been in hundreds of situations that held far greater risks of possible physical danger. There was no sign of any danger in that room twice the size of most modern apartments. We had no reason to feel apprehensive.

Yet each of us soon reported feelings of general uneasiness – a definite sense of discomfort we couldn’t define. Each was especially anxious about the hall – brightly illuminated – and the staircase leading to the floors below.

One of Weschcke’s cats, a black Angora, came silently up the stairs and into the room. It went to reporter Giese. He stroked its back. The cat then walked to the door to the hall and stopped. It looked back, its tail twitching. Giese walked to the doorway.

The cat moved to the top of the stairs and again looked back. Giese followed it. The cat then went down to the first landing and looked up at the reporter peering over the wooden rail. The cat seemed to be waiting for him to follow it down the stairs. He didn’t. He returned to the room.

He reported a very strong sense of apprehension about the staircase that was bathed in a light so bright one looking down could see the worn spots three landings below made by the thousands of footsteps that had been taken since 1883 on those old stairs.

Photographer Ell then went to the top of the stairs. He stood there a minute and then returned. Reporter Farmer went to the stairs.He returned.

Both Ell and Farmer reported a similar sense of discomfort, uneasiness – fear.

Overactive imaginations? Forbidding surroundings? Lateness of the hour? Lack of sleep? Expectations of coming face to face with the Art Gallery Ghost?

We don’t know. But we each know there was NOTHING that could induce us to walk down those lighted stairs alone.

We sat talking softly at times and at other times we sat in silence. Ell was making periodic exposures on his infa-red film camera aimed at the hall.

Suddenly, at 1:20 a.m., outside our room but on our floor, there were at least five distinct thumps – like heavy footsteps. Silence followed.

We sat, listening and waiting, our eyes frequently turning to the door leading to the hall and the staircase.

At 3:35 a.m. there was a creaking sound – like soft footsteps – on the stairs. We stared at each other in silence. The noises stopped.

At 3:40 a.m. reporter Giese walked to the top of the staircase. He leaned over the railing. There was nothing visible on the landings or the stairs below. He listened and looked for about two minutes. There was no sound.

He returned to the room and said he had “an almost overpowering urge” to step away from the stairs – a “feeling” that there was “something” on those stairs that was not Carl Weschcke or any of his cats.

Minutes later, at 3:45 a.m., there was again the same squeaking sound on the stairs – a sound that might be made by feet starting up the stairs to our floor and then stopping. Again there was silence.

We sat until after 4 a.m. and heard nothing more. We packed our equipment and walked together down the stairs to the back door. We let ourselves out, looking the door behind us. We looked up at that hulking stone mansion. We were relieved to be outside it.

We saw no ghosts. We only heard what we heard and felt what we felt.

We all agreed on one thing. There is no prize on earth that could get us to spend a single night alone in that great stone house that seems to speak in sounds we cannot explain or understand.

There is a growing, and much more scientific, interest in the supernatural. Some very distinguished and notable men believe in ghosts and spirits.

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