LAFOLLETTE HOUSE
Location: The home of the University of Colorado, Boulder is a picturesque city twenty miles northwest of Denver surrounded by mountains, rivers and acres of untamed wilderness. Closer to the civilization of the city, Lafollette House is in the Marshall community of homes north of town at 1350 Williams Street nestled not far from the Dawber Forest Reserve. It's a private residence and trespassers are not welcome.
Description of Place: Devoid of the appearance of most stereotypical haunted houses, Lafollette House rests in a shady neighborhood lined with old and partially sunken sidewalks and picturesque homes and cottage right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. A two-story American white frame house with bay windows and a balustrade roof, the house is almost a hundred years old and still exists in exactly the same condition it was in when it was built in 1908.
Ghostly Manifestations: Several reputed haunted houses in the United States have stories based on rumor and innuendo. In the case of Lafollette house, there may be a basis for the hauntings based on an unsolved death in the house. Local adults knew it as a haunted house through the Forties and the early Fifties until the McConnell family lived there, but when they tried to sell it in 1989, it soon became obvious there might be a basis to the stories.
"I grew up in this house." Mindy McConnell told the Collinsport Ghost Society. "I had happy memories of living here with my parents. I didn't grow up with ghost stories, I didn't have séances and I certainly didn't have poltergeist playmates. My father spent long years on the road as an orchestra conductor, and I never thought anything was wrong with the house all the years I lived here, but when the choice was made to sell the house, I noticed and experienced things I knew should never have happened."
Mindy's father was spending more and more time abroad as a conductor and the house was sitting empty a lot so the house was sitting empty for most of the year. The old structure needed a bit of superficial restoration and Mindy called in help and favors recruited from many of her groups of friends. For all of them, it was their first visits to the old house, and their lasts. Some of their experiences are remarkably similar despite the fact that they didn't compare notes until afterward. They felt cold breezes through the house when it was locked up tight and furniture changed places. An antique hallway chair taken out of the upstairs corridor had been set through the door of a bedroom to get it out of the way a a large armoire being moved. As Mindy supervised the moving of the large piece of furniture, her friends Mark Pitts and Remo DaVinci lifted and struggled hoisting the heavy armoire down the hall and into another bedroom in order to get it downstairs, but during the struggling and hoisting, DaVinci backed up into the antique chair, now out in the center of the hall once again.
During the painting period, Mindy opened the windows along the front and second floor to avoid the paint fumes. However, as she would be painting, she'd always get the feeling that someone else was in the house. Eventually she thought it was her imagination and started bringing music and friends for company. One day as she and Remo's sister, Jean, were painting in the living room, they heard the three windows at the top of the stairway slam shut one after another.
"It was just... bam-bam-bam... one after another as if someone was closing them up." Mindy recalls. "Jean and I both recoiled for a second and then had a laugh before checking it out. I mean, it's an old house, you figure they won't stay open by themselves and we had finished painting up there and the paint fumes were still unbearable. We went up there, opened the windows and propped them open with the wooden paint handles used to stir the paint which were laying all over the place. Setting the windows up again, we both went downstairs and started making sandwiches. We were talking and joking and laughing, but as soon as we started painting again, all three of those windows slammed shut again along with the sounds of the paint handles hitting the floor and flying across the top landing."
There was also a problem with the light in the master bedroom. Mindy shut off all the lights but for the light on the front stoop when she locked the house at night, but every morning when she returned, the light in the master bedroom to the left side of the house would be burning brightly. She would double check it several times and it would be on again in the morning. Remo finally shut it off at the circuit breaker and that soon would be it for all of two days.
"Monday morning..." Mindy replies with a puzzled tone. "After skipping work on the house for two days, I'd return and that light would be on again. I took the light bulb out after that than try and explain it."
"This rocking chair..." She gestures to a rocking chair in the corner of the parlor. "Could be heard rocking. We'd never see it, but we'd hear, come running and and no one would be in it. The chair has been a part of the house for years and used to sit n the master bedroom at the top of the stairs. During the final fitting of new light fixtures in the house, I'd be talking to the electrician and he'd ask me if someone else was in the house. I'd say no, but he'd say he'd heard someone come into the house. Instead, I'd hear the rocking chair going going back and forth; it's a very distinct sound on the hard wood floor. I'd come up on it rocking and the sound with cut off right at the exact instant I'd look into the room, but I'd never catch it physically rocking."
As if the odd quirks and idiosyncrasies of the house in its unnatural barren and empty state were not enough, both Jean and Mark claimed they'd heard voices going on the house at times. Mark arrived once hearing people talking upstairs and would head up to join in, but he'd find himself alone. Gina heard incoherent sounds once while alone in the house. Remo had driven Mindy to replace incorrect window handles for the correct size and when they returned, Jean would be sitting on the stone steps at the sidewalk smoking a cigarette and claiming she heard incoherent voices from the upstairs. Remo blamed it all on a fan blowing through the house. The house did not have central air and it had been an oddly warm fall so a fan was sometimes running. Something about the vibration of the fan and the air going through it made sounds like incoherent whispering, but then it got cold and rainy and they stopped using it and the voices became even more obvious.
"I was in the living room sorting through books and I distinctly heard someone call me by name." Mindy confesses openly. "I'd call out, rush to the front parlor and no one would be there. I still don't know what to think of that."
Despite the occurrences going on or not going on, no one had used the word ghost yet. The house was either odd, spooky or creepy, but it wasn't called haunted. According to McConnell, haunted was for deserted old houses left alone to be festered by the elements. While Mindy was talking and haggling with the idea of selling the house, Remo and Jean were mulling over the thought of buying it. Their local Brooklyn style delicatessen was doing very good business and they were prospering. Jean was thinking marriage with her boyfriend, and Remo wanted her out of his apartment. However, as they were deciding on installing central air, Jean said she saw over her shoulder an elderly woman slowly hasten from the parlor to the dining room and she realized she would not like living in the house after all. After a day at the county archives, she brought Mindy newspaper clippings about the deaths in the house... and the alleged hauntings.
History: Built in 1908, the Lafollette House has been in the custody of the McConnell family for several years. Fred McConnell married Chloe Lafollette in 1962 and had a daughter, Melinda ("Mindy") who later inherited the house. Beyond new wallpaper and restored copper pipes, they have not changed a single part of the house. Mindy is married to local radio personality Mark (Mork) Pitts.
Identity of Ghosts: It is believed the house is haunted by the spirits of sisters Lucinda and Deirdre Lafollette. In 1924, they were both wooed by a gentleman named Harrison Monteith, a gambler of ill-repute possibly interested in their family fortune. However, Deirdre wanted to run away with Harrison to leave behind the controlling confines of her older sister, Lucinda, who possibly realized their subterfuge. Deirdre was apparently afraid of Lucinda who was the controlling more aggressive sister, but they remained locked in their love/hate relationship with the older sister controlling the younger sister. Whether they discovered Harrison's intent is unrevealed, but he turned up poisoned in the house and the police at the time could not determine which among the sisters could have killed him. The case remained open for years, and the sisters isolated themselves off from society afterward, never seen beyond the walls of the house for eighteen more years. Groceries were delivered by messenger, but when no one answered the door one cold January morning in 1947, concerned authorities broke in and found both the sisters frozen to death in their upstairs rooms. The pilot light o the heating system had gone off and both the sisters had froze to death in their sleep. Whether their was any malice in the deaths has never been answered.
Source/Comments: Mork & Mindy (Episode: "The Morkville Horror"), Phenomenon and history loosely based on the Cassidy House in Chicago Illinois, Schnell House in Nashville, Tennessee and Borden House in Fall River, Massachusetts.