THE SPENSER HOUSE
Location: The Spencer House is located at 15 Willoughby Lane about a mile from the Adams Bridge over the Winooski River near Lake Champlain, three miles north from Burlington, Vermont.
Description of Place: A 35,000 square foot Nantucket-type shingle house, the two-story structure has two fireplaces, bay windows, a grand staircase, four bedrooms, a full attic and back patio to a small pier on Lake Champlain.
Ghostly Manifestations: While she lived there, Claire Spenser had no idea why the bathtub in the front upstairs bathroom of the house was constantly full of water. She doesn't recall hearing the water running, but regardless if she was home or not, the tub was frequently discovered full of extremely cold water ready for a very chilling bath. If it was the product of a leaking tap, it would take much longer to fill, and if she was leaving the water running, it surely would have not stopped once the tub was full. There was something behind it, but what?
In addition to that phenomenon, Claire started believing in ghosts. She'd start hearing whispers in the house. Sounds like huddled voices speaking in secret from corners and darkened rooms. She'd try to discern their source and they move away from her. They appear near her in the kitchen, from the corner of her husband's office, off the landing over her head and even outside while she was near the lake. They were never coherent or clear enough to be heard, but Claire could always hear them while her husband could not. He thought she was being foolish, scaring herself into believing something, but Claire was positive by the way her dog would perch his ears to the noise or scurry cowering from the room. At other times, he would amble down to the dock and bark at the water. Once when Claire dared to look into the water, she noticed a pale white face staring at her from underneath, but it couldn't have been a real person. There was no shape of a body with it, just a face.
Among other strange activity, Claire recalls the front door of her home being left open by itself. She would close it, latch it and leave the room, but a few minutes later, she'd feel a breeze through her home, turn around and the door would be standing open again despite being latched. On one occasion, she recalls catching the door swaying open in the reflection of a mirror with a drenched and ambiguous female presence standing in it, but when she'd turn around, the door would be open, but no one would be there.
Claire reported several of these happenings to her husband who would just shrug them off and tell her that she was acting crazy. Despite his opinion, Claire attempted to exorcise the ghost... or what ever it was... by calling it out, burning a white candle and even trying to catch it in the act, but it always stayed just a little bit ahead of her. She'd feel cold spots, the presence would rummage around her husband's desk, the radio would came on and Claire would continue to feel as if she was never completely alone. For all intents and purposes, the spirit seemed to be interested in her. One night as Claire showered in her bathroom, she wiped the steam off her bathroom mirror and discovered a strange face other than her own staring from the mirror!
Ironically, a mile away at the same time, several motorists driving over the Addams Bridge over the Winooski River were experiencing another sort of phenomenon. At night as the fog rolled in off Lake Champlain, they were not experiencing the oft-seen celebrity serpent of the lake. They were encountering the apparition of a young woman standing in the middle of the road on the south end of the bridge. Several people swerved to miss her, but never stopped. They all agreed she looked too unearthly to be real, but the few that actually ran into her would watch her tumble over their car and then vanish. On three occasions, the State Patrol were called to look for her body knocked off the bridge, but they never found a thing...
Until Claire and her husband drove off the road to avoid her and sank into the Winooski... not far from a vehicle trapped in the mud with the remains of a female driver in the car...
History: The Spenser House was designed and built by Richard Gardner and James Teesgarden for Dr. Wendell James Spenser. After a fire in 1983, his son, Norman Spenser, had it restored into a home for his wife, Claire Lowell-Spenser. She has not lived in the house since his death. The hauntings only occurred from Summer to Winter of 1989.
Identity of Ghosts: In the beginning, Claire confesses she erroneously believed she was being haunted by the ghost of Mary Feur, a neighbor who had mysteriously vanished one day, but when Feur later turned up very much alive, she began suspecting she was actually being haunted by a missing college girl named Madison Frank from the University of Vermont... a young woman for whose murder her husband was posthumously indicted.
Source/Comments: What Lies Beneath (2000) Paranormal activity and phenomenon almost solely from the movie.