The people of Rockford, IL just called it the Penfield House.
Built sometime in the 1870s, the rambling Victorian mansion was first called home by its builder and his new bride.
But all was not well in paradise. Whispers circulated of an affair. Only a year into the young couple’s marriage, the owner’s wife was no longer seen about the property or in town.
More rumors made the rounds, finally driving the assumed widower out of town forever.
The house’s next occupants – and undertaker and his family – fared even worse. Sickness claimed the man’s wife and both of their children – again within a year of moving in.
Not long after, the undertaker was found hanging from the red maple tree in the backyard.
Horror and misfortune would continue to haunt the home’s successive owners down through the years – including the family that finally dug up the original owner’s late wife. Buried under the same tree where the undertaker later hanged himself, the bones of her head and torso were found rolled up in a rotting Persian rug.
Of her missing arms and legs, no sign was ever found.
The discovery and reburial of the murdered wife’s remains did nothing to calm the rampant ghostly activity plaguing the house. Phantom footsteps, invisible children crying, and a recurring stench of death represented only the most pedestrian paranormal phenomena.
Sleepers in the master bedroom reported waking in the small hours to the shuffling and prodding of an unseen presence feeling the edges of the bed, accompanied by a feminine voice asking “Am I dead?”
But that was mild compared to what a houseful of revelers saw on New Year’s Eve 1920, when a loathsome black shape was witnessed crawling on the second-floor landing. “It snuffled and pawed at the carpet,” stunned partygoers said, “as if searching blindly for something.” Their cries caused the shadowy monstrosity to rear up, revealing a head lacking any hint of a face. It spread what looked like ragged diaphanous sleeves or wings and floated up through the ceiling.
The house is still there, and can be visited.
I don’t recommend it, though.
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