OLD SIMMONS HOUSE
Location: The Old Simmons House is located at
Description: The American Gothic edifice sits well in the city limits on a weed-choked and unkempt yard. Two stories tall with a third floor attic room; the house is decorated with hand-carved wood furnishings, Old American antiques and a wrought iron metal circular staircase to the attic. An old-fashioned coal chute connects the basement furnace to the outside. Many of the Simmons family belongings are still in the house.
Ghostly Manifestations: For a long time, it was reported that the tiny
hamlet of
The so-called organ actually still sits up in
the attic; its keys still reportedly stained with blood. Several attempts were
made to clean them off, but they never came clean. Numerous cleaners were tried
that failed, but then in 1982 it was revealed that they weren’t stains at all
but imperfections in the pattern of the ivory.
In 1968, Miss Halcyone Winslow who lived
across the street reported several times a woman in a long white dress pacing
the sidewalk in front of the house’s front gate as if they were waiting for
someone to pick her up. Miss Winslow once reported that she had seen her up to
twelve times in a three month period and that she never thought much about it.
Whenever she looked to see if someone had finally picked the woman up, the
distressed girl would already be gone. She adds that on one of the last times
she saw her, the unidentified woman actually stopped pacing and turned and
looked at her directly as if she had known she was being watched. Miss Winslow
stopped looking for her after that.
Subsequent owners who acquired the house
never reported much strange activity from the house, but in 1975, Donald and
Elizabeth Griffith purchased and invested much of their money in the old
dilapidated house. They started calling the police about a woman in white
lurking around the house and possibly sneaking inside, because things were
often being disturbed. Officers came as often as twice a week, but never saw a
sign of the strange person or any evidence of trespassing. Three years after
moving in, the
A few of the movers reported seeing a strange woman in white sitting on the bottom stairs.
History: In 1945, Abraham Simmons was the owner of a successful contracting
business and later a town councilman. He designed and built the house as a gift
for his wife, Magnolia Simmons in 1946, but he was very jealous of her and both
paranoid and insecure that several men in town wanted her for their own. After
a brief year of marriage, neighbors reported heard an incredible screaming
fight on
In 1966, reporter Luther Hegg ran a newspaper
article on the ghostly legends of the house. His investigation, however,
challenged the official account of the murder when he found the original
staircase to the attic concealed behind a false bookcase (A second spiral
staircase had been added late in the building to the loft. Nicholas claimed
years after it was found that his uncle used it to sneak to the attic to drink
alcohol behind his wife’s back.). The secret passageway cast doubts on
Nicholas’s innocence when it was revealed that he had been bilking his uncle
out of a lot of money. It was later revealed in court that he had killed his
uncle first and then his aunt second and tried to frame the murders on Kelly.
He came down the passageway and then followed him up the metal staircase as
they “discovered” the bodies.
The house was soon being rented out after the
fervor of the case died down. After the
Identity: Presumably, the spirit is Magnolia Simmons. Hegg theorizes she is looking for her husband to beg for his forgiveness or to just stay connected to the house she loved so much.
Comments: The Ghost and Mister Chicken (1966) Hauntings based on the
“My Night in a Haunted House” by Luther Hegg,