Taken from the upcoming book "Illinois Hauntings"
I am indebted to Mr. Samuel S. Blane's article "Shickshack" and interviews with Rich & others at Ghost Hollow for information contained in this article.
The original inhabitants of central Illinois, if the lore is to be believed, knew of certain places where our world was closer to the Spirit World beyond. In these places they held their religious ceremonies and buried their dead. To those of us in the modern world these old beliefs seem a bit quaint. But…what if they were right? And what if those places still hold power today?
Above the bluffs of the Sangamon River, hidden away amongst the rolling, wooded hills of Cass County, in central Illinois is the fifth generation farm of the Wagoner family, now run by Rich Wagoner who has turned the ancestral farm into a retreat for those who enjoy a simpler way of life. This is Ghost Hollow Ranch.
The rustic beauty of the 120 acre spot is ideal and has changed very little since Rich’s great-great-great grandfather first took up residence here more than a hundred years ago. The only modern improvements to be seen are Rich’s small cabin, a bunkhouse/stable and a large fenced corral where horseback competitions are regularly held, the rest is given to nature and riding trails.
Ghost Hollow Ranch is a tranquil, out of the way place but, as the name implies, it is also a very haunted place and, what’s more, its hauntings are only now being fully explored! To date there have been two fully organized investigations by members of the American Ghost Society (with hopes of more to follow) and they have yielded some fascinating results. More about those later, first we need to explore the history of this location and introduce you to its ghosts. As you will see, they are as varied a group of spirits as you will ever hope to find!
The hauntings of Ghost Hollow Ranch are, for the most part, the result of tragedy. As those familiar with ghosts and their associated hauntings know, untimely, violent deaths often leave ghosts behind. This is certainly the case here!
Illinois was settled from south to north with the first permanent white settlers arriving in the central part of the state around 1818 or a few years before. Many passed through the area prior, most of them were trappers and hunters who wandered into the area which, until their arrival, had been the exclusive hunting grounds of Native America tribes like the Kickapoo, Pottawatomie and Winnebago. While the intrusion was unwelcome; the two factions managed, unlike other parts of the country, to live in relative peace.
Tales of Indian ghosts in the area are plentiful. One woman, near Tallula (south of Ghost Hollow) claimed that one morning, as she made breakfast, she looked out the window and watched as a man, clearly an Indian, walked through her backyard and vanished before he reached the property line. Another talked of encountering the wandering spirit of an Indian one evening while camping along the Sangamon. Several accounts have been reported of ghostly Indians around Cass and neighboring Menard County, generally they are fleeting glimpses of shadowy figures in the woods.
The mythical Mound Builders were in the area long before the Indians we recall today; evidence of their culture can be found near Lewistown to the north at Dicksen Mounds. In the area that it today encompassed by Ghost Hollow Ranch the tribes consisted mainly of migratory people who subsisted by agriculture and hunting the rich river bottoms. Not far to the east of Ghost Hollow is a prominence known today as Shickshack Hill.
By 1833 the natives of this area had been induced by treaty to surrender their traditional lands and move west. One Indian who remained behind, and became familiar with the incoming white settlers, was Shickshack, a Winnebago chief who had been in the area since around 1812. On the hill that now bears his name he lived a peaceful life with his two wives, Lo-lo and Mah-qua-la, and four children.
Shickshack was on good terms with his white neighbors but, as game dwindled and his hunting grounds shrank, he became resolved to the fact that the Indian’s days in the area were numbered. In 1827 the old Indian saw a steamboat on the Illinois River for the first time. The noisy, smoke-belching machine convinced him that he couldn’t ever live among these new settlers and, it is said, he moved north.
During the Black Hawk War in 1832 several members of Abe Lincoln’s company from Sangamon County recalled running into Shickshack near Dixon’s Ferry where they had a pleasant visit with their old neighbor. At their parting they shook hands and Shickshack continued his northward migration; some say he ended up in Wisconsin but, the fact is, he simply disappears from history.
Shickshack, one historian records, became somewhat of a legend in the area. Even after the bulk of the tribes had departed; lone Indians wandered through from time to time and usually the settlers claimed these figures were Shickshack. One hunter claimed to have stumbled across the old Indian and, becoming startled, shot him and dumped the body in a frozen pond! There are few traces of the Native Americas around the area today. Their burial mounds can be found along the bluffs of the Sangamon River and the old-timers recall where their villages once stood but obvious signs of these proud people have vanished…unless, of course, you consider a golf course near Petersburg that derives it’s name, Shambolee, from a long-forgotten Indian who once lived in the area!
That Ghost Hollow Ranch, before the Wagoners, was home to Indians is evidenced by the mounds they left behind of the property and the interesting artifacts that still sometimes are found on the property. Six large mounds ring the west side of the ranch. In the early-1900’s one was partially excavated, the burial treasures removed but the bodies left intact. These mounds have yielded some interesting results with KII meters and other equipment. During one investigation in 2009 Kelly Davis recorded significant electronic activity at one mound in particular, evidence that was replicated a year later during our second investigation.
What makes this activity interesting is that there are no power lines or manmade objects that would produce these types of readings anywhere near the hill. Furthermore Kelly received specific answers to her questions as she conducted the tests on the hill. While, to date, nothing more concrete has been recorded it remains an interesting, mysterious place.
A few years ago a worker on the ranch was walking through the woods near the mound that had been excavated. As he rounded a bend in the path he came face-to-face with a man he knew instantly was a ghost. There before that started farmhand was an Indian. The ghost stared straight ahead and started to make a motion of some sort with his hands before he vanished before Rich’s shocked employee.
As far as is known the first white settler on the acreage that now encompasses Ghost Hollow Ranch was a trapper who came here in the mid-1800’s. Sadly his name is lost to prosperity but he, in spirit anyway, still lingers and is the one ghost at the ranch who may inadvertently scare you if you visit!
The old man’s cabin stood where Rich now has a parking lot for the stable and corral, his still-functioning well is nearby. In those days people didn’t travel much; they planted themselves in one spot and took what they needed from the land around them. This circumstance led to a booming trade for some entrepreneurial types who would pack as many goods as they could carry into a wagon and travel around the countryside hawking their wares. One such huckster was a regular in the neighborhood.
This man came to the trapper’s cabin one afternoon and, as was the custom then, when no one had hard cash, negotiated the trade of some of the trapper’s goods for some of his own. The deal was done and the peddler rode away. Not long after the old trapper began to think he had, in some way, been cheated in the deal and he began to watch for the peddler’s return…always announced by the distinctive, noisy clanging of the goods on the wagon.
Weeks passed and word got out that the old man was angry and looking for the peddler so, it is said, he avoided the area as best he could. One night, dark and stormy as it turns out, the peddler made a fateful error.
Lost in the storm, and drunk some say, he erroneously turned down the road that lead right past the trapper’s cabin (the modern Gabbys Road, which still follows the same route through Ghost Hollow). Once down the road there is no room to turn, even today, as the bluffs rise high on both sides.
The trapper heard the loud, unmistakable wagon and rushed out into the night to face his nemesis and confront him over his perceived grievance. Meanwhile, realizing his mistake, the peddler urged his horses on faster. The trapper reached the road just as the wagon thundered by and he lunged to grab one of the horses. Unfortunately it was in vain and he was pulled beneath the wagons wheels and crushed to death.
What happened to the peddler is unknown but guests today still encounter the old trapper near his homestead.
On more than one occasion Rich has had frantic people pound on his door to tell him an old man has just thrown himself in front of their car. While several have believed they hit a man, upon further inspection they find no damage to their car, no sign of a man…and no body. The man has simply vanished.
Others report strange occurrences with the electronics in their car while coming down the road. Radios get fuzzy, dash lights inexplicitly dim and headlights go out completely. Cars have been known to stall on the spot. While all this can’t be attributed without question to a ghost, it does make the spot in the road a weird location where investigators have been able to record strange, unexplained and passing spikes in the electromagnetic field there.
Rich’s great grandfather, Breeze Wagoner, purchased the property after the old trapper’s death around 1860. Although the elder Wagoner has never been seen I often wonder if the man who started the farm still wanders its grounds. His manner of death certainly shows his tenacity!
Breeze was a muleskinner who made his way to Illinois a few years before he bought the property. One afternoon he and his mule boarded the ferry across the nearby Sangamon River; his mule, a cantankerous creature, got spooked during the ride and started to kick and buck, inflicting significant damage to the craft.
At the other side Breeze and his destructive mule disembarked and went about their business; returning late in the afternoon to cross the river. The ferryman told Breeze his return fee would be a dollar, significantly higher than the passage over. When asked why he replied to cover the damage the mule had done on the first trip.
Breeze thought the price unfair (and a dollar was, in fairness, a lot of money then) and refused to pay. An argument ensued and finally Breeze declared he’d rather drown trying to swim his mule across the river than pay such an exorbitant fee. And that’s exactly what he did. The mule swam to safety; Breeze was lost in the current.
One ghost you may encounter lost her husband in a similar manner and she waits for him to this day. Her name is Mrs. Miller and she is not only the most famous ghost at the ranch, she’s the one you’re most likely to encounter as she has been seen repeatedly over the years.
Mrs. Miller’s story begins in the 1950’s; she and her husband were neighbors to the Wagoners and often used the road in front of the house while going about their business. The creek at the bottom of the hollow is, coincidently, called Miller’s Creek and it, even today, can quickly become a raging torrent during heavy rains. It was a common problem when Rich’s grandpa lived on the land; Rich remembers the floods from when he was a boy. It was a dangerous place during a storm because the water rose so rapidly.
A questionably constructed lumber bridge (several boards set across the creek with no rails or safety features of any kind) spanned the creek. Mr. Miller was riding home, on a skittish horse, in a downpour and, despite the ankle-deep water rushing across the bridge, decided to brave it. Partway across Miller’s horse spooked and he was thrown from the saddle into the fast-moving creek waters and swept away; his body was never recovered.
Mrs. Miller was a broken woman after that and returned often to the spot to look in vain for her husband’s body. This sad ritual was played out for several years until the widow herself joined her husband in death. But, as it turns out, even death didn’t bring the long hoped for reunion as Mrs. Miller has returned to continue her watch.
Rich’s grandpa and, later, Rich himself encountered the spirit of Mrs. Miller on the bridge where her husband died. She is a sad woman in the plain clothes of a farmer’s wife who stands looking into the woods only to vanish seconds later.
Guests near the house have reported a woman, presumably Mrs. Miller walking through the parking lot and into the stables. One man told me he awoke one night while sleeping in the bunkhouse to see a woman walking through the room. Startled, the man started to ask who she was and what she wanted but before he could get the words out the woman disappeared!
Once Rich even encountered the ghostly woman in his house! He was minding his own business and glanced up to see her standing there. She, Rich, recalled looked him straight in the eye and abruptly vanished. Although he was startled, Rich simply accepted the fact he might share his home with the old, friendly ghost and went about his day. Mrs. Miller hasn’t been seen in the house since but Rich believes she often takes or moves things; including a pair of glasses that were a gift from his mother.
In recent years Mrs. Miller has also been seen serenely rocking in the chair on the front porch of Rich’s house. One guest asked why this change of motif operandi and the only suggestion I can offer, and one that I hope is right, is that she may have come to peace with the fact her husband is gone and now she, like many visitors to the ranch, is just enjoying the peace the place offers.
Another occurrence in the area of the bridge that people have reported over the years are strange lights floating along the road and out in the woods. This was a phenomenon I hoped to capture on film during an overnight investigation in 2010. That night I, along with several others, had an encounter that very well be related to what others have been reporting for years. During the night I took another investigator, A.J. Jenchel out into the woods to investigate the mound that had been disturbed in the 1900’s, we were trying to find a hint of the Indian ghost.
Failing in our mission, we made our way back through the woods and, coming to Miller’s Creek, we decided to follow it out to the bridge and try to find Mrs. Miller.
As we walked along with our flashlights A.J. and I realized there were people on the bridge and we thought our lights might be mistaken for something paranormal so we began to talk a little louder to ensure we weren’t mistaken for ghosts.
We reached the bridge and found David Lowery and Chris Mason who had, in fact, seen our lights. They had been on the bridge for several minutes and had seen several lights floating through the trees. Our flashlights were markedly different in appearance than what they’d seen.
Several minutes passed as we discussed these weird lights when, suddenly, from about 20 feet up the road I noticed a light. It was about the size of a basketball and had a weird, bluish glow surrounding it. This light approached us very slowly and then, within seconds, it blinked out and didn’t reappear. Chris saw this light as well and confirmed it was the same as what they’d seen earlier.
What was this light? It’s hard to determine if it’s the ghost of Mrs. Miller or, perhaps, a roaming Indian spirit. Maybe it’s something else altogether; natural or otherwise. Hopefully future investigations will offer some answers to this puzzle, until then it’s just another of Ghost Hollow’s many mysteries.
Finally we come to a ghostly encounter with special meaning to Rich because it involves a horse that unlike any he has known before or since, his name was Dark Eyes and, if you’re lucky, you may meet him yourself if you visit the ranch!
Dark Eyes came into Rich’s life in the early ‘90s when his owner was sent to prison and needed someone to watch over his horse. Rich took the animal and quickly realized this was a special horse. He developed an instant bond with Dark Eyes and spent the next year taking him to horse shows and competitions. When home at the ranch it wasn’t uncommon for Dark Eyes to escape his stable and run out into the nearby alfalfa field. Unlike some horses though, Dark Eyes would come running back when Rich called his name. It became a friendly game between the two.
Dark Eyes performed well at events; eventually winning a World Congress Championship. Rich and the horse had a great year but, sadly, it was to be a short-lived relationship as, at the end of the year, Dark Eyes’ rightful owner was released from prison and came to claim his horse. Reluctantly Rich sent Dark Eyes home and thought he’d never see him again. It was sheer coincidence that brought the two friends together again a few years later.
While on a trip to northern Illinois Rich happened to see an ad for a horse event in Ottawa, Illinois so he made an unscheduled detour. Upon arrival he was met by several people he knew from the circuit and quickly learned that Dark Eyes was there with his owner.
Rich sought the horse out and, when he finally saw his old friend, his heart sank because the horse looked terrible, sick and neglected. He would later learn that Dark Eyes had been badly mistreated. When Dark Eyes saw Rich he perked up as if he recognized Rich, “he seemed almost happy”, Rich told me. Rich and the owner talked and all the while Dark Eyes nuzzled Rich’s hand; it was a good meeting for both of them. But, sadly, Rich had to leave but he didn’t leave without making an offer to buy the horse; an offer that was sadly rejected.
Fate came knocking again about a year later when, again, the owner was sent to jail and made Rich the same offer as before. He could watch Dark Eyes for the duration of his imprisonment but would have to return the horse when he got out. Rich, unable to face the parting again, reluctantly turned the offer down. It wasn’t long after that Rich learned Dark Eyes had died.
Rich mourned that horse like the old friend that he was and, truth be told, when he tells the story now, many years later, you can hear the sadness in his voice. It is that deep sadness that Rich believes may have led to the recurring events at Ghost Hollow that he believes is the spirit of Dark Eyes.
It began one quiet summer night a year or so after Dark Eyes died. On a ranch it’s not uncommon for horses to escape the stables or corral; Dark Eyes did this frequently. Often, at Ghost Hollow, they animals make their way to the large alfalfa field just beyond Rich’s yard. That night Rich heard, as he sometimes did, a horse out in the field. He went out to search for the animal and was unable to find it, furthermore, upon inspection he found all the horses in the stable and accounted for. He wondered if, perhaps, it had been his imagination…but then he heard the neighing of a horse in the field again; a sound that was very familiar to him. Rich heard the recognizable sound of Dark Eyes’ bray!
To this day Rich listens for his old friend and others claim to have heard the mysterious sounds of a horse that isn’t there. Rich wonders, “Could this be something I wanted so badly that, somehow, I caused it to happen?” While the power of suggestion certainly can apply in this case, is it so hard to believe that, in death, Dark Eyes has returned to a place he loved in life? There are numerous reports of ghost animals in the investigative files of ghost researchers all over the world. While it’s impossible to answer Rich’s question with any certainty, it has to be considered a possibility.
As we have seen, Ghost Hollow Ranch has its share of mysteries. The ghosts here are as much a part of the land as the trees and creeks across the property. They, like the ranch itself, offer an insight into a simpler time and while we may never fully solve all these mysteries, Ghost Hollow is a place that will remain a haven for those who long to escape the modern world and, maybe, the physical world itself!
