There are some tales of the paranormal that only suggest a minor disturbance in the field between the living and the dead. Then there are tales that seem to suggest a level of eldritch evil and terror that goes far beyond anything mankind could possibly understand. The story of Lamont Mansion reaches far past the ordinary stories of the paranormal and touches the very heart of darkness. It’s difficult to tell if ghosts were the only thing involved in the events within the Lamont Mansion.
In 1916 the mansion was built by Robert P. Lamont and his family. It was constructed according to exact design parameters of the architects called in, and was designed to allow the Lamont family a refuge from the pressures of life in Washington DC. Robert was then the Secretary of Commerce for Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression. And even then amid the worst economic catastrophe of the century, the family constructed the opulent mansion as a place to get away from the stresses of city life in DC.
Tales had been told of a dark and sinister force haunting the area around the lake years before the house was constructed, and Lamont himself had seen and felt “something” in the woods he could not quite put into words. Though it was less tangible than physical entities on the planet, he got the distinct and inalienable impression that this entity, whatever it was, was most unmistakably evil. After the house’s construction, when he was in the basement one late night, he spotted the entity within his own home and opened fire on it. The bullets passed harmlessly through it and lodged into the door behind it where it would stay for many years. When Lamont died the house went through many different owners without incident.
When the Alan family decided to take up residence in the home in 1972, however, unidentified ghostly sounds were reported throughout the mansion wailing and screaming periodically. A phantom woman was spotted floating in the area just beyond the entrance to the kitchen. The owners, Arnold and Ginger each had their own respective encounters with the entity that haunted Lamont Mansion, then known as Summerwind. A corpse was discovered buried within the house while the family was remodeling, which only seemed to increase the amount of paranormal activity. The encounters would eventually lead Arnold to have a mental breakdown. Ginger, during this time, almost committed suicide. Eventually, the two divorced and left the mansion. When it was sold, the investors saw the reasonably priced and opulent property and decided to turn it into a hotel. Days after the transaction, however, the property was struck by lightning by multiple bolts of lightning and burned to the ground. The mansion, it would seem, had decided it would not be turned into a hotel. To this day nothing remains but the burned wreckage left behind from the sudden and unexplained fires that consumed it. But whatever once haunted West Bay Lake, near where the Mansion was built in Wisconsin, is still said to reside there.
