Summer Scares Return With Waukesha Ghost Walks

WAUKESHA, WI—Did you know Mary Todd Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln's widow, spent a summer in Waukesha?

She was visiting a psychic to contact her dead husband, according to Mike Huberty, owner of American Ghost Walks.

"She spent time at the spa to make herself feel better and kept going to a psychic in Milwaukee to try to contact Abe from the dead," he said.

Abe’s ghost may not be the only paranormal phenomenon haunting Waukesha — at least according to Huberty's company. The tourism company dedicated to the paranormal and weird Waukesha history will offer ghostly walking tours July 2 and July 3.

Expect Waukesha's haunted history, urban legends and real-life ghost stories in the tour of downtown.

Huberty grew up in Waukesha County and got into the business after his sister, Allison Jornlin, started Milwaukee Ghost Walks in 2008.

He started Madison Ghost Walks in 2010 and launched similar tours in other cities in Wisconsin and Minnesota, leading to Waukesha Ghost Walks in 2016. The pandemic caused the business to shut down for a year.

"This year, we have a new guide who is really into the paranormal," Huberty said. "He has gone on ghost hunts around Waukesha."

The guide has a new tour route and includes elements of true crime in it. "I think it is going to be a lot of fun," Huberty said.

Huberty researched local stories at the Waukesha County Historical Society. He also combed through newspaper stories and police logs and spent a lot of time researching supernatural and weird stories around Waukesha. He promised that the tour will feature new stories and content residents have never heard before.

"We try to make people excited about the place they are at," he said. "No matter if they are visiting, from there or live there."

"It is the stories that give someone a sense of connection to a place that isn't a civics lesson," Huberty said.

The Truth Of The Scare

Huberty attended Mukwonago High School in Waukesha County and heard many urban legends.

Such tales are scarier than the actual reality, he said. Take the resort development called Rainbow Springs Hotel, which never opened.

A long-standing rumor said the owner became distraught after he went bankrupt and killed himself inside the hotel, which he then haunted, according to a psychic.

But "when you do research on it, and you find out the owner did go bankrupt and had to be dragged off the property, he didn't commit suicide," Huberty said.

There were ghost sightings from people who worked there despite the hotel never opening to the public, Huberty added.

Other stories have nothing to do with ghosts but deal with broken relationships.

"A lot of ghost stories have to do with a result of a crime or a love affair gone wrong," Huberty said.

Dr. David Roberts, a former Wisconsin state veterinarian, was part of a love triangle that led to the Grace Lusk murder case of 1917-1918. Lusk, who was Roberts' mistress, killed his wife. She was eventually found guilty of the crime.

"We love the drama of people sometimes doing horrible things to each other," Huberty said. "It's compelling and you are fascinated by it."

Some of the best ghost stories aren't even that dramatic, he said. Huberty said the tour is less about urban legends and more about real things that people can't explain.

"It ... [connects] those uncanny experiences with the history of [a] building, what people experienced and who lived there," he said.

Tour attendees will know they are getting the real story rather than the legend, he added.

"That is less interesting to me," Huberty said.

For more information, visit the Waukesha Ghost Walks website.