The Ridge Historical Society
The Paranormal Ridge: Part 8 – Personal experiences reported at the Givins Beverly Castle in the 1950s
By Carol Flynn
This is the first of the in-person accounts of experiences at the Castle.
Rudy Visser was 12 years old when his family – father, mother, and three brothers – moved into the Castle in 1951 to be the caretakers. He attended Sutherland grammar school and Chicago Vocational high school. Now in his 80s and living in the southwest suburbs, in the fall of 2019 he shared his remembrances for a special event held at the Caste on “Folklore and Phantoms.”
As caretakers, the Vissers maintained the grounds and buildings, including everyday cleaning. It was a lot of work and they knew every inch of the Castle. The Vissers lived in rooms on the second and third floors. Back then, the Castle maintained its original floor plan, a lot of small rooms lined with dark wood. [Note: When originally built in 1886-87, the Castle was reported to have 15 rooms, paneled with red oak, including a spacious drawing room and ballroom, a library in the largest tower, and beautiful tapestries, chandeliers and gas lighting fixtures.]
Rudy said it was “very creepy” for a child living in the Castle. It was not comfortable and there was little privacy, being a church building open to the public. There were noises and creaking floors and the wind howling through the building. There were no screens in the windows and bats flew in at night, and they encountered rats when they first moved in.
One experience that Rudy found memorable involved a boarded-up opening in the basement. The family did not like going down to the basement, but it was necessary to tend the furnace and change blown fuses, as this pre-dated circuit breakers. The basement included a large room lined with benches that was used for parties and events.
The boarded up “window” opened underground beneath a stone side porch on the south side of the Castle. The side porch is now gone but it is evident in old pictures. The opening entered a tunnel system that Rudy and his brothers crawled through that was full of mud and cobwebs and very constricted in places. Although they did not have a good perspective of distance underground, Rudy believes they crawled south at least as far as 103rd Street, but he does not know how much farther the tunnel extended past that. He said the tunnel was very old and he had no idea why it was built.
A lot of the renovations made to the Castle occurred while the Vissers lived there. In 1958, the school extension was built onto the building to the north. The school extension was supposed to be part one of a plan to tear down the Castle and build a new church, but that never happened. Before the school was built, that area was a garden.
One strange experience involved a lady in a flowing white dress that Rudy described as being like a nightgown. Rudy’s mother observed this woman several times walking around in the garden. Then one day, the woman was suddenly behind Mrs. Visser in the second-floor apartment. No one saw or heard her come in through the door. Back in the 1950s, the practice was to leave churches open during the daytime but locked at night, and the Castle followed this routine, so the woman would have been able to enter the building.
Mrs. Visser was startled and asked the woman what she wanted. The woman said she thought there was a service that day and she was looking for the minister. This was on a weekday, and Mrs. Visser explained that the services were on the weekends, and that is when the minister would be there. The woman said all right and left. Mrs. Visser immediately followed her to the door but when she looked out, the woman was gone. They never saw the woman again. They asked around and no one had any idea who the woman might have been. And for the record, the woman did not have an Irish brogue.
Another strange experience occurred one summer they lived there. The castle was closed and locked during the summers. There were no classes or services for three months. The family went away for a week, and before leaving, went through the entire building to make sure all the lights were off, the windows were closed, and the building secure. They locked the place up tight before they left.
When they returned, as they were driving down the street, they noticed a light was on in a third-floor turret window. They knew they had turned all the lights off, and there was no reason for anyone to be in the Castle while they were gone, especially up there in their family quarters – the room was the bedroom of one of the children. However, there certainly were other people with keys, including the minister, the piano teacher, and other church people.
The Castle was securely locked when they got to the building. Rudy’s father and the boys went up to the third floor, and as they were approaching the door of the room, it opened by itself with a loud squeaking noise. It scared all of them. There was no one in the room and the light was indeed on. No one ever admitted to going up there and turning on a light.
These were the experiences this family had at the Castle. They moved out in 1962. Rudy is a practical man and does not consider these to be “ghost stories.” He felt their walking on a certain floorboard or something of that nature might have made the door open on the third floor.
One story attributed to Rudy’s mother that appears in print did not happen. It is often reported that the caretaker in the 1950s reported that one time during a winter storm, there was a knock on the door, and when she answered, a girl with an Irish brogue was standing there in a light dress and no coat. Sometimes the story is that she is barefoot out there in the new snow. Supposedly, Mrs. Visser left the room to get the girl a wrap and when she returned, the girl was gone, and there were no footsteps left in the snow.
Rudy had never heard this story before and said this never happened to his mother.
Rudy said he receives calls, usually at Halloween time, about the ghost stories. He admitted that sometimes he embellishes the truth or makes something up just for his own amusement.
In the next post, stories from the 1960s will be shared.