True Ghost Tales

I had always known about the Stickney Mansion in Woodstock Illinois. I had visited as a teenager in 1983. The Mansion had at one time had a boy hang himself in the Mansion. The parents of the boy did séances trying to talk to their son.

The mansion was frequented by teenagers looking for a ghost. I never did see anything on the few occasions I drove by the mansion. I was fearful driving down near the Mansion it had large spooky trees and their weren’t too many houses built there.

The Stickney Mansion had an iron gate and had all round corners. The house is located in Bull Valley Illinois. It was known to be haunted. In 1984 my brother died in a car accident pretty close to the haunted mansion. He died on Fleming Road a few miles near the mansion.

The George Stickney House or simply "Stickney House" or "Stickney Mansion" is located in rural McHenry County, Illinois, in the small village of Bull Valley, near Woodstock, Illinois. Stickney believed that the spirits required the freedom to roam without getting caught in corners. Therefore, the home's interior was designed with no 90 degree angles between the walls

I never thought anything about the close proximity of the mansion to where my brother died in the car accident. Until 1986.

On a winter day in a bitter cold January day in 1986. It was 1pm and it was a bright sunny day. I was attending McHenry County College and was running late for one of my classes.

I sped down route 14 leaving Woodstock and was heading toward my destination, the college. As I drove around a large curve I straightened out my car and saw a Church on the left side of the road.

I suddenly spotted someone walking in the frozen snow dressed in a black robe. He was tall. The man dressed in black had his hood up and I could not see his face.

The man turned and walked into the tall icy snow. I saw the man in the black robe walk in toward Bull Valley. The man kept on walking toward a group of pine trees in the snow. There were no houses around only a distance away.

I did not understand why someone would be walking in the bitter cold like that.

I did not think nothing of it until I realized the man dressed in the black robe was headed for Bull Valley and he was walking in the direction toward where my brother had died in a car accident and near the Stickney Mansion.

I shudder with terror, when I think of what I saw that January day and know now what I saw it wasn’t a man it was a spirit. This spirit was an evil one.

Sent in by Carri Williams, Copyright 2011

“The Stickneys may have drifted toward spiritualism as a way to communicate with their dead children; they had twelve children but only three survived to adulthood. It is known that the family conducted seances on the second floor of the building. In the years since the house left the hands of the Stickney family, owners have reported supernatural occurrences.” ~ Wikipedia