The Morgan House (above circa 1890) is a historic Queen Anne–style residence in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, built in 1884 for John R. Morgan (1833–1906) and his wife Eleanor Hughes Morgan (1832–1909), prominent figures in Oshkosh’s early lumber industry.
John and his brother, Richard Morgan, arrived in Oshkosh in 1855 and founded one of the city’s earliest and most successful sawmill operations, Morgan Brothers & Company. Their mill – which suffered multiple fires including contributing to the disastrous Great Fire of 1875 – grew into a leading local wood-products manufacturer.
To reflect their success, the Morgans commissioned local builders Adam Bell and Edwin Cole to design a grand Queen Anne residence at 234 Church Avenue. The ornate home, featuring an octagonal tower, intricate woodwork, and interior finishes in a variety of hardwoods, cost about $12,000 to construct — an impressive sum for the era. When inside the home, the love of lumber is not lost on the visitor, as Morgan would have been proud of the diversity provided in this space.
During the building of the home, the Morgans lived in a home on what is known as 518 Franklin street. The original home was torn down and replaced with a new home for Elnora Morgan, the oldest daughter of John. Elnora’s home would come to be known as the M.E. Rounds House, after her husband, Mellen Eugene Rounds.
After the Morgans’ deaths, the house remained in the family for a time but was eventually sold. In the 1940s, Constance Misky bought the property, running a cosmetology school on the first floor until 1963 and living upstairs until 1970. It is unclear to me through research and questioning how the property was used after 1970, as it appears Constance School of Cosmetology moved to Jackson Street.
In 1987, the Winnebago County Historical & Archaeological Society acquired the home and began restoring its historic features and period furnishings. The Morgan House now serves as a house museum, offering visitors a look at Victorian-era life and craftsmanship in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
The home was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 and it remains one of the few surviving residences tied to Oshkosh’s early lumber families. If you’d like to learn more, as well as appreciate the beautiful interior restoration and love for the American Victorian-era interiors (such as the “wallpaper”), check out the Winnebago County Historical Society Website. There are numerous opportunities throughout the year to experience the beauty of this historical home.
As with all plans, even the best-laid plans – of mice and men – they often go awry. Our initial plan for the evening’s investigation had to be re-tooled on-the-fly at the outset due to some unforeseen circumstances. However, our goal remained the same for the night. Our goal was to investigate, not to convince ourselves of the existence of spirits in the Morgan House. We were collecting the stories of those who had passed and who did not have a voice or platform with which to share those stories. While I am a medium, my skills and abilities are not as flamboyant as some of my peers and my engagement with spirits attempts to dig deep to find evidence to support what the spirit has shared with me. My husband, Ray, is a stalwart pragmatist who always works through debunking and evaluating the environment as it pertains to any experiences we have. My daughter, Isabelle, is a dedicated investigator, always seeking to provide a rational response, while also realizing her own psychic gifts are emerging. Our other mother-and-daughter-duo team members (Tracy and Alainee) also have their own sensitivities and can tune into them to inform their investigation. All of us seek evidence to support experiences or any psychic information that comes our way. But we are not explicitly a team of psychics. We are a team of investigators in search of stories and, hopefully, a factual foundation on which to tell them.
With that in mind, the night’s investigation began in the basement of the Morgan House.
The basement of the Morgan House has several separated rooms rather than one big open area. There is an L-shaped hallway that takes you to a larger space, but there are rooms that branch off from that hallway. I found myself deep in the small back room adjoining a larger area serving as a laundry room. The room wasn’t given a name to my knowledge, but my daughter said I should look into it. My husband had done the initial equipment setup in the basement and had been drawn to this dark little corner to place a REM-pod. So while I sat for a moment, everyone else went down to the end of the hallway and the large open space to begin their own investigation. I did put out some additional equipment in this location, but spent most of my time working with the energy I was feeling in the space. I listened carefully to every outside noise, other investigator noises, my own noises – I waited until it felt right to engage.
When I had entered the space, I had sensed a woman. Someone asked me once, “How do you KNOW a spirit is a man or a woman?” My answer was simple: “I just know.” I can barely explain sometimes how information comes to my mind in a way that others can process it, but to try to convince someone that you “just know” might be the harder task, honestly.
As I started to engage with the spirit, asking them questions, a picture was painted for me. Her name was Rebecca, but she went by Becca. She worked for the woman of the house for five years and, when I ran through the various women of the house there had been, she selected the name Constance. Moving forward with that information, she informed me that she had rented a room upstairs, but only after Constance had moved out. She showed me a mental image over my shoulder out the window, towards the M.E. Rounds house.
When I asked Becca about how she feels regarding being in this house, she said she likes staying here and some of her friends are here, which makes her happy. And with an energy the likes of a woman with a folded laundry basket turning and walking away, she was gone out of the door.
As I came back from my communication with Becca, I sensed my daughter moving into my space and waited for her to enter the room. I turned my attention to the door, but instead of seeing my daughter or my daughter’s shadow, I saw a squat dark mass standing in the doorway. It was curious about my being in the room and as it started to rise up, it seemed to get spooked by my daughter’s voice as she called to me and it vanished.
My daughter reported nothing of consequence happening in the main room and I invited her to sit with me and see what we could see.
It didn’t take long for something to start dancing in the doorway. I mean to say, the darkness was fluctuating and making it difficult to focus our eyes. I even took my glasses off at one point, trying to see more clearly.
I asked my daughter if the rest of the team had asked a spirit to come in here. She responded with, “Yes. They said to go do something to get her attention.”
As this exchange happened, I saw a circular light, slightly refracted, appear and disappear. I told my daughter to look and all of a sudden it appeared again right in front of us, across the table we were looking at and then suddenly I was ambushed by a rush of energy that came across the table and then it was gone. At the same time there was a huge commotion caught on my recorder from the larger group and I sent my daughter to find out what happened. Here is a recording of the event:
My daughter & I in the backroom of the Morgan House Basement 01-09-2026
My daughter reported back that nothing of consequence had occurred and that everyone was ready to move on to a new location. So we all gathered back in Mr. Morgan’s Office to regroup and strategize.
This room is on the first floor, down the main hallway, behind the stairway area. The room has a bookshelf nook full of ledges and notebooks and books, some of which were the originals of the Morgan family. In the middle of the room is a table with four chairs. On the wall with the main door is an older couch. This time of year, we were lucky enough to see some of the holiday decorations and this room had a beautiful and ornate Christmas tree, flanked on both sides by some more period-style chairs. Behind the table, as you walk into the room, on the wall to the left is a fireplace, adorned with more seasonal decor.
While as a group we didn’t get much time to do any investigating of this room – a room I was very excited to investigate due to a previous experience there – a few of us did have some small things happen that were a bit beyond our ability to debunk. We attempted to find out from our hosts if these types of experiences were common, but their response was inconclusive.
My husband has provided me with an account of what he experienced in this room:
“The office/library of the Morgan House was a room of inexplicable noises all evening. It began on our first break after investigating the basement. Sarah, our fellow investigator Tracy, and I were in the room. Tracy and I were prepping gear for our session in the attic and Sarah was writing notes. I heard a peculiar sound emanate from somewhere in the room. I began to move around the room, touching and inspecting things, trying to locate the possible source of this noise. In a recessed nook lined with books in the room, I spied a metal vase. I lightly flicked the vase and it created the exact sound I had heard a few moments earlier.
There was obviously no reason why the metal of this vase would have reverberated like that with no external cause. The three of us considered this, but did not think it was quite enough to dedicate attention to at that moment. I walked away from the vase to join my wife and Tracy back at the table and then, less than a minute later, we all heard the same metal dinging from behind us. We called out to ask if someone was trying to make their presence known and if they could make the sound again, but then the rest of the people in the house began to filter into the room and that investigative moment fizzled.
Throughout the night there was an intermittent thumping in the room. We attempted to debunk it. It occurred too frequently to be attributed to the furnace kicking on or off. Its source was too located towards interior walls to be something like a branch thumping against the house outside. Yet it also did not seem to have a purpose or responsiveness to it. It was peculiar, but we could not definitively call it paranormal either.
The moment that convinced me there really was a spirit in that office, however, was towards the end of the night. Everyone else was on the second floor, but I headed downstairs for a drink and to have a much-needed break. Due to the previous experiences, my ears were on high alert and when I entered the room I detected a strange rattling noise. I neared the table in the center of the room and the sound abruptly stopped. Again, I set out to find the source and recreate the noise and I was stunned to find that if you shook the table slightly, a flashlight we had standing upright on an uneven seam on the table created the precise rattle I had heard. The table had been shaking when I had entered the room, I was certain of it.
When my daughter joined me in the office, we put out some equipment, turned out the lights, and tried to get some intelligent responses, but if there was a spirit there, it was unwilling to make its presence known to that extent with us. Even as skeptical as I can be, I have to say it felt almost like very weak poltergeist activity.”
The other interesting thing about the room is that I did feel like someone was there. The first time I felt energy on my right side in the room, I knew it was a person of authority, but it felt like a woman. She had on a “current” dress for the late 1880s, not quite romanticizing the Pre-Raphealites, but still providing a bustle, and the left side of her outer skirt was hitched and draped. The colors I saw were ivory and trim not quite as deep and dark as burgundy. Carmine, perhaps. Her hair was up with curls. And just as soon as she appeared in my mind, she was gone, but the lingering thought she left behind was one of curiosity and a desire to understand why this group of almost all women were in this masculine space.
The next time I was in the room and felt a presence, it was more masculine and was just standing in front of the tall clock in the far corner of the room. Just watching, with his right hand bent across his abdomen. The other arm was at his side and he just watched. I was not in a position to engage with this spirit at the time and by the time I made it back to the room, we were wrapping up for the evening and the room seemed empty of spirits.
After regrouping in the office, we knew that our next stop was absolutely the attic. When I was at the Morgan House the previous October, there was a great deal of activity in the attic. It had all been so confusing, though, and I didn’t know what to make out of what we were experiencing at the time. Tonight I wanted to look into some of those things.
The attic was a place of quiet excitement. Many of us felt like something was around us, but we only caught glimpses of potential activity. My daughter made an assessment, agreed upon with several of us, that the spirits were gathered around us and potentially sitting in the rafters looking down. Our eyes were often drawn up or to certain fringe areas of the attic.
Tracy and her daughter often found themselves looking at the laser grid that they set up. Shadows were dancing through the lights. And while we didn’t catch the shadows on camera, we did catch an amazing light anomaly that quickly flashes by. We were able to discount vehicular headlights and flashlights as the source of this anomaly and it looked nothing at all like the bugs and dust particles that were caught on camera during the session.
This is the original clip of the orb in the basement.
This video has been zoomed in and slowed down to help view the orb better.
Towards the beginning of our investigation, we were quietly sitting and taking-in the room. The Spirit Talker announced “Her Voice” and we, as a group, didn’t know what to make of the statement, as we had heard no voice. Upon review of the audio, however, right before the Spirit Talker announces this, there are two whistle sounds. The whistles are very audible on the recording, but no one in the room reacts to this noise in the moment. Not even my daughter, who has a very recent fascination with whistling. So below, you’ll find the clip along with the Spirit Talker statement. It was certainly an unexpected and intriguing find.
EVP Whistle caught in the Attic of the Morgan House 01-09-2026
The final point of interest from the attic revolves around the K2 readings coming from above people’s heads in the middle of the sitting area. When I was there in October, people were making a huge deal about a ghost sitting in someone’s lap and that the readings above them were high and that spirits were all climbing on the ceiling – which I did see myself on an SLS camera. At that time, things were a bit chaotic (the attic was packed with people) and I couldn’t sort through the clamor of claims from people to determine what may or may not have been worth further investigating. So I figured I’d ask my daughter to lead the hunt on this one.
While there are electrical cords and lights and furnaces in the attic, the one thing you don’t overtly feel are fear-cage feelings. A fear cage is a term used to identify a space where feelings of paranoia, dread, nausea, and unease in sensitive people are felt, which are typically caused by extremely high EMF emissions in that space. These feelings can also be linked to spirits that are producing their own high-energy field. While one of our team expressed the feeling of something being behind her, no one seemed noticeably affected by high EMF. I am someone who is sensitive to high EMF. I grew up with a fear cage in my basement, so I am very familiar with even low-grade fear cage experiences. I did not feel that here.
The EMF readings above our heads in the open space of the attic were off the charts. I am not dismissing an electrical option, but I am saying it was peculiar, because the readings actually closer to the electrical wiring and light sockets was less pronounced and frantic. I feel like something else was going on. Unfortunately, I am not willing to call the readings absolutely paranormal either. I like to examine all sides before making an assessment and we could not gather enough concrete information at the time to make an informed decision on those K2 readings. Combined with the strange whistle and possible orb, though… it makes you think.
Aside from one catball trigger, our other equipment did not go off. It was not nearly as “active” as my previous visit, but that previous activity can also easily be attributed to over-excitement of a large group of relative newcomers to ghost hunting. What our group did catch on this night, though, is of interest and bolstered our growing belief that many of the spirits at this house want to interact, but at a distance.
I was asked to look into a second story bathroom by one of the Historical Society’s board members. She let me in and set me up. I sat for a little bit, letting the energy of the space wash over me. I wish I could have closed the hallway door, because ambient noise was interfering with my reading, but I pushed forward. Fortunately, despite the distraction, I was able to feel someone enter the room. I doubled my focus and reached out to my spiritual team and utilized my labradorite heart to help amplify my reach. After about two minutes I felt her next to me and I took out my divining rods.
The spirit I encountered was a blond woman and she said her name was Terry (spelling unknown). Terry used to rent a room in the Morgan House in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She showed me that Constance Misky left and moved to another house in the area during this time, which is accurate. This implied, though, that the building was maybe used as a boarding house during this time, possibly exclusively for independent women. I started to talk to Terry about why she was here and my heart felt overwhelmed with grief and I started to cry. She confirmed through divining rods and a continual stream of mental images what occurred. She shared with me that she had been involved in an intimate engagement with a man. She later learned that she was pregnant and made the decision to terminate the pregnancy. She went to a “back alley” doctor to have the procedure done. I felt the area around my abdomen, left and right side, pinching and I felt sore. Terry shared with me that the bleeding following the procedure would not stop and she died from complications due to the botched execution of the procedure. She passed away in her room. The images I received indicated the room I was currently in was not a bathroom when she lived there, but it was certainly the space she passed away in. I saw her lying on the floor, surrounded by towels, trying to stop the bleeding. She was too scared to go to the hospital.
I asked her why she stays at the Morgan House and she told me she has friends there and she feels at home. I asked if she had intentions of moving on or if she had already moved on and come back to stay where her heart called her. She told me she did not want to move on. Terry told me that she was afraid to see what was on the other side, because of what she had done that led to her death. So she just wants to stay here with her friends where she feels happy and safe. I asked her if there was anything we could do for her or if she needed anything from the people who work here and she said “no” and that she was happy with existing the way that she is.
We closed out our conversation and said our goodbyes. I sat for a moment thinking about everything and I still felt a bit emotional. But I gathered myself and I left to engage in the conversation I heard already occurring in the hallway.
While my story did not match up with what other psychics who have come through had experienced, this house has a lot of history to be revealed. We all function at different frequencies and different spirits may choose to take the opportunity to interact with different people.
We weren’t given a name for this room, but everyone on our team who walked into the room felt this lightness about space. It felt easy and comfortable and welcoming. If you come up the front stairway it is the second room on the right. If you come down the back hallway, it’s the first door on the left. I, personally, didn’t get to investigate this particular space, but my husband and daughter took the initiative to visit with whoever was there.
My husband’s recounting of their connection:
“As we neared the tail end of our investigation, our group headed towards the second floor which contained numerous rooms to explore. I knew that I wanted to pick one spot and just really hunker down and try to lure in some activity. I do not know why I was drawn to the room that I selected, but I know that I chose it quickly, before anyone else in our group had really settled down. It appeared to have been made into a small lounge, with several antique chairs and an old set of shelves full of mementos and knick-knacks. There was more decor in the room but I did not take it all in as I had one of the Morgan House volunteers kill the lights and shut the door immediately.
I set out a para-lantern and sat on the floor and just allowed myself to sink into the stillness and darkness. I briefly introduced myself and asked if there were spirits that wanted to reach out to me, but said no more. The room was silent for a short while before my lantern went off.
Now, I am quite used to the various ways a para-lantern can behave. What ensued during this encounter was highly irregular. Based on responses and just the general vibe I got from the spirit I was engaged with, it seemed very much to be an adult spirit, yet it was high energy and enthusiastic in responses. It rarely made the lantern go off once in response. It was usually a series of several beeps/flashes, and for some answers it seemed particularly passionate about the lantern would go absolutely bonkers for a few seconds.
While the spirit seemed very much to be responding to my more general questions (e.g. “Do you wish to speak with me?”, “Do you like this place?”), it seemed reticent to give me any answers that might help me make heads or tails of who I was interacting with.
It was then that my daughter asked if she could join me. Now, my daughter is a sensitive like her mom, though only newly coming into the talent and unsure of herself. She bowled me over as she joined in on the conversation, however. She began to ask what seemed to me to be questions that were completely out of the blue. Wild swings. But they were met with enthusiastic responses. We were finally starting to get some impressive details on the individual we believe we were communicating with.
It was she who identified the spirit as an artist (I helped narrow it down to sculptor). She discovered they had a passion for the mountains and either were born in the mountains or at least grew up in them (we tried to narrow it down to eastern ranges or the Rockies, but the response was not definitive). She felt they passed away in the 1980s and we received an affirmative response when she asked if that were true. We eventually learned they passed away in Wisconsin, but not in Oshkosh itself.
The lantern activity was fascinating enough that I also brought out the Ovilus. Now, I am not the biggest fan of the Word Generator function of the Ovilus. I do not find it particularly dependable. Nevertheless, once in a blue moon it will behave in a way that seems like a spirit is intelligently manipulating it. That happened this night, but much like the over-enthusiastic lantern behavior, the Ovilus too behaved in a way I was unaccustomed to. It would sit in long spans of silence and then spit out a multitude of words. However, when these words flowed forth, the lantern would also go off once, maybe twice. We began to feel as if the spirit was rifling through words frantically and then triggering the lantern when they found a word they wanted.
The first notable series of words ended with a lantern flash on “Sixty”. Isabelle asked if the spirit was in their sixties when they passed away and the lantern flashed again. Another series of words ended with a lantern flash on “Psychic” shortly after my daughter and I had been discussing the feelings and information that seemed to be coming to her.
We eventually used the lantern to move through the alphabet to try to get the first letter of a first name. They responded with “D”. Pinpointing their last name initial proved trickier. When we attempted the exercise again, the lantern went crazy in a manner that made proceeding impossible. Perhaps they did not want to wait for me to go through all those letters. But what occurred on the Ovilus at the same time was intriguing. The letter “R” had popped sometime between the first alphabet-lantern exercise and our attempt at the second, while Isabelle and I had been talking. But then, when we attempted the second exercise and the lantern went wild, a number of words starting with the letter “S” all came in a rush. “Sift”, “Scan”, “Sure” “Starve” “See”. Sift and Scan are interesting in and of themselves as it almost implies our unnamed spirit really was frantically sifting through words to share with us, but the proliferation of S words might also have indicated the first letter of their last name was “S” and not “R”. Tough call.
Another string of Ovilus words ended with a lantern flash on “Grave”. I inwardly groaned at that, but I asked the first question that came to mind with that and again received affirming lantern activity. The spirit seemed to indicate they wanted us to locate their grave which is a not-uncommon and rather burdensome request. I don’t particularly know why spirits ask for this. Maybe having someone visit their grave makes a spirit feel still connected to the living world– a memory remembered and not forgotten. Either way, they gave us clues to the whereabouts of their grave in Oshkosh that we have yet to explore, but perhaps we will be able to do this for them with the limited information we have.
One strange thing about the encounter was that, despite their openness on many topics, multiple times they flat out ignored identifying themselves as male or female. This seems odd to me. Isabelle is certain they were male and towards the very end of the session they did seem to finally confirm that, but the resistance to answer throughout the course of the session was something I took note of.
I know the Morgan House is frequently investigated by another paranormal group, but this spirit’s behavior felt like that one an individual that had long been waiting to connect with the living. All in all, I found it a fascinating encounter for myriad reasons and I hope their apparent pleasure they had in having someone attempt to converse with them was real. The final word the spirit gave us on the Ovilus as we were saying goodbye was “Friendly”. I would like to think that was him thanking us for being friendly to him!”
When I initially entered this room earlier in the night, I was drawn to the other side of the bed, across from the doorway, where I encountered an energy. It was fleeting, but still very much a presence that wanted to make itself known. Whoever this was, it was their room. The spirit, visible only in my mind’s eye, just looked at me, not judging, but questioning. Then she was gone.
My next attempt at engaging with this room did not go as planned. I encountered the energy again and retrieved a chair, so that I could sit and do a session. Others entered the room, though, and the commotion severed my connection to the energy. I gave up this room to my fellow investigators and that was when I went to investigate the bathroom and met Terry.
The third time was the charm with this room, though. I eventually found myself in the Master Bedroom again, this time with just my husband. We closed the door and turned out the lights. It felt refreshing to be in the space with relative peace and quiet. This was the only time I would get to investigate with just my husband during the evening which is always nice because we tend to draw out activity when it is the two of us.
I used my light-up divining rods. I started by asking questions and I learned that yes, someone was in the room with us. Two someones to be exact. The primary spirit we engaged with was Constance Misky. Constance, again, is the woman who bought the Morgan House when it went on sale to the public and she turned the first floor into a beauty school and the second floor into her personal residence where she lived with her children. When I identified her as an entrepreneur during our interaction, she used the Spirit Talker to say “building.” And we felt it was confirming her business was in this building.
Constance confirmed that sometimes Eleanor is in the room, but that she primarily spends her time in the front room of the Morgan House. Eleanor had been in this room during the evening but had left early on.
The Spirit Talker said Constance died of sickness. I asked her if she died in the house next door and then asked if she died in a hospital and the Spirit Talker said “stop right here.” She did not want to talk about how she died. I could feel that very clearly, not only because of a message on the Spirit Talker, but it filled my whole mind. One of the things Constance told me, though, was that she did something with jewelry. I was unable to confirm this as information on Constance’s doings was limited beyond her beauty school.
About 10 minutes into our investigation, my husband coughed loudly and the Spirit Talker almost immediately responded with, “did you hear that?” I explained that it was my husband, thinking his cough had prompted the question, but then our daughter quietly opened the door and the rest of our team joined our investigation. So, Constance may have been referring to the conversation that had been occurring right outside our door before the rest of the crew entered.
I asked Constance about the second spirit in the room who seemed to be keeping to the background, either from fear of us or out of respect for Constance. I asked her if she could pull back and let that spirit come forth so that we could figure out who they are. She pointed the rods towards the bed where the second spirit was standing. We asked if they were connected to the bed – no. We asked about the dress on the bed and Constance said yes. All of a sudden I thought of Grace. Grace Morgan (1862-1935) is the second daughter of John and Eleanor Morgan. I started talking to Grace and we asked her if she was attached to the dress and she said no. The question raised by team members was why Constance and Grace made two different claims to us. So my husband left the room to find out if the dress belonged to Grace or other members of the Morgan family. The board member volunteers present said the dress did not belong to the Morgans. While that would not necessarily preclude a spirit of a Morgan to attach itself to the item, when the spirit themselves says they are not, I am inclined to believe that spirit. Especially since, after my husband left to look into the dress, Grace stormed out of the room. (The rods tracked her as I narrated her upset exit from the room. She didn’t like inaccurate statements being made about her and greatly disliked that we sent someone to follow-up on the matter.)
I am uncertain why Constance told us what she did. I have a feeling Constance likes to stir up trouble. Not maliciously, but mischievously. After Grace left, we spent a little more time talking to Constance and then decided it was time to leave her be in her favorite part of the house.
When I did my original attempt at a walk-through of the house, I came into this room and felt someone standing next to me on the side of the bed farthest from the door. I was trying to ping who the spirit was, but I was not yet in the mindset to do so. I was still a bit off-kilter from unexpected aspects of the evening’s investigation we were presented with. So I noted the room and wanted to return later to try to engage with whoever was there.
Once I was back downstairs in the office room, planning our next moves through the house, I found myself putting this room further and further down on the list. It was not until the very end of our investigation that I made it back to this location.
The front bedroom was explored by myself and my co-investigators, Tracy and Alainee. We put out a cat ball and a recorder. I had my divining rods. We shut the door, turned the lights off, and settled in to find the energies in the room. Much like in the previous room, there were very feminine energies in the room with us. Myself and Alainee both sensed spirits with us in the room. We both latched onto one spirit wanting to communicate with us and another one that seemed to be warning against it. One of my divining rods would try to cross to say yes, while the other almost pulled away, as if two spirits were fighting over them.
As this experience went on, I started to pick up on someone named Lydia. She was visiting the home and was in this room because she appreciated the decor. Lydia wanted to talk to us and answer questions. She wanted to be engaging with the women in the room. And I finally asked her, “Is Grace Morgan here with you?” Lydia said that Grace was, but only after a small battle over moving the rods.
Then everything seemed to click into place. Grace was still upset over what had happened in the master bedroom. She came in here to get away from us and she didn’t want anyone talking to us. We tried to make amends to no avail. So the three of us said our farewells and thanked them for their time with us.
Upon leaving we were informed that our experience in this room does not match that of others. We were also informed that this room did not belong to Lydia and that there were three Lydias in the Morgan family, so it could have been any of them. I was not aware at the time of investigating, but it turns out there is a picture at the foot of the bed in this room of one of the Lydias. After listening back to our recordings and doing my own family tree deep dive, I can share the history that I was able to walk away with.
The room itself did not belong to a specific Lydia, that I was able to ascertain. As stated above, the Lydia we spoke with said she only liked being in the room because of its decor. It belonged to Grace and Elnora, the two daughters of John and Eleanor Morgan. This was until their weddings. After that, it doesn’t seem uncommon for visiting young ladies or family members to stay in the room. It explains, though, why Grace would have left her mother’s room and come to this second room.
Despite a very thorough and deep dive into records that were available to me, I learned of only two Lydias in the more immediate family tree that would also have access to this house or might seek family here. First, there is Lydia E. Jones. She married Thomas Rowland Morgan, who is the nephew of John Rodgers Morgan (the owner of the Morgan House) through his brother Thomas Morgan. The woman we encountered was not Lydia E. Jones. I found a copy of her picture online and she was not the woman I was engaging with. What I found fascinating, however, was that the woman in the picture at the foot of the bed that I wasn’t aware of at the time was actually Lydia Enid Morgan. I found a picture of her through a family tree site and she looked very familiar to me. As I sat with the image, my guides ushered me towards the memories from the previous night. I was consumed with energy (or what I call “ghost fuzzies”) and I knew she was the one who spoke with us that evening.
Why was she in the Morgan House that night? I don’t know. I wasn’t able to gather enough information through research or the spirits. Lydia Enid and Grace would not have shared this room in life, but they appear to now in death to some degree. While Lydia Enid Morgan died in Arizona, she was buried in Riverside Cemetery here in Oshkosh. If she was connected to the place of her birth, it is not unfounded that she would remain in this city and spend time at this family estate.
I know we always want to be able to check everything we experience against facts, evidence, and maybe even the experiences of those who came before. But it is important to remember that your experience is your own and is a valid assessment of the location that you visit.
As for the Morgan House, I have my theories about some of the inactivity we had. I’ve been around long enough to understand the difference between the full house during my visit in October and the empty house we explored this January. But honestly, the majority of the spirits at the Morgan House are comfortable and happy and don’t need a storyteller. While you might not hear about Terry or Becca or D.S. on the tours, other spirits are having their stories told often and with appreciation. For me, it’s about giving those who aren’t part of the tours a chance to open up to us. We did the best we could to allow for that and I’m happy we drew out some spirits heretofore unknown by the caretakers of the house and those others who have investigated it before us.
It is a beautiful location with numerous layers of history to peel apart and to find the reality in the overlapping generations and varied histories. It is a valuable cultural and historical treasure for the city of Oshkosh that the Winnebago County Historical Society is working to preserve.
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