The Haunted Mill Attractions

Attractions:

The Lady in White

Legend: The ghost of a young woman wanders the mill and surrounding area. The ghost is believed to be Eloisa McKinnon*, who was arranged to be married to Tom Nelson*. Tom was strange and old enough to be Eloisa’s father. Subsequently, Eloisa was against the marriage. Her parents, however, hoped the arrangement would help their failing farm. Eloisa begged her parents to call off the wedding. They refused. The wedding day was set for some time in October. Feeling trapped, Eloisa ran away as she was being fitted with her wedding dress. Her body was recovered in the mill race, after plummeting to her death from the third-floor window. As the legend goes, Eliosa’s spirit repeats the events of her death every year on the day she died. She has also been seen wandering the mill and grounds throughout the fall. Witnesses claimed she still wears the white dress.

Miller's Mine

Legend: The mine that is part of The Haunted Mill is haunted by the miners who killed and covered up the murder of the members of a homesteading party funded by Albert Miller*. The miners erroneously thought the party was coming to the town to mine, not homestead.

They slaughtered them to protect the unclaimed land that may contain gold from being discovered by anyone other than themselves. When they realized their mistake it was too late, so they slaughtered and the entire party, even the women and children, to hide their crime. The bodies were burned on the ground above the mine.The miners at some point dug a mine where the bodies had been burned, convinced that it was the spot in the area that contained gold.

The mine, however, would never be completed. It reached the length it is today: 302 feet. The same number as the people killed in the Miller Party. The miners who were working on the mine would disappear. Those who were left assumed it was because someone in the group of miners was now killing their own. Some miners believed it was the vengeful spirits of the Miller Party.

Most of the miners, however, thought it was a mountain lion who preferred human prey. Eventually, the mine was abandoned. However, ghosts of the miners and Miller party have been sighted over the years in and around the mine.

The Scarecrow
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Legend: A person in a scarecrow costume who didn’t work at the mill was often seen getting warm at the bonfire outside the mill. There were claims that it was an actual scarecrow from an area within the mill. The reports were mostly ignored until one night the scarecrow in the field burst into flames. The burnt remains of the scarecrow were removed and replaced. The scarecrow has still been sighted by workers and patrons by the fire and in the field. The reports typically mention that the scarecrow can’t be a person, because its eyes are like flames or are engulfed in fire.   

Aldreinus

Legend: Aldreinus was a sinister alp. An alp (also alb and Eeb) is old Germanic folklore, the more modern English version of the word is elf. Interestingly, there are many kinds of alps. Some were harmless and some were not. Aldreinus falls into the most harmful category. These alps are similar to the nightmare or pressure demons from many cultures. (old hag, incubi, mære, knashbari etc.) Aldreinus is ancient and powerful. He was filled with power and dark magic from claiming so many victims. The cost was that he became more shadow and rotten sludge than human. His particular form of Alp is sometimes called shadow-wanderer. (Beowulf may have been referring to these creatures calling them sceadugenga, which translates roughly to shadow-wanderer.)

Shadow-wanderers were known to shapeshift, and have been seen in many forms. They were thought to have once been human, yet, for various reasons, they give up their humanity for a longer life, magic, and power. Unlike vampires, these creatures feast on fear, hate, contention, etc. Their victims are plagued with nightmares and sometimes go mad. Often soldiers, especially those who were in the trenches for extended periods, were thought to be victims of shadow-wanders, seeing them in the trenches and then the persistent nightmares and flashbacks after the war. The shadow-wanderers were said to cling to their victims, following them from place to place until their victims were dead. Their favorite thing to do is to drive people mad and feast on the chaos of madness.

Shadow-wanderers are said to have sophisticated magic that helps them shapeshift from a dark oozing state into whatever suits them as long as they have the right hat, clothing, fur, etc., and as long as it is dark. They are said to lure victims to them posing as a high-ranking officer, a handsome hatted stranger, or a friendly animal. Shadow-wanderers are said to live in a dimension outside of our world. They travel to our world to feast. Occasionally, people have entered their worlds. It never ends well for people who enter a shadow world. To travel between worlds, a door must be created. To create a door shadow-wanderers use part of their inky ooze to mark an object in our world. His mark takes on many different forms, but each has similar pieces. It is unknown why the mark varies. We have wondered if all of the powerful shadow-wanderers can create these doors.  Shadow-wanderers hate light and crowds. Their victims are always alone and in partial or total darkness. Often a bell is heard as they go between worlds.

We have discovered variations of the mark of Aldreinus or perhaps another shadow-wanderer’s mark on a wall of the mill, a wall in the granary, on a glass button we found inside the mill, and recently a small smashed bell discovered in 2024 on the mill grounds. We have removed the mark on all items. There is also a picture of the granary with a shadowy man inked onto it, but no mark. We do not know why this artwork was created or who the man is supposed to be. The grandchildren of the mill told the owners it was Slenderman when the legend became popular. At the time, we found these shadowy men in other cultures and thought they were variations of Slenderman. We went with this theory, until finding out about Aldreinus and shadow-wanderers.

Note: Modern science calls this phenomenon sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is when you wake up during REM sleep. In REM sleep your muscles are temporarily paralyzed. This leads to intense fear in the person when they wake without the ability to use any part of their body. In this state, people are also prone to intruder or pressure hallucinations. Even though science has attempted to explain this phenomenon, the monsters people see in this state are similar across all world cultures, even though their cultures are not similar. Furthermore, science can explain the paralysis, but not the hallucinations. They have attempted to say the pressure on the chest and the image hallucinations are an anxiety response, but they admit the actual reason is unknown.

Masks:

Legend: A young immigrant boy and girl from Denmark are said to haunt the grounds of the mill. The boy disappeared on the morning of Fastelavn. (Fastelavn was a festival held by protestants from Denmark. The children celebrating the festival would traditionally dress in bright clothing with white masks or faces and solicit treats and food for their evening feast from their neighbors.) The boy was never found.

The only trace of his disappearance was his footsteps in the snow that led (and stopped) at a large choke-cherry tree in a field by the mill. His sister claimed she would often see him. in the shadow of the moon, dragging a large sack towards the tree, wearing his festival clothes and white mask. His sister also disappeared three years late on the morning of the festival. She too was never found. Over the years there have been sightings of the two children near the choke cherry tree. (The tree, for some reason, is still alive and wasn’t removed when the area was deforested and made into fields and pastures.) White masks have also been seen hanging from the tree, typically in February.  

Teeth & claws
 
Legend: A witch, or more likely a victim of a witch hunt, haunts the grounds. A woman with yellow eyes wearing a grey robe has been seen wandering the lower land of the mill. The yellow-eyed woman lived in a small log cabin below the mill when the land was heavily wooded and often flooded with groundwater. She sold homemade remedies and charms made from alligator parts (typically the teeth and claws). It seems people enjoyed her products and let her do her thing until a man was found slashed in the river. His friend, who was fishing with him, claimed the “witch” could summon supernatural, yellow-eyed alligators to do her bidding. He said he saw yellow eyes before his friend fell into the river and drowned. The slashes, which looked like wounds from a fishing knife, must be from the alligators. Sadly, no one questioned his story and the woman was drowned by a vigilante mob. There have been reports of glowing yellow eyes around the lower land of the mill since her death.

The Cellar

Legend: There is the sound of a woman weeping in the basement of The Haunted Mill. The sound has been heard over the years by those who work in the mill. The weeping is faint and the workers only hear it when the mill is deadly quiet. This event has no traceable origin or story associated with it. However, when the mill is silent, we have confirmed and recorded this weeping.

Blood Falls

Legend: Due to the amount of death in and surrounding the mill, supernatural forces warning people of the danger of the falls cause the water to look blood red. The waterfall, typically, looks ordinary. However, rumor has it that if you see the waterfall when it runs red, it is a death omen.

Psychotic Suspension Bridge
 
Legend: A white dog of unknown origins has been visiting people at the mill since it opened in 1997. The dog appears on the suspension bridge while patrons are touring the mill. Side note: Yes, there is a real suspension bridge in this haunted attraction. As you walk across the bridge, you can actually see the water flowing below. If that isn't bad enough, you also can feel the mist of Blood Falls blowing onto your face; these two attractions are just that close to each other. Combine Blood Falls and the Psychotic Suspension Bridge, throw in the darkness and the dog, and you're in for a freaky ride. The dog also hangs around the bonfire and eats leftover treats. The dog does not seem to age. It is only seen at night. The dog doesn’t photograph. The dog has been known to vanish into thin air. During the first year of operation, some guests actually claimed to have petted the enormous white dog.

Marbles

Legend: Two brothers, both still living, claim the granary, or crib as we call it, is haunted by a young boy who is probably seven years old. Sometime in the 50s, the brothers were working near the mill. They saw the boy run across the bridge and towards the granary (crib). They followed to warn him the granary was dangerous and not a place to hide or play. They called to him through a crack in the door, but he just giggled and asked them to come in and look at his marble collection. They slid open the door just enough to see him start to climb the grain elevator ladder. The brothers pursued him warning him of the dangers, but he kept going to the top. When the two brothers reached the top, the boy was not there, only a small box filled with marbles. That was the only time the brothers saw this little boy. But, the brothers (one currently owns the mill) their children, and now their grandchildren have been finding marbles around the mill and granary ever since.

The Crib
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Legend: Some whispers a few patrons hear while going through the mill are not actors or recordings, but an actual ghost who made his first appearance many years before the mill became a haunted attraction. The support for this legend involves the tragic passing of Jacob Wright. During the 1930s the supervisor of the mill, Jacob Wright*, claimed there was a prankster ghost who was constantly harassing him.  Jacob said he could hear the ghost whispering as well as causing accidents and trouble for Jacob. Jacob disappeared one day, but his body was later found buried in the grain silo. Many workers became convinced that Jacob became a victim of a prank pulled by the ghost that he thought was plaguing him.  Others wrote it off as a terrible accident, but nothing more. Yet, since then, others have also claimed to have heard the whispers and some have claimed to have seen the ghost of a man up in the rafters of the now empty grain silo.  Some believe it is the prankster ghost still trying to pull tricks and others think that Jacob now haunts the place of his tragic death.

The Labyrinth
 
Legend:  An unnamed woman approached the owners of the mill about a field of tall prairie grass located on the mill grounds. She called the area The Labyrinth. Wishing for anonymity, the owners have only revealed her story, not her name. This woman believed there to be a small area in The Labyrinth that swallows anything that stands there. She revealed this is how she lost her sister, Lily*.  She explained she had heard the legend, before her sister's disappearance, that animals were known to wander into the grass and then vanish without a sound.  “That is the worst part about it,” she said.  “When my sister disappeared, she never made a sound.  You would think if she fell in the river or someone took her, or she fell into a hole you would have heard something.  There would have been a splash, a scream, a slip, a struggle, the dry grass crunching under running feet, but there was nothing:  Nothing, but the feeling that I shouldn’t be there; that someone was watching me; the feeling…that I should run.”  Her face was so pale and disturbed as she uttered her last sentence that the owner agreed that he would not allow people into The Labyrinth, as long as she lived.  Upon her passing, The Haunted Mill expanded the tour into the grassy area after thoroughly checking and finding no abnormalities in the soil.

The Sawmill Door

A tuberculosis outbreak struck several mill workers in the late fall of 1919. To contain the disease and protect the flour the town needed for food, the infected workers were quarantined to a long narrow cellar on the south side of the mill basement, which could only be accessed by a door in the adjoining sawmill. When the loved ones went to check on their ill, the door to the cellar had been sealed from the inside and a strange symbol was burned on the door. When they pried open the door, they found all of the quarantined had died, even though it had only been a few days, which is very unusual for tuberculosis. Terrified, the town decided to close the mill for several weeks leaving the corpses until they were determined what to do with the dead.

Even though science had identified the bacterium that causes tuberculosis in the 1880s, folk traditions of vampirism causing the deaths were still accepted among many communities and the quick deaths fueled this theory. If a vampire were responsible, they would rise and strike again, unless decapitation or the bodies of the dead were burned. The scientific reason prevailed and it was determined the bodies should be buried. Yet, an unimaginable horror met the town when they went to collect their dead, which is best described by a journal entry, which states, “We gathered what we could of the remains to be buried and did the best we could to clean the rest, but all eventually agreed to leave the worst of it walled off and wait for time to rid that place of the horrors we could not.” It is still unknown if some of the townsfolk, who believed in vampires, took matters into their own hands or if something more sinister was at work.

The area remained sealed until 2022, when it was reopened without knowing the history. After numerous reports from those who worked in the area of strange activity, the owners looked into the history of the walled area, and this is what they found.

Amber Buttons

During a routine cleaning in 2021, the mill owner stumbled across a US Army medic coat from WW2 and 3 amber-colored glass buttons. The coat was determined to belong to his relative, who he knew served as a medic in WW2, and returned the coat to the direct descendants of the medic. The buttons were determined to be Kriegsmarine -German navy. It is unknown how or why these buttons were in the mill. Interestingly, one of the buttons had a strange symbol inked on it.

The symbol was shown to a German friend. It looked like something he remembered from an old storybook.

The story recounts the tale of a naughty boy who crosses through a magical door made of tree roots with the mark. The door takes him to a magical filled with riches and wonders. As he wandered, he came upon baskets of wheat and bread laid out in picnic style near a waterfall. Hungry the boy ate a handful of wheat, assuming no one would miss a small handful. The boy returned home without incident. As the boy slept that night, a loud bell rang Opening his eyes, he was face to face with a huge, black oozing monster kneeling on his chest. He tried to scream, but could not. Fighting to breathe from the weight of the monster pressing down on him, the boy tried to close his eyes again in hopes he would awake from his nightmare. His eyes would not shut. He spent the remainder of the night staring at the monster, who didn’t move, but just sinisterly stared back.

When the sun rose, the monster faded away like a shadow in the sun, leaving his mark burned in the boy’s cloudy white eyes. The night spent without blinking left him blind. Everyone who saw his eyes knew he was cursed. The boy spent the remainder of his days an outcast; blindly searching for the door with the symbol, clutching a handful of wheat hoping his repayment would break the curse. Legend says he is still searching unable to die until he repays the monster, because even in death he cannot close his eyes.

Smoke and Mirrors

Legend: The Teton dam broke and flooded most of the communities along the river below the dam, causing the death of 11 people and millions in property damage. Somehow, the town of Teton was largely spared. The mill and the canal that bordered the city acted almost as a supernatural barrier sparing homes south of it from the flood. The people in the town used their good fortune to help those who were not as fortunate. A harvest carnival was held at the elementary school to fundraise for others in the area impacted by the floods. During the day, the children played games in the classrooms while the adults held a fundraising raffle in the gym.

As evening fell upon the carnival, a large bonfire was held. During the lighting, a group of children slipped away to play pranks in the school. Part of the group went into the girls’ bathroom, which is thought to be haunted. The curious group wanted to see the ghosts for themselves. The bathroom has no windows and was completely dark when the lights were turned off. A boy from the group suggested they turn off the lights and play Bloody Mary. They called for her name while looking in the mirrors for about 10 minutes, but nothing happened. Disappointed, they turned the lights back on ready to return to the bonfire. One girl, Marietta, walked to the sinks, instead of the door. She turned on the hot water staring at the mirrors as they fogged. While staring at the fogged mirrors and drawing a strange symbol into the fog Marietta slowly said, “Are you ready to be scared?” Before anyone could answer she whispered a name. Immediately, the lights went out and a tall shadowy man appeared in the mirror. The children were frozen with fear. The lights flashed for a few seconds and then remained on. Immediately, the children noticed their group was smaller.

The terrified children ran and confessed what had happened to the adults claiming two girls were taken. One of the missing girls, Caroline*, was a cousin to a resident of Teton. The other girl was Marietta*. The children described Marietta as an 8-year-old with long, black hair and green eyes. She was wearing a flowered, harvest-yellow, eyelet dress and black shoes. Not knowing who she was, the adults believed she was invented as part of the prank. The children insisted that she was real. Yet none recalled her before they entered the bathroom, and they were unsure how they knew her name. As the adults questioned the children, one claimed he saw the old mill in the mirror behind the man. Thinking the kids finally confessed to Caroline’s hiding place, the adults walked the short distance from the school to the mill. As they arrived at the mill, what sounded like an old church bell rang in the distance. The bell was followed by unrelenting screaming.

They followed the screaming to find Caroline crying and screaming in a hidden room under the loose floorboards of the granary. Caroline claims she was pulled into the bathroom mirror and exited into the granary room through another mirror and that Marrietta had stayed in the bathroom. Caroline claimed the man who grabbed her was not human, even though he looked like a man. In his presence she was paralyzed, unable to scream or move. The man re-entered the mirror upon hearing a loud bell. As he did, the mirror smashed into so many pieces it became a fog and floated away. As the fog disappeared, her voice returned and she couldn’t stop screaming. The adults believed this to be an elaborate prank. The children, now adults, have not changed their story.

Hours: 7:30pm-Midnight

Tickets:

Admission: $15
Fast Pass: $25

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