Summerwind Mansion: The Book That Made a Haunted House

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated September 21, 2026 · How we verify

Summerwind Mansion is not a house anymore. What stands on the shore of West Bay Lake in Vilas County, Wisconsin, is a ruin on private land, and almost everything a visitor thinks they know about it can be traced back to a single self-published book from 1979. That does not make the place uninteresting. It makes it one of the clearest case studies in the country of how a haunted house gets built, not out of brick, but out of print.

What Actually Stands on the Shore of West Bay Lake

The property sits in the far northeast corner of Wisconsin, near Land O’ Lakes. It was known for most of its life as Lamont Mansion, and that is still what many local people call it. Popular accounts say it began in the early twentieth century as a fishing lodge at the edge of the lake, a modest building in a remote place.

Today it is ruins, and they are closed to the public. The land is private. That is the single most important fact for anyone reading this with a flashlight in the car.

Robert Lamont, Chicago Architects, and a Pistol Shot

According to the popular version of the story, the lodge was purchased in 1916 by Robert Patterson Lamont, who hired Chicago architects to remodel it into something grander. Some retellings name the firm as Tallmadge and Watson, and some say the renovations took two years to complete. These details circulate widely, but they come to us through legend rather than through any document quoted in the accounts.

The famous episode belongs firmly to legend. The story holds that Lamont fired a pistol at a ghost one night and was frightened badly enough that he and his family left the house behind. No record is offered for this. It is the founding anecdote of the Summerwind story and should be read as exactly that.

The Hinshaws and the Breakdown Story

Later owners Arnold and Ginger Hinshaw appear in the legends as the family who suffered most. The claims attached to them are severe: that the hauntings disturbed the couple so deeply that Arnold suffered what accounts describe as a nervous breakdown, and that Ginger attempted suicide. These are presented in the popular literature as consequences of the house. They are reported claims, not established findings, and there is no medical or legal record cited anywhere in the accounts that circulate.

Some widely repeated versions of the Summerwind story also include human remains found inside the house. That detail does not appear in the documentary record available for this article, and it is left out here for that reason.

Raymond Bober, Jonathan Carver, and The Carver Effect

Here is where the trail gets clear. The supernatural tales were first spread by Ginger Hinshaw’s father, Raymond Bober, and it was Bober who attached the name “Summerwind” to the property. In 1979, writing under the pen name “Wolfgang Von Bober”, he published The Carver Effect: A Paranormal Experience, in which he claimed the mansion was haunted by the eighteenth century explorer Jonathan Carver.

Bober’s narrative supplied the elements that have been repeated ever since: that the house stood empty because of the alleged supernatural activity, and that the Hinshaws could not persuade workers to enter the building to carry out remodeling. Some versions of the story say Bober bought the property himself and then abandoned it because the rooms could change shape and dimension at will.

The counter-testimony is worth as much weight. According to one of Bober’s neighbors, Bober did not live in the mansion at all and never spent a night in it, staying instead in a trailer on the property. At least two previous residents reportedly denied that the house was haunted. Local people have said the haunting stories simply did not exist before Bober’s book was published. Author Marv Balousek recorded that locals never believed the home was haunted and were dismayed when it turned into a supernatural tourist attraction.

The book alone might have stayed local. A 1980 Life magazine photo essay that included Summerwind among “Terrifying Tales of Nine Haunted Houses” carried Bober’s version to a national audience. In October 2005, the Discovery Channel series A Haunting devoted an episode to the site, sealing the reputation for a second generation.

The Lightning Strike of June 19, 1988

By the mid-1980s the vacant house had become a practical problem rather than a spiritual one. In 1985, officials for the town of Land O’ Lakes attempted to demolish it. The Vilas County Sheriff said it was being used as a staging area by local teenagers who burglarized and vandalized nearby cottages. The demolition attempt failed.

The building came down anyway. Summerwind was destroyed by fire following a lightning strike on June 19, 1988. Later that week, fire officials reported that the blaze was not suspicious and that arson was not suspected, since neighbors reported being woken when lightning struck the vacant house. Officials did note that teenagers frequently used the location for parties and might have left a fire burning. The often repeated claim that the fire was deliberately set has no support in the official account.

What People Report at Summerwind

The phenomena associated with Summerwind are almost entirely literary in origin, and it is fairer to the reader to say so. The catalog includes voices in empty rooms, apparitions, rooms that alter their own shape and size, and the presence of Jonathan Carver, who Bober claimed had a stake in the ground beneath the house. None of it is corroborated by any resident who spoke outside the Bober family, and several who lived there contradicted it outright.

Why You Cannot Visit Summerwind

There is no tour, no admission, no viewing platform. Summerwind stands on private land in Vilas County and its ruins are closed to the public. The people who live around West Bay Lake did not ask for the reputation the property acquired, and by the accounts on record they resented it.

If the story interests you, the honest way in is the reading list rather than the road: Bober’s own book, and the Wisconsin folklore collections by Michael Norman and Beth Scott that discuss the case. Never trespass on private property. In this instance the trespassers are already part of the history, and not the good part.

See Summerwind Mansion for Yourself

Sources

• Strange Wisconsin: More Badger State Weirdness
• The Haunting of Summerwind
• Geographic Names Information System (Nationalmap (official))
• theweirdusmessageboard.yuku.com
• Wikipedia: Summerwind

More Haunted Houses

Brumder MansionCherry Hill Murder AlbanyFerry Plantation HouseKendall ManorAlton Town HallPirates House