Paula Shares the Haunted Farmhouse Story

From Time to Thyme

By Paula Dunn

A while back I ran across a ghost story in the July 24, 1892 Indianapolis Journal that seemed like a perfect Halloween column. It’s a rather lengthy tale of a haunted farmhouse “nine miles north of the town of Sheridan, in Hamilton County.”

During my background research, however, I realized that, if the distance really was nine miles, it would probably be in either Clinton or Tipton County.

When I tried to dig up information about the people mentioned in the story to confirm that the farm was in Hamilton County (as the article noted several times) I couldn’t find anyone by those names in any of the old newspapers, or in census records for the entire state.

I asked Nancy Massey to double check since she’s the Hamilton County Genealogist. Even she couldn’t find those people.

I finally decided what the heck, it’s an interesting tale from the Sheridan area, wherever the farmhouse was actually located.

According to the article, a man named Joel Compton settled on that land in the 1840s and built a two-story frame farmhouse for his wife and five boys. After a few years, his wife died. He later remarried.

Compton died in the late 1870s, but his second wife and several of his children still lived in the farmhouse in 1889 when one son, Turrel, married Nellie Wilhoit, “a young lady of this city” (Indianapolis, presumably.)

The newlyweds moved into the Compton family home and right away, nearly all the family members told the new bride not to worry if she heard noises in the night. They explained that Turrel’s brothers frequently came in at odd hours and some were often up looking after their mother, who suffered from asthma.

Nellie did hear someone walking around at night, but followed the family’s advice and paid no attention — at first.

About two months after she and Turrel moved in, she was awakened by the sound of a person in heavy boots running across the porch. That time she decided to get up and investigate.

Everything seemed in order and she was about to return to bed when she heard footsteps enter the room in which she was standing. In the clear moonlight, she could see that she was alone.

She froze, paralyzed with fright, as the footsteps came closer and closer. Finally, she was able to scream and run away. Hearing her scream, her husband flew to her side and managed to catch her just as she fainted.

After Nellie finally settled down, Turrel admitted that the house was haunted. He told her that the family had gotten used to the strange noises and that she probably would too, because that’s all they were. No one had ever been harmed.

When Nellie described her experience to Turrel’s mother, the older woman said she’d heard the footsteps ever since she’d come to live in the house. She told Nellie that whenever she’d asked her husband about them, he just said the house was haunted.

That wasn’t the only spooky phenomenon Nellie experienced. She also watched a bedroom door open on its own after she’d closed and bolted it, and she heard an “invisible person” stride into the house and drop an equally invisible load of firewood on the hearth.

One night, Nellie finally had enough. She informed her husband that she was leaving — with or without him. She and Turrel went to a neighbor’s home that night and the next day they headed to “this city” (Indianapolis?)

Once they were underway, Turrel told her of other events that had taken place in the house.

The most notable incident involved a teacher who’d boarded with the family briefly. The teacher had been given the bedroom with the door that wouldn’t stay closed, but only lasted two nights because someone — or something — had climbed into bed with him!

Happy Halloween!

Thanks to Nancy Massey for her help.

Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at younggardenerfriend@gmail.com