services were attended by some of the bank’s directors, a few friends, and the waitresses from Hotel Elkhart. She was buried at Grace Lawn Cemetery beside her parents, son, and husband with a mammoth concrete cross towering over the site.
She had been the daughter and wife of prosperous businessmen, and yet her estate amounted to only $11,000. What had happened to the Knickerbocker fortune?
Shortly after her death, court and bank officials searched the home. Carpeting was removed. Even the spaces between the walls were searched. Neither money nor family documents were ever found.
The Goshen family lived in Nellie’s home for several uneventful years before leasing it to the Juhl Advertising Agency. A reporter for the Elkhart Truth asked several Juhl employees if they thought Nellie was still in the house. The question was answered by guarded laughter. Over the years, the employees had adopted a habit of half-heartedly blaming Nellie for any inexplicable happenings.
One employee commented, “If she exists, as a ghost, she’s fairly benign.” However, he admitted to being one of the first to have had an inexplicable experience. He was taking some friends through the mansion when the back of a grandfather clock fell out. No one had been near it, nor had there been a sonic boom, earth-moving equipment in use, or a tremor. Of course, Nellie got the blame.
Another strange happening occurred in a room that was being used to store magazines. Instead of the stacks growing, they seemed to be getting smaller. Later the magazines were found in the basement just below a laundry chute that began in this room. Some of the employees believed the fun-loving Nellie was still enjoying a joke from time to time.
Another employee admitted to the reporter that he’d experienced several bizarre events. The most bizarre of these happened during the Christmas season. He was walking past the office’s Christmas tree when suddenly it toppled over and fell on him! Again, no one had been around the tree, and there was no explanation—other than Nellie.
In another of the man’s stories, he was by himself working after hours in the conference room when all of a sudden a gust of wind scattered the papers he was working on. He wouldn’t have thought anything of it—if the windows and doors hadn’t been shut!
The employees also told of recurring strange experiences with a storage closet door. The door was secured by a latch that required a firm tug to open. Yet, employees were forever going to the room and finding the door open.
Another employee recounted experiences from an evening spent alone in the house with his young daughter. The girl insisted she heard something like money jingling. In an effort to quiet her fears, they looked around for the source but found no one in the building or anything unusual. A short time later, she tugged at her father’s arm, this time saying she heard footsteps on the stairs to the attic. At that point, her father decided it was time to leave.
Today, Nellie’s home, which has suffered from a lack of loving human occupants, will be getting a new lease on life. The newly created Winchester Group is planning to undertake its restoration. Once this has been done, the second floor of the building will be available for offices. The first floor will maintain the historical presence of the structure—and the entire home, perhaps, its ghostly presence.
Ghostly Good Samaritans
In 1984 the Elkhart Truth retold a story of two women who were driving alone on a road at night. They were just north of South Bend, but below the Michigan state line. They’d lost their way and didn’t even know what road they were on. As they came to a hill, the car stalled. They tried and tried to get the motor to turn over, but with no success.
There wasn’t a house in sight. In fact, there weren’t any lights anywhere. A sense of isolation and fear came over the women. As they sat there trying to decide what to do, two strangers appeared. Cautiously, the driver rolled her window down just enough to ask if the two men would help them.
They nodded and began pushing the car slowly up the hill. As it reached the peak, it began rolling quickly down the other side. Once sufficient speed was reached, the driver was able to get the engine to turn over.
The women were so grateful they turned the car around to go back and thank the good Samaritans. When they returned to the spot where the car had died, no one was around. Both of the women got out of the car and began calling out, hoping the men would hear them and return to receive their grateful thanks. No one answered. There was only silence in the night. As the women turned to go back to their car, they stood in amazement.
The car, which had been left idling, was once again making that slow ascent up the hill as if it were being pushed. The women be-gan running, reaching the car just before it arrived at the top of the hill. They opened the doors and jumped in. The driver put her foot on the gas pedal and kept right on going—never stopping and never looking back until they’d reached their destination.
They were convinced that the two men were ghostly good Samaritans, standing watch over the hill, waiting to help unfortunate motorists with a push up the hill.
The Giant Ghost
The story of the giant ghost of Benton in Elkhart County became a news item in the September 13, 1896, issue of the Philadelphia Press. The story attracted so much attention that many upstanding, intelligent individuals who were considered to have good sense decided to investigate.
This is the story as it was reported: A farmer and his wife were returning home one night from a visit with one of their neighbors. The road to their farm, about sixteen miles southeast of Elkhart, passed near an old church surrounded by a moss-covered, overgrown graveyard.
For years, an old man who lived not far from the graveyard had tended to the gravesites, keeping the vegetation under control. Ten years before, however, the old man was found murdered. He had been beaten to death by a large club, which was found beside his cold body. The motive for this dastardly deed was the rumored hoard of gold he supposedly had hidden. The crime was never solved.
The old man was buried in the graveyard where he’d spent so much of his time. Sadly, after his death no one continued to maintain the hallowed ground and final resting places of the county’s pioneer families.
This particular night, as the farmer and his wife neared the graveyard, the horses reared back on their haunches, eyes bulging, ears flicking as they snorted in terror. The farmer was alarmed and suspected the horses had gotten the scent of highwaymen hiding in the shadows. He reached for a shotgun laying in the bottom of the wagon for just such an emergency. His wife screamed. She pointed straight ahead, grabbing his arm speechlessly.
Blocking their way, standing in the road just beside the old graveyard, was an apparition of a man with a long white beard sweeping over his chest. The man had to be no less than eight feet tall. In one of his hands, he carried a large club similar to the one that had been used ten years earlier to kill the old cemetery caretaker.
Slowly raising his free arm, the ghost bowed and, with a majestic sweep of his arm, beckoned the farmer to come ahead. The farmer struggled to restrain the panicked horses while his wife sat beside him, dumbstruck and frozen with fear.
The farmer, still struggling with his team, watched in apprehension and mounting fear as the ghostly figure slowly began to move toward the wagon. The large club was now raised to its shoulder, much as a soldier would carry his rifle. The farmer saw that the fearsome figure moved without touching the ground—just
