This isn’t so much a ghost story as it is a creepy curiosity that has inspired countless legends. There is a house in Janesville, MN. It’s one of those old Victorians that looks beautiful in the daylight and haunted like crazy at night. Except this one was pretty creepy during the day, too. In a tiny attic window, there sat for decades, a doll. A plain white, no frills doll. Staring out the window, day after day. Never moving (except maybe it did...?). Watching over Old Highway 14. It was always there, blank faced and emotionless. The owner of the house, Mr. Ward Wendt, would never disclose why it was there. So, naturally, tales of its origin sprouted up like grass on the prairie. There’s the story of a little girl who loved her doll so much that she would never put it down. She and the doll were inseparable. One day the girl was playing in her yard and went chasing after a ball that had rolled out onto Highway 14. Tragically, the doll she was holding blocked her view of the car coming down the highway that struck and killed her. Her grief stricken parents hung the doll in the window as a reminder for drivers to watch out for children in the streets. Another talks about a young boy who hanged himself in the attic, the doll placed in the window as a memorial. Yet another has it that a couple left on a long vacation, entrusting the care of their daughter to a friend of the family. However, this friend had always secretly despised the girl – there are a million different versions of why – and locked her in the attic. When the parents arrived home they found the girl dead, sitting in a chair, looking out the window, watching for her parents to come home and save her. The mother sat the doll in the little girl’s chair and left it there to call attention to the plight of child abuse and neglect. Not to be outdone, still one more legend says that the doll was actually a demon that disguised itself, and placed a curse on all who stared at it for too long. Whatever the reason was, Mr. Wendt refused to tell the story. In 1976, however, he did write it down and placed it in a time capsule during Janesville’s 4th of July Bicentennial celebration. The capsule is scheduled to be opened on July 4th, 2176. Mr. Wendt passed away in 2012, never
telling a soul what the doll’s meaning was. It was removed from the attic shortly after his death, and eventually found its way to the Janesville Public Library, where, according to Librarian Nicole Krienke, it sits “in the window looking out onto the corner of Main Street and 2nd Street.” Filmmaker Dan Kettler made a short documentary about the doll, entitled The Janesville Baby. You can find it on YouTube, and we’ve provided a link to it from this story on SouthernMinnScene.com. Do you believe yet? Are you reading this alone and suddenly wondering if you feel something behind you? Are you turning the light off in your bedroom and jumping under the covers because something may or may not be there? Are you wondering how true all this is? “The bottom line,” said Larsen, “is you can choose to believe the stories or not. But you’re never going to know if they’re true until you experience it yourself.” He’s right. You can choose to believe that there’s no ghostly librarian at St. Olaf, or that there was just a weird power surge that night in Mantorville, and all of this is just a bunch of hooey. Just remember, we haven’t even begun to understand how the universe works. Maybe there are portals, and psychic echoes. Maybe that creak you here behind you isn’t a loose floor board.
You can reach Rich Larson at editor@ southernminnscene.com.
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