Holy Hill Investigation
This blog post was written by Whitney Dankemeyer.
Holy Hill sits atop a 289-foot hill and has been an institution for the Catholic faith for over 300 years. It was first discovered by a French-Canadian Priest named Jacques Marquette in 1673, alongside a fur trader named Louis Jolliet. This sacred structure can be seen towering over the city of Hubertus, Wisconsin, and it received its name from Irish settlers in the area. Some may even call this place the Church of Miracles or Miracle Hill.
Jacques Marquette’s work comes back at a later date, but first we need to touch base on who Francois Soubrio was. Francois Soubrio was a man who studied for priesthood, only to never follow through with these ambitions. Due to unseen circumstances, the up-and-coming priest fell in love with a woman. When shunned by both sides of the family, Francois concluded that he would need to leave town for a while. He asked his lover to wait for him, only she did not. When he returned, it was discovered she was unfaithful, and he killed her with his own bare hands.
It is unknown whether this death ate away at Francois’ spirit or if he truly seeked redemption. However, Soubrio fled to Canada where he became a monk instead of a priest. He remained there until he came upon a map of Jacques Marquette. Once he decided to follow it, it led him straight to Holy Hill.
Francois Soubrio lived on top of Holy Hill for years until he was discovered. After he was noticed, he built a small chapel at the top of the hill where he continued to live for another several years. Then, one day, Francois mysteriously vanished. He was never traced and never returned to Holy Hill alive.
With that being said, there are rumors Francois Soubrio still roams the land. His ghost can be seen wandering the grounds, sometimes kneeling at crosses to pray. There are times where he is also seen roaming Carmelite Cemetery. This is the burial ground for Holy Hill’s caretakers and is said to be below the church. Visitors have claimed seeing a mist in the shape of a man, and many believe this to be the spirit of Francois Soubrio returning to Miracle Hill.
There are other hauntings reported nearby the Holy Hill property, but the father seemed to be the only reported and most experienced activity on the land the church sits on. He was our point of interest for this investigation, and we were hoping to have a word with him.
We arrived at Holy Hill mid-afternoon on Saturday, February 24, 2024. We started our adventure in the Holy Hill Cafe, which was just off of the parking lot and before the steps to the old monastery. The cafe closed at four, so we wanted to make sure we could contribute a tip or two to the staff before they closed. We helped ourselves to coffee and chai, as well as fresh-baked goods being sold at the counter. We asked one of the employees if we were allowed to visit the church. They said we could, so long as no masses were in session at the time.
We began our excursion a little after three. We walked a lot of the perimeter before we visited the churches. There seemed to be multiple chapels on site, and we accessed two of them by walking up a few flights of stairs.
We tried to locate Carmelite Cemetery, but we were unable to find it. We are unsure if this was around the back of the church or if it was located inside in the basement somewhere. Our GPS kept taking us to the parking lot of Holy Hill, but we did not see any headstones in sight. If any of our readers have insight on this, please feel free to contact us any time to discuss it.
We decided to drive around to the grotto entrance to conduct our investigation. It was closer to four now, and there were a lot of people showing up for a service. The grotto closed at four, so our session for this investigation was limited. We only had twenty minutes to conjure the father and ask any questions we had for him. He wasn’t hard to find, because as soon as Swan put the headphones on for the Estes session, she was already giving us information about him.
We greeted the spirits to begin, but we could already feel eyes on us from the woods. It was a hard feeling to ignore, but we pushed on and started asking questions about the father. We hoped this would either conjure him up or that he would speak up and start a conversation with us. He did.
The father went about different ways confirming his presence with us. He first began by saying, “Hurry,” which indicated he was with us the minute we drove in. He was letting us know he knew we had limited time to talk, which was pretty impressive.
We were welcomed with open arms in the beginning of our session. In fact, Francis even tried to initiate a hug. This was a nice path to start down, though we did take a small turn down a sketchy lane when he said odd things about the church. He warned us something was coming, not to tempt him, and asked if we could guilt sacrament. While we pondered if this could be someone other than the father-in-training, he confirmed his existence two more times after this, one of those times saying, “father.”
We did ask a few personal questions about the murder, and he did open up about the events. He told us it was quick, and that he felt extreme guilt for the result. We believed he suffered enough in his waking life, so instead of prying for more answers, we chose to sympathize with him instead. There wasn’t much else we talked about after this, other than him asking us to walk the grotto. We did walk a path for a few minutes, but we didn’t have much time to explore with the park closing in ten.
We had to end the Estes with the father before we could walk around, so we knew there’d be a chance he wouldn’t be there once we restarted our next session. We got back in the car and immediately felt a larger audience watching us from the woods. Whether or not the father was one of the 8 we were told we were speaking to, a vast majority of the group turned out to be children. They even confirmed for us that they were “In the woods.”
The children didn’t seem to have a wide attention span even in death, so aside from their roars and playing, there wasn’t much they wanted to say. They seemed to be happy though, which is a lot nicer to see than some of the trapped spirits we’ve met along the way.
The real tear-jerker was Marie. She was the last spirit to enter the session, and she really made quite the impact on us. Not only was she incredibly responsive through the device, but she was strong enough to manifest touching different sections of Swan’s leg. We assumed the spirit was just being handsy at the time, but we later discovered she was a doctor in her recent life. She wasn’t being a flirt; she was actually examining Swan.
Swan has had four major leg surgeries in the past, so chronic leg pain is something Swan deals with on a daily basis. Our spirit friend seemed to know this and spent a lot of her session with us taking care of Swan. She brought up her injuries, told us she was sick, and said she was trying to heal her. She also shared with us how horrible she felt with Swan and wanted us to give her a hug. We told her we would have a group hug after our session (we did). The whole conversation made us all incredibly sad, so while Nicole and I sobbed in our seats, Swan, under the Estes, started crying and said she didn’t know why. We knew exactly why.
Our session at Holy Hill was different than we expected it to be, but it was healing to say the least. We found fresh-baked pastries, laughs, tears, stained-glass windows, and adventure. We were welcomed by both the people and the paranormal on this journey. And if you ever travel Holy Hill’s way, we hope it treats you just the same.
Thanks for reading.
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