Joel S. Fisk House Investigation
This blog post was written by Whitney Dankemeyer.
The Joel S. Fisk house in Green Bay, Wisconsin has such a rich history to it. Located at 123 Oakland Avenue, this Italian-style home was built in 1865 and was owned by none other than Mr. Joel Savage Fisk, a local postmaster to the area. This home was formerly known at the William Gibbs house and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. It is one of the 22 large homes occupying the Oakland-Dousman Historic District across 8 acres.
Joel S. Fisk was born in 1810, finding his way to the Sheboygan area in 1835. Fisk walked from Sheboygan to Green Bay on foot before he moved his family to Wisconsin in 1836. At this time, the state was under territorial rule, which meant sections of the state were still being inhabited by Native Americans. The area Fisk turned up in had few paved roads, and he quickly noticed not much was being done for construction. He took it upon himself to help with the development of the district. He even opened and ran his own general store.
By 1848, Fisk was elected register of deeds for the U.S. Land Office in Green Bay, and he later platted the city of Fort Howard, which is still a part of Green Bay present day. Aside from being a postmaster, he started his own fishing operation and was also a lawyer. He passed away in 1877, just six weeks before his wife Charlotte died. They are both laid to rest in Fort Howard Memorial Park.
Fisk had seven children, the oldest being William Justin Fisk, born in 1833. When William was fifteen, he worked alongside his father at the Land Office. Once he completed his education, he went on to work for a mill that produced shingles. He did this until 1862 when he fully invested his career in the lumber business. For the next 35 years, he became a major supplier of ties and lumber for the construction of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad in Wisconsin. In 1877, his sons joined the business and his lumber business Fisk and Son was renamed W.D. Fisk and Company. At this time, William was also active in financial and civic affairs. He went on to be one of the best known bankers in the area.
In 1926, Fort Howard Branch Library in Green Bay purchased the Joel. S. Fisk home. For years it ran as a public library until it closed in 1980. The home is now being used for commercial use, and one of the employees reached out to our team regarding the activity.
On Saturday, November 18, 2023, we met with employee Angie, her friend Robin, and the owner Steve for the business Power of Change. The sun had just set in the sky, and the business was closing for the weekend. After brief introductions, we took a tour and were given a deeper background of the history of the home. All of which we learned has been mentioned above, except for the infamous photo of the man in black. On the wall in the first floor hallway, there is a photo taken in the early 1900s of folks gathering outside the Fisk house. Amongst them is a black silhouette of a man, unknown to people then and still seen roaming the premises present day.
Regarding other activity in the home, Angie explained having seen a face in the window with her own eyes. Besides that, no clientele or employees have reported seeing anything other than the man in black.
When we began our investigation, Steve had left but Angie and Robin stayed back with us to further explore. Nicole and I brought up feeling an intense static from the room on the first floor at the bottom of the stairs, so we decided to begin our session in there. As soon as we entered the room, Swan felt someone was watching over her shoulder, so we figured starting up a device would give us some answers.
Upon starting the EVP recording, we introduced ourselves before explaining where we set the flashlight in the room. We placed a flashlight on one of the bookshelves in case anyone wanted to walk up to it and turn it on. Before we could finish, spirit had already found the flashlight and set it off.
What was interesting about the flashlight was its intensity; sometimes the light would shine bright, and sometimes the light would flicker as if there wasn’t enough strength to turn it all the way on. I started to see a vision of 2-3 spirits curiously observing the flashlight and questioned how many spirits were actually with us. To my surprise, the girls thought the same thing. I waltzed over to the flashlight to do an EMF sweep, but the EMF reader zeroed out and the flashlight went off. Whoever these spirits were, they were incredibly shy.
I walked back over to the other side of the room and sat my phone on the couch. I told them I was recording on my phone and they had permission to walk up and talk to it. However, we didn’t capture any EVPS from this session, nor did they want to communicate via Estes. Instead of arguing, we thanked them for their honesty and informed them we were going to move on to the next room.
The next room was across the hall, and this was what we called Vanessa’s office. Our reason for scoping out this room was because the window in there is the same one the man in black was captured outside of in the early 1900s. We thought we could either pick up on residual energy or possibly encounter the man in black himself. So, we propped Swan on the chair next to the window and began our first Estes for the night.
I sat my phone on the side table next to Swan to debunk any noises coming from my person. Before Swan put the headphones on, she briefly explained to Angie, Robin, and the spirits of the house what the Estes was. When Swan put the headphones over her ears, the first response was, “Finally.”
Nicole chuckled, as did I. Clearly someone wanted to communicate with us, which we later discovered to be an angry female. We were asking questions about the man in black, but she told us she didn’t need a husband and that she was ticked off. I tried asking a few follow-up questions to get to know the woman we were speaking with, but she responded, “Buttcrack.” We didn’t know this at the time, but this is a safe word for Angie's patients who no longer want to talk about a particular topic. Because we assumed these were random responses at the time, we cut the conversation off to set boundaries.
After setting boundaries with spirit to come forward one at a time, we found that we were still communicating with the woman. We asked if anyone wanted to come forward and speak, and the woman said, “He’s a professional.” We asked for clarification, and Swan said, “Me.” We took this as the professional coming forward, so we asked if they were that person. Swan answered, “Hi.”
When asking questions about this professional, Angie kept getting a feeling that it was a coworker who had passed away. She asked if we were speaking to John, and Swan responded, “In and out.” I also asked if this was John, and Swan said, “Since” and “Me.” John did end up giving Swan a word to say that validated his existence for Angela.
We asked John if there was anything he wanted to say to Angie, and he said, “Magic view. How could you ever give up? Don’t have to.” Angie explained to us that John was always a very uplifting and positive individual, which gave us even more reassurance he was the one coming forward to speak.
I did try asking if any one of the spirits would like to set the cat balls off for us, and Swan responded, “Why can’t you?” Once the uproar of laughter faded, we started to receive a bunch of random responses again. Swan stopped shouting answers to tell us she saw a group of people fighting in her head. This very well could have been residual energy we were picking up on, or it could’ve been that spirits were arguing over communicating (which we experienced later). In regards to this session, however, it is inconclusive.
We wrapped up the session in Vanessa’s office and decided to record in Angie’s office next. Her office was upstairs on the second floor, so we scurried up the steps and set up equipment in her room. There were cat balls scattered around, and we sat the flashlight down on the desk. The cat ball on the ground next to me went off before recording, but unfortunately, we were unable to get it to repeat on camera.
We explained all over again how the equipment worked and how to communicate with us. We even whipped out the dowsing rods to conduct a session, but spirit wouldn’t use them. The spirits seemed to really enjoy the flashlight though, which was the only device they ended up setting off. We asked if the spirits in the room wanted to conduct an Estes, and Swan said she saw kids in her head that were very shy. Are these the same spirits from downstairs?
I had Swan pull out the headphones to perform an Estes Method session. We sat the spirit box on the floor and turned the temperature gauge on in case any spirits wanted to touch it. The responses we received were random and all over the place at first, which we assumed was due to there being more spirits present upstairs. Once the boundaries were set, it still took a moment to get a proper conversation started. It wasn’t until we received “Howdy, folks!” that our responses began to make more sense.
I asked who we were speaking with, and Swan said, “Out front” and “Three step.” While some of us thought of dancing, others thought of the three steps out front. Angie brought up that there were actually two sets of stairs out front that each had three steps. We tried to ask if they hung around out front, but our questions were avoided. Swan then said, “This is awesome!” At least they were enjoying themselves.
We shared laughs over their excitement with the Estes, but we were interrupted with spirits fighting over the spirit box. We received words such as, “That’s mine,” and “Give it back” over multiple sweeps. This instance is what made us wonder if the energy downstairs was residual after all; maybe these spirits just didn’t know how to share. Regardless, we concluded it was a man and woman who didn’t like taking turns. It wasn’t long though before Swan said, “Left, Man in black” and the bickering ceased.
Conversation continued, however, there were some things discussed between us and spirit that contained confidential information. These spirits were so intelligent they knew and remembered valuable information about previous employees and therapy sessions there. While we are unable to share that information with you, we can assure you that this was compelling.
The temperature gauge randomly started turning blue. Anytime the temperature gauge changed to blue during the evening, we all believed it to be a child. There was a feeling of innocence that followed the activity, like that of a little kid. Immediately after this occurred, Nicole’s phone told her the storage was full. This is something spirits do often when they don’t want to be recorded. Anytime the children spirits used anything other than the flashlight, they refused to let it be documented; just like the cat ball.
Swan then said, “Gary.” When we asked if the spirit’s name was Gary, Swan answered, “Myself. Sure!” We told him it was nice to meet him, and Gary told us in return he loved us. We asked Gary if he liked the Fisk House, but his response was, “Your view won’t stay for long,” followed by a child’s laugh and the word "Yes." Not only did this confirm we were speaking to a kid, but a child finally came forward to speak for an Estes.
To summarize our session with Gary, he shared with us that he’s felt lost since he was ten. We were told two children had died in the room we were in: a ten-month old and another child whose age was undetermined. While the ten could’ve linked to the ten-month old, we believe we were talking to a ten-year-old boy. When we even tried to have a side conversation about the information Gary shared with us, he said “To the crack.” We think he meant butts.
Gary did keep saying “12” and “1-2,” but we are still unsure what significance that number had. This kid was actually confused for a lot of the session, but he was a good sport through the whole process. He asked what we were doing, what he needed to say, and was honest and told us “Too hard” when we told him to tell us more about himself.
We stayed in the room and chatted with Gary for another several minutes. We did get interrupted from time to time, but we presumed spirits were coming up and telling Gary what to say. Swan picked up on someone saying, “Ask them about-” in the middle of our chat, which lead us to that conclusion. When the session came to a close, Gary sounded the temperature gauge, changed the color to blue, and then told us to “Go” twice when we asked about the other room. We thanked the boy for his hard work, picked up our gear, and walked across the hall.
When we entered the Zen room, you could feel that someone was in there with us. Strangely enough, I was drawn to the curtain in the front of the room. It felt like there was someone standing or watching us from behind it. Once we started setting up the Estes, I made sure we positioned where I could still have an eye on that area.
Our Estes was set up in the middle of the room, with the girls and I sitting cross-legged on pillows on the floor. We set up the camera on one side to record and placed the flashlight on the other. Swan sat on the end nearest to the camera so the camera could hear her responses better. The first word she received when she put the headphones on was, “Four.”
Four was a word that came up during conversation in Angie’s office, but when Swan sputtered out a bunch of male names, we remembered Steve said four men used to live upstairs. We don’t believe these spirits to be of those four men, but we presume they remembered them like they did other employees and patients.
The spirits in the Zen room were very welcoming. In fact, they actually said, “Welcome! We’re cool here!” For the entirety of the session, these spirits were saying full sentences into Swan’s ear. Considering our spirit box was sweeping through radio stations backwards, their responses were very impressive. They said things like, “If you owe money, pay,” “Our goal, fast and easy,” and “Holidays are basically one day.” This was the most we’ve ever received full sentences on any investigation we’ve been on.
The rest of our conversation was with Joseph, a spirit who came forward and said his name multiple times. He knew it was November, that we were coming, and told us about a time in Winter where he received $50. Assuming he is from the late 1800s and early 1900s, this was a lot of money to come by at the time.
Leading towards the end of our session, Joseph told us, “Everywhere I go I’m disappointed.” We asked how we could make him happy, and he said, “Hold me,” followed by saying the owner Steve’s name twice. We believe Joseph was a very interactive spirit, as he blew into my right ear and appeared as a black silhouette in Swan’s peripheral vision. Could Joseph be the mysterious man in black?
We told Joseph we were going to give Swan her body back (which he thought was creepy), and then we decided to end our series of sessions for the night. We packed up our gear, discussed the timeline of the night, and then said our goodbyes. While a medium has moved some of the Fisk house spirits on, there’s still a boatload more spirits where that came from.
Thanks for reading!
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