Haunted Folklore: Growing up in Joliet’s haunted Allen House

Editor’s note: Whether or not you believe in ghosts and hauntings, this is one of several spooky tales of local lore that Shaw Local News Network will be sharing with readers in the spirit of Halloween.

Paranormal expert Mary Lou Wahlstrom bought a Joliet house in August never realizing it was haunted — until she moved in, she said.

Wahlstrom bought the house at 608 Morgan St. in Joliet, the former home of architect Frank Shaver Allen, also known as F.S. Allen, who built it in 1887 using Joliet’s signature limestone.

Allen came to Joliet around 1886 after winning the commission for the Christ Episcopal Church, according to the Pacific Coast Architecture Database.

[ Owners looking for others to help restore 19th Century Joliet home ]

Allen also designed Joliet Central High School, among other buildings in Joliet, and eventually moved to California, according to the database.

Wahlstrom said she’s since seen people who aren’t her family and heard voices that don’t belong to her family. She said the house definitely “has its charms and it has its activities.”

“Sometimes we see someone standing at the front door. But when we look through the camera, there’s nobody there,” Wahlstrom said. “Sometimes our back camera goes off, telling us a person’s in the backyard. But when we look, there’s nobody there, at least, nobody we can see. "

The boy who lived in the F.S. Allen home

Cean Magosky of Lockport said his parents Pat Magosky and Andrea Magosky bought the house in 1967 or 1968 after his uncle read the listing in The Herald-News: “A man’s home is his castle; so what if the ceilings are falling down?”

“And it was in rough shape,” Magosky said. “It was overgrown, covered in vines.”

Magosky said the front bedroom was locked, so his parents weren’t able to view it. The door in the kitchen to the basement was also blocked by a chair, Magosky said.

“But they made an offer and they bought it,” Magosky said.

Magosky said he and his family remained in their two bedroom home on Peal Steet in Ingalls Park while his parents worked on the Morgan Street house. The phone inside the Morgan Street house would periodically ring with no one on the other line, Magosky said.

“The meter man who came out to check the gas meter said he saw a woman in old-time dress in the yard,” he said. “When he asked her if he could help her, she had disappeared.”

That front bedroom became Magosky’s bedroom. At night, he’d wake up yelling, crying, scared, he said. His parents trimmed back the bushes, moved the bed, changed the lighting, added a night light.

And then Magosky, who was age 4 or 5 at the time, started seeing a woman in his room he called “the fire lady” because she looked like smoke, he said.

“It was just a woman, smoky looking, in a gray dress; everything was gray,” Magosky said. “And one time, she had a boy with her. He was in a little play suit for the era. I thought it looked like a suit, like 1890s play clothes.”

One morning Magosky apparently told his parents, “It’s OK. She won’t hurt me. She’s just checking on me. Her little boy died here.”

“I don’t remember saying that,” he added. “I remember some of the apparitions. But I don’t remember the discussions.”

Magosky said he apparently told his parents information about the Allen family or facts about the house from time to time.

“My mom would spend a lot of time at the library, researching it,” Magosky said. “They pinned down the little boy who, as a young boy, did die early on from a childhood illness. The wife then died of childbirth in the house.”

[ An Extraordinary Life: History buff died from COVID-19, Andrea Magosky co-owned a Victorian museum in her son's memory ]

Allen’s first wife, Mary E. Hendrie, whom he married on April 22, 1885, in Chicago, died in 1895 in childbirth, according to the Pacific Coast Architecture Database.

Magosky said the stories on the internet that mentioned the ghostly woman inviting the little boy who lived in the house to “become her son’s forever playmate” are simply not true.

“That’s not how it happened,” Magosky said. “All those stories online – they start with me.”

When Magosky’s parents remodeled the kitchen in 1973, they added a trash compacter, a “very 70s thing to do,” Magosky said. But the trash compacter only worked “off and on,” he added.

One night, the trash compacter unexpectedly turned on and went through a complete cycle, Magosky said.

“It wasn’t even plugged in,” he said.

Magosky said he moved out of the house in early 1990, when he married and bought a home on McDonough Street. His parents moved out in 2014, Magosky said.

Magosky said he mostly recalls is “a lot of odd noises” and the feeling of “a presence there.” Paranormal experts came to the house to take recordings and photos and their devices would stop working, he said.

“They’d check all their batteries beforehand, and everything would be good to go,” Magosky. “They wouldn’t work during a session, but afterwards everything was fine.”

Was he ever scared?

“No, I can’t recall being afraid,” Magosky said. “It was more comforting. You’re never alone.”

The Scutt Mansion and another haunted house on Morgan Street

That wasn’t the feeling Magosky said he had with the former Hiram B. Scutt Mansion at 206 N. Broadway St. in Joliet that Magosky’s brother Seth Magosky (deceased), a local historian, author, and Herald-News columnist, once owned.

After Seth Magosky’s death in 2007, Pat and Andrea converted the home into the P. Seth Magosky Museum of Victorian Life. The Scutt home was featured in season two of Paranormal Lockdown.

“That house makes me nervous,” Magosky said. “It feels crowded. I mean, it’s a huge house. But it feels crowded. It feels like there’s way too many people and not enough air.”

[ An Extraordinary Life: Joliet man works hard to make son's dream of a Victorian museum come true ]

In 1972, Magosky’s parents also bought a tiny one bedroom house at 611 Morgan St. Joliet after its owner died in 1971, he said.

The Magoskys never lived in that house, he said. They rented it.

“We had people live in the house for years,” Magosky said. “We had people move in and out the same night. We literally had people move in at 5 p.m. and move out at 1 in the morning ... people who moved out quickly or suddenly complained about water. They felt like someone was throwing water in their face or had water dripping on them. They felt like they were drowning when they were sleeping there.”

Still, the house was a lifesaver for the Magoskys, a much-needed source of income when Andrea was sick or ‘Pat was out of work, Magosky said. Eventually the house was condemned and torn down, he said.

“That property got us through a lot,” Magosky said.