FROM MINES TO MONSTERS TO MINERAL POINT: One-Stop Shopping for Vampires, Ghosts & Goblins
In the shadowy corners of Wisconsin’s oldest mining town, something pale, caped, and terrifying has been leaping fences — and into legend — since 1981. But the vampire isn’t the only creepy creature to beware of in Mineral Point.
Planted in the heart of Wisconsin’s rural Driftless landscape, Mineral Point is a throwback to what America’s mining history once was. This small town, founded in 1827, soon became one of the Midwest’s earliest mining hubs, attracting settlers in search of the rich sources of lead and zinc beneath its surface. The influx of skilled Cornish miners in the 1830s meant more than just new mining technology; it left an indelible stamp of culture, still visible today in the stone cottages at the Pendarvis Historic Site.
After the turn of the century, as resources dwindled, mining subsided however Mineral Point reinvented itself. The town’s population grew to 3,275 in 1870, before it gradually began to decline. By the mid 20th century, it had become an artist and preservation community that maintained its historical character and became a favorite place for heritage tourism.
But behind the quaint exterior of these historic streets lies a more sinister tale – a story teeming with weird sightings and unexplained events that have become part and parcel of its local folklore.
The Mineral Point Vampire: First Encounter
The tale of the Mineral Point Vampire originated on the eve of March 14, 1981. Local policeman Jon Pepper was out on patrol and was shining his flashlight through Graceland Cemetery, where there had been a spatz of vandalism. All at once his light struck upon a great dark figure standing amid the headstones.
Pepper described the figure as “a big man, with a black cape and white face paint…… about 6′ 5″ and gruesome.
Pepper woke up and swooped down to see what it was doing, it turned and ran. Pepper took up the chase, following the odd creature to the cemetery’s perimeter where it vaulted a four-foot fence and disappeared into the darkened empty bull-pasture beyond.
Pepper and a few other officers were detailed the next day to examine the spot. They found no damage or disturbance at the cemetery. They picked up a trail of footprints leading from the snow to the fence they’d seen the vampire jump but, weirdest of all, there were no footprints EVER AGAIN on the other side.
Although Pepper dismissed a vampire as “silly,” troubled by the mystery man’s behavior and demeanor, he instead suspected him to be insane. The rumor of the events spread like wildfire through Mineral Point. In the ensuing weeks, practical jokers dressed as Count Dracula started leaping from shadows, terrorizing innocent passersby.
It wasn’t April Fool’s Day or anything but police Lt. Bill Trott couldn’t get any officers (including Pepper) to go back out to Graceland Cemetery at night. He told the Wisconsin State Journal he wanted to make clear that this wasn’t a prank.
The Return of the Vampire
After the vampire’s first appearance in 1981, the creature vanished for over twenty years. And then, in March 2004, police received a complaint from residents of a nearby apartment complex who complained someone sitting in a tree near their building was bothering them.
The description sounds like short work of the man, or thing, known as the Mineral Point Vampire – a pale man or woman in old-timey dark garb, possibly a cape. Police arrived and the suspect jumped from the tree and ran off into the night, leaving tracks in the fresh snow.
The officers followec the footsteps, which inexplicably ended at a 10-foot-high cement wall. And to no one’s surprise…the Mineral Point Vampire was gone.
The Ludden Lake Encounter
Another chilling encounter was reported four years later, this one just outside town at Ludden Lake.
On July 11, 2008, Heinz and his girlfriend Jamie Marker, both of Mineral Point, were fishing near a jetty on the lake’s western side when they and another fisherman heard vibrations under the water. It sounded like something or someone was crawling along the wooden structure of the jetty. Heinz tried to scare it off by stomping, but when he flashed his flashlight between the boards, they heard a splash as whatever it was made its way to the distant edge of the pier.
They looked behind them to see a white-faced figure with black hair pulling itself up onto the jetty. “It was also wearing what looked like maybe a Dracula-y looking cape and a suit, a little,” Heinz said.
Neither of them moved as the shape began to stand. Jamie then spun around and ran up the trail to where their car was parked, and Heinz, holding his flashlight on the figure, hurled the flashlight and then turned to run up the trail after the others. The two men broke into a sprint and reached their car, when Jamie looked, only to see the figure rush up the path at them. The couple drove off and notified the police.
Police completed a sweep of the area and found nothing suspicious. When Heinz and Marker returned the following day to pack up their things, every single item was still there, except for Heinz’s flashlight which couldn’t be located.
“Whomever they are,” Heinz said, “they can have it.”
The Vincent Price Connection
In one of those very weird coincidences, the town with a vampire issue is tied to the actual “Master of Horror,” the late Vincent Price.
Price’s mother, Marguerite Cobb, was born in Mineral Point, and several generations of his forebears had been leading citizens there. Price’s great-grandfather was George Cobb, a prominent local merchant and Superintendent of the Mineral Point Railroad.
Cobb’s office still stands at the Mineral Point Railroad Museum, and the store he constructed has been converted into the Commerce Street Brewery Hotel. The Cobb family home has survived on Cothern Street, next to the elementary school, and they also contributed several stained-glass windows to the town’s Trinity Episcopal Church.
Price did not settle in or even visit Mineral Point but donated a large sum of money to restore the church’s organ in 1962 in honor of his great-aunt Laura Antoinette Cobb, for whom the original organ was dedicated.
And eeriest of all, the Cobbs and some other of Vincent’s forebears are buried in Graceland Cemetery, right near the place where that first Mineral Point Vampire scared the heck-fire out of those poor little kids.
Controversy and Investigations
The Mineral Point vampire, legend has it, has been the subject of much discussion and controversy over the years. The 1981 and 2004 sightings weren’t the only ones; newspapers documented, though not all believe, in another sighting in 2008.
Bob Weier, who has been police chief of the Mineral Point Police Department since 1991, said there are no reports about the 2004 and 2008 sightings. “We have no response to the three events you are seeking,” Weier said. I do not remember either of the two appended reports or reports of suspected vampire appearances in my time here. Our response to many calls at Ludden Lake have been calling for the Iowa County Sheriff Department, but not for a white faced individual in a cape.”
Which raises issues for the later spottings. Some speculate that these reports came from the web and got recirculated as truth by some sources. Yet the 1981 incident is still an odd one.
Researcher Chad Lewis told Coast to Coast AM in 2011 that the 1981 sighting and the way it was reported did indeed haunt Officer Pepper. And so the story went that the police officer, I guess so upset about all the attention, left the police force, left town and never spoke of the case again. Well actually he just went a couple counties over and he’s with the sheriff’s department there. And in the last five, 10 years I probably, on a couple of dozen occasions, have tried to contact him, and he’s never responded. (At first) it seemed like he was cooperating, (but perhaps he just) wants to move on for real.”
A 2022 item in The Dodgeville Chronicle may have solved the mystery, when it was reported that a Rueben Riley had confessed to being the vampire. This reality was disclosed by a friend of the family, who wished to remain anonymous after Riley’s death in 2017.
Other Supernatural Tales of Mineral Point
The story of the Mineral Point Vampire is just one of several supernatural tales connected to the town.
The Cornish miners who founded Mineral Point left behind a rich history. These miners came with their own beliefs, practices and superstitions, and some of these myths live on in local myth even today. They talked about mythological creatures: “Piskies” and “Tommy Knockers”.
Piskies, goblin-like creatures, were thought to grow tired of their own children and replace them with human babies. The Tommy Knockers, naughty little sprites that made their homes underground in the mines, would protect miners good to them with crusts of their pasties.
The town is also home to the infamous Ridgeway Ghost. This apparition of a man — or possibly two brothers — killed decades earlier in a bar fight one night during the area’s lead-mining boom, has persistently haunted Mineral Point in repetitive tides, with sightings reported in 40-year cycles from as early as the mid-nineteenth century to well into the 20th century.
The panic over the Ridgeway Phantom got to the point where neighbors asked for escorts with rifles to leave home after the sun set. This myth appears to date to the murder of two local brothers in 1840.
The Walker House Ghost
Another popular ghost story is from the Walker House. They haven’t actually technically admitted it on their website, but the building where the restaurant is located is rumored to be haunted by the ghost of William Caffee who was hanged for murder in 1842 near the site.
The former manager of the Walker House, Walker Calvert, experienced many ghost sightings, including one with a headless man in 1981.
Additional Unexplained Phenomena
In 1987, at midday during a sunny spring, up to 20 people saw a werewolf running in the daylight to a house where they lost no time in watching it turning into a human being. The account was relayed to Wisconsin investigator Linda Godfrey, and is included in her book “Hunting the American Werewolf”.
In his book The W-Files, Jay Rath says in 1986 the local sheriff and other people saw a very bright light over Mineral Point. The light “seemed to be stationary… then shot off at a tremendous rate of speed, silently. The sighting was in the same area, at about the same time as the first vampire sighting and the werewolf sighting, so it seems like Mineral Point could be a hotbed of scary.
Conclusion
Whether the vampire of Mineral Point was a trickster or madman or more otherworldly entity, he has staked a permanent claim in Wisconsin’s lore. It remains a subject of local and visitor interest, a colorful stitch in the complex fabric of history and mystery that makes this town different!
Some say the town could lean into this odd bit of its history, similar to how other Wisconsin locales have embraced their own folklore creatures. I mean, in a place that already has Cornish pasties, an arts community and preserved historical buildings, maybe a vampire can find its place there, too.
Like legends so often are, the truth is likely lost for all time. Was Officer Pepper the butt of an elaborate practical joke, or did he witness something genuinely inexplicable on that night in 1981? The solution to the tale sleeps with the little foot prints which disappeared on the cemetery fence — a legend calculated to play upon the imagination of the people of Mineral Point.
SOURCES:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB5u8OfSS_Y
https://www.ranker.com/list/mineral-point-vampire/april-a-taylor
https://www.wisconsinology.com/the-weird/the-mineral-point-vampire
https://authorlyngibson.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/the-vampire-of-mineral-point/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpsG8lJRpJE
https://driftlesstimesmedia.com/2024/05/05/mineral-point-vampire-wisconsin-folklore/
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