Before Woodland, Ho-Chunk, Menominee or Potawatomi inhabited the area, the Mound People traveled and lived in Racine millennia ago A sonnet of mounds remains to tell with silent green — the dead on dead, who gets counted, and who gets named who owns which plots, who gets seen, dug out even amid red echoes of…
Category: history
Haunting, Haunted, Haunts
by Jessie Lynn McMains All houses wherein men have lived and diedAre haunted houses.—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from “Haunted Houses” Every house is a haunted house. The things which haunt them might truly be ghosts, or they may just be the ghosts of memory. They may exist independently of us, may reside in the pipes and…
“I guess there’s just a meanness in this world” (Murder Ballads and Death Songs)
by Jessie Lynn McMains This song is about two people who go into the woods, but only one of them comes out. That’s my favorite kind of song. I have a few of those in my songbook. Rennie Sparks, The Handsome Family There’s a lot of contention about murder ballads (and other adjacent death songs:…
A Field Guide to Ghosts and Cryptids of Southeast Wisconsin
by Jessie Lynn McMains If you’re anything like me, the start of spooky season has given you the urge to seek out haunted places and creepy creatures. Actually, if you’re anything like me, you have the urge to seek out those things year-round, but I digress… Wisconsin has a wealth of ghosts and monsters. What…
ArtRoot Writer-In-Residence 