Haunted Folklore: Spooky stories of downtown Geneva’s famous ghosts

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.

GENEVA – Downtown Geneva is rife with ghosts.

There’s the piano teacher, Miss Vere A. Cory, who died in 1982. Some say she still can be heard playing the piano in her former house at 216 James St.

The building formerly was the Kris Kringle Haus, a year-round Christmas store, then it became the Designer’s Desk Needlepoint Shop. The owner had the house turned around to face James Street.

It is now Harvey’s Tales, a bookshop.

Vere Cory’s story will be among those in the Geneva History Museum’s Ghost Walk on Oct. 28.

Museum Executive Director Terry Emma said 45-minute walking tours are scheduled for 2 p.m., 4 p.m., 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.

“We’ll walk around downtown Geneva and hear great stories of hauntings that still happen today,” Emma said. “We’ll be walking down Third Street to South First Street to State Street, all in the historic downtown area, past homes and shops that all have stories of hauntings.”

At The Little Traveler, 404 S. Third St., the spirit of Kate Raferty, who opened the iconic Geneva store in 1924 in the couple’s home, is said to linger. She died April 2, 1953, in her apartment upstairs, according to the history of the building.

“She moves merchandise around and things jump off shelves,” Emma said. “I think she’s trying to tell them how to display things better.”

The Charles B. Wells House, 220 S. Seventh St., which was built in the 1850s, also is on the tour. A doctor turned it into his office in 1908 and eventually it became known as the Colonial Hospital, according to the Geneva History Museum.

“The ghosts could be from that era,” Emma said.

Ghosts seem to have followed the collection of the late Darlene Larsen, who helped preserve the Col. Fabyan estate. Larsen died in 2018 and gave her entire collection to the museum, Emma said. It was five carloads of boxes.

“Here I am, organizing files and a question came up,” Emma said. “It happened twice that I could pick up any file in that room and it would answer the question I just asked. It freaked me out twice. It was like her hand led me to that right folder. The hair stood up on my arm.”

Emma said she knew Larsen, who fought to save old buildings as a preservationist.

“I’ll say, ‘Thank you, Darlene,’” she said.

When the old library was being emptied out for the move to its new location, employees found a pair of old windows left in the HVAC room that didn’t match anything else in the building.

“They were cool, church-like,” Emma said. “I said sure, we’d take them and figure out where they came from.”

She went to one of Larsen’s boxes of stuff, put her hand in and pulled out photos of the Illinois State Training School for Delinquent Girls, which used to be located off Route 25 in Geneva.

The school was open from 1894 to 1978, where the Fox Run subdivision is located now. All that’s left of the girls school is a graveyard.

“The windows were from the chapel of the old girls school before it was torn down,” Emma said. “And it was there in Darlene’s stuff. We’ll use them when we do our girls school exhibit next time.”

Other times, she hears noises when working there alone at night.

“Here I am, among all of this old stuff and you research all these people and you start to feel like you’re part of that family,” Emma said. “And all of a sudden, noises start happening. And I wonder, ‘Did I unearth something?’”

Register for the ghost walk online at genevahistorymuseum.org.