Highlights Archives
Halloween Week at the Historical Museum
As Halloween approaches, visitors to the Wisconsin Historical Museum can enjoy three days of activities for all ages about the spooky and the supernatural. This year we explore Wisconsin's rich, ghostly storytelling tradition. Haunt your house with a ghost craft for the kids, join in the hunt for Wisconsin's spookiest stories and places, and meet some colorful characters from Wisconsin's past wandering our exhibit floors.
Exploring Weird and Strange Wisconsin
Join paranormal author Linda S. Godfrey at noon Wednesday, October 27, for an illustrated presentation on Weird and Strange Wisconsin. Godfrey has spent her literary career documenting everything from obsessed folk sculptors and ghost roads to UFOs and pigmen, goatmen and werewolves in books such as "Strange Wisconsin," "The Beast of Bray Road," "Weird Wisconsin" (co-authored with R.D. Hendricks) and "Haunted Wisconsin: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Badger State."
At noon Thursday, October 28, singer, author and storyteller Stuart Stotts will share songs and stories for family fun and slight fright in a presentation called Ghostly Songs and Stories from Wisconsin. Come to learn about some of Wisconsin's famous ghosts, and to think about ghosts you may have seen.
Three Dark Tales by Wisconsin's Native Son August Derleth
August Derleth, Wisconsin's most prolific author, told many a spooky tale in his books and short stories, and some of them made it to television. Each day at 2 pm, Wednesday through Friday, October 27-29, enjoy a trio of short clips of Derleth dramas produced for television. In "Lagoda's Heads," travel to Africa and join in the search for a lost explorer who British authorities fear may have been murdered by a powerful witch doctor. In "House – with Ghost," learn how a philandering husband schemes to murder his wife with the aid of a ghost. And travel to a one-room frontier school house in Missouri to discover the unexpected education the teacher gets while trying to reach a hauntingly strange fourth-grader in "Dark Boy." Total run time of the three films is 60 minutes.
Learn more about Derleth's life and distinguished literary career from Derleth devotee David Schweitzer, a member of the August Derleth Society Board of Directors, who will use his own theater background to share cherished bits and pieces of Derleth's writings in a noon presentation, The Life and Works of August Derleth, on Friday, October 29. Schweitzer will discuss some of the 150 books Derleth authored, including a compilation of approximately 50 of his works titled "Sac Prairie Saga," which tells the story of his birthplace and beloved home town Sauk City and its twin village Prairie du Sac.
If You Go
For complete details about the Wisconsin Historical Museum, its location, hours of operation, admission, parking and bus routes, view the museum's visitor information.
:: Posted October 25, 2010
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