At the north end of Watseka, Illinois is a large brick two-story home. It looks like an ordinary midwestern house, but a story from its past makes people wonder what secrets the walls contain. In 1877, Mary Lurancy Vennum was born near the town of Watseka. At the age of thirteen, she had trouble sleeping at night, telling her family that she heard voices calling to her. She started having seizures and psychotic episodes, claiming to be possessed by someone else’s spirit. Her relatives told the family to have her admitted to an asylum for treatment. Instead, her parents took her to see E. W. Stevens, a local renowned spiritualist.
According to Stevens, Vennum’s body was taken over by other spirits. She spoke in different voices and became several different people, including an old woman named Katrina Hogan and a young man named Willie Canning. Eventually, she became possessed by the spirit of Mary Roff, who had died twelve years earlier. Mary Roff’s parents lived in the home that stands on the north side of town and after meeting with Vennum, they were convinced she was possessed by their daughter’s spirit. They invited Vennum to live with them, and after staying at the Roff home for several weeks, Mary’s spirit eventually left and Vennum returned to her normal self. She later married and moved to California, living a long life.
E. W. Stevens wrote a book titled The Watseka Wonder about the ordeal. C. W. Raymond came to own the house after the Roffs. He served as a federal judge in the Oklahoma territory, and after his death in 1939, Raymond’s step-daughter Katharine Clifton inherited the house. She owned several farms in the region and built a runway behind the house so she could fly an airplane around to view the status of the crops. Currently the home is owned by John Whitman, who restored it to its original condition. It is used for private events and rented to guests on Airbnb.
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