The History of Haunted History Tours

The first Haunted History Tour began in 2015 at the historic Satterlee Clark House and focuses on more macabre histroical realities rather than operating a traditional haunted house.

To avoid attaching falce information to people and historical figures, the organizers created the recurring fictional Smithers family to anchor the storylines and narritive around.

Each year features a distinct theme, and this ear explored “Women’s Mental Health from the 1870s through the 1940s” at the fictional Lake Misery Asylum. This year’s tours earned high acclaim from visitors for its historical accuracy and immersive storytelling.

In 2015, the Horicon Historical Society hosted their very first Haunted History Tours that would become an annual event that attracts people from all over the county and even the state.

It started off when someone asked Lahnie Moyle-Neu, curator for the Horicon Historical Society, if they’d ever turn the Satterlee Clark House into a haunted house. Lahnie said, “No, I wouldn’t... But I did say we could instead do something creepy based upon history. What if we recreated a wake? What if we talked about the different disgusting diseases that we may have perished from? And so talks started to commence, and next thing we knew, it’s like ‘Okay let’s do this.’”

The first haunted tour started with the recreation of a wake inside the living space of the Satterlee Clark House, just like it would have happened decades ago. Other themes looked at death, disease, ghost tours, vampires, dolls, cryptids and more.

To pick a theme for the next tours, actors and crew start spewing ideas during their cleanup session as they transition into the Christmas season. Lahnie says that they have so many ideas that they can keep these tours going on for years to come. It isn’t until about the beginning of summer, however, that the Historical Society Board will really sit down to discuss and decide a proper theme.

Originally this year’s theme was supposed to be about fears and phobias, but as they began to do their research, they discovered a pattern for the institutionalization of women for mental illnesses. And so this year’s theme became “Women’s Mental-Health from the 1870s through the 1940s.” This is the second time they looked at mental health, the first being in their third year when they looked at “Mental Illnesses in the Victorian Era.”

Not only did the society want to tell the more macabre stories and history of Wisconsin, but they wanted to keep the privacy of people who may have been involved with the stories, as well as making sure not to give any false history of certain well known names. And thus, the Smithers family was created. “We decided when we first started we don’t want to implement the builder’s name in false things. We don’t want to go around saying names like the Van Brunts or the Satterlee Clark family and say that all of this happened to them, because that’s false history and that’s bad… and so one of our very first actresses came up with the name Jacob Smithers, and that was it,” said Moyle-Neu.

“In the coming years, we always sort of used the Smither’s family as our main characters so that we can build this sort of world around them without having to drag actual people into it,” said Autumn Neu, Lahnie’s daughter and one of the actresses.

Every year the Smither’s family is mentioned in some way or another. In some years, the entire story focuses on members of the family or the household they lived in. In other years, they may only be mentioned in passing, or you may see their name on a book or document. This year, the Smithers are seen twice.

First we see Jacob Smithers V, played by Lahnie’s son, Lahn Neu, as a sort of narrator. He was the very first character people meet via video format as he introduces visitors to Lake Misery Asylum and the themes they are about to witness. We then see him two more times, still in video format, when we transition from the 1870s to the 1940s and at the very end to conclude the tour. We also see Prudence Smithers, played by Lahnie and Mary Schuett, as she tours Lake Misery Asylum to see if it is the right fit for her mother. This is the character the tour follows for the most of the play–at least throughout the 1870s. There is even mention, and with some of the beginning tours, physical representation, of Josephine Smithers, Prudence’s aunt.

As visitors walked around the house, they got to meet many different characters representing many different mental illnesses that were seen in a very negative light in the 1800s and early 1900s. They meet characters with symptoms of distress, agitation, phobias, and many more symptoms that are often seen today to be associated with diagnoses like ADHD, Tourette’s syndrome, schizophrenia and more. To us, these mental illnesses are more normalized, but back then, these things made people, especially women, be labeled as lunatics. Visitors even meet a young lady, played by Autumn Neu, who was put in the asylum by her husband for her “new woman” ideas and behaviors, such as asking questions and refusing to remain silent.

After walking through the asylum grounds and seeing the lives of the people living there, sometimes being referred to as inmates–which was terminology used back then–and which was not always pleasant, the tour moves to the garden, where a woman is experiencing postpartum psychosis, and where a tent is set up with the coffins of those who passed in the asylum, many of their remains going unclaimed to be used towards medical research.

As they travelled through the first half of the tour, visitors may have also noticed how the only women in the asylum were either nurses or patients, and that the men in the asylum were the doctors, or in one case the husband. This is because women were not allowed to be doctors during this time. As we move to the school house, we are also moving to the year 1942 where we are transported to a medical school with a female student. Here, you see two more patients, one with symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and another with symptoms of severe psychomotor agitation. Although there are some changes in the way things are done in the early 1900s compared to the late 1800s–such as women entering psychiatric medicine and names being given to some diagnoses–many illnesses at this time were still unknown, and the medicines and practices used to treat them were still unsettling.

“As someone who lives with mental illnesses, the research and writing struck a deeply personal chord. It reminded me that while mental illness itself has not changed, our understanding of it–and the ways we treat it– has transformed dramatically over time,” Lahnie wrote in a pamphlet given out during the tours that explains more behind the lore and decision making of the tours.

Although ticket sales this year were not the best due to other surrounding events (and the World Series happening at the same time), Lahnie mentioned how this years’ theme and tours have received some of the best feedback to date. “The play itself was so immersive and so many people said it was their favorite one yet. We had so many people reach out to us afterwards and say that this was the best year,” Moyle-Neu said. “We had some nurses come through [the last] weekend, two different nurses, and one of them talked to my daughter, Izzy, and one of them talked to me. They also came back and made a comment on our facebook page as well that she’s been in the medical field for twenty years and she was just shocked at how well we got the information and how well we projected it. She said, ‘You should be applauded because it was so spot on.’”

One comment on their Facebook page even read, “It was FABULOUS! I was terrified, and my friend screamed. Well written, clever and well acted. That’s what keeps me coming back every year.”

What’s next at the Historical Society

To conclude the 2026 year, the Horicon Historical Society will be holding their annual Christmas Open House on Saturday, Dec. 12 and Saturday, Dec. 19, both from noon to 8 p.m. Not only will the Satterlee Clark House be decorated with historical Christmas decorations, but there will also be many traditional crafts being shown and presented throughout, including blacksmithing in the shed and kids crafts in the school house. Plus, you can enjoy some baked treats and a luminary walk in their garden.

Visit the Horicon Historical Society’s Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/horiconwihistoricalsociety to learn more about the Historical Society and their events–and keep an eye out for next year’s Haunted History Tours theme.