by Tena Starr
For the most part, Vermont cultivates a vanilla image — a small, pretty state, full of cows, skiers and maple syrup.
But if you poke it a little, Vermont is weird. It used to be weirder, but there are still remnants of eccentricity and odd characters.
Last week, Steve and I found ourselves floundering around in the town of Proctor, population around 1,100, in search of a castle. I realize, of course, that we have our own castle here, in Irasburg, but the one we were looking for is big and old and open to the public. And maybe haunted.
I’d never heard of it until a few weeks ago when Steve suggested we go there. How Steve knew about Wilson Castle, I don’t know. But Steve is in possession of volumes of esoteric information, the kind that makes him no one you want to challenge at trivia.
We started these little Vermont trips at the beginning of COVID when Governor Phil Scott urged us to take stay-cations. Why not? There’s got to be something to do in Vermont besides ski, tour Ben and Jerry’s or pretend to milk a cow (too much of the real thing in my life).
We’re not official 251 members (people who set out to spend time in every Vermont town), but we’re kind of vaguely trying.
And that’s how we ended up in Proctor where Google Maps on my phone was blanking on the existence of Wilson Castle. We wandered Proctor, small as it is, a good while, and that was interesting because everything was made of marble — the fire station, the church, the cemetery walls, the curbstones.
Marble is kind of an upscale stone, and Proctor isn’t really a mansion kind of place, but it is home to marble quarries, so, yeah, marble curbstones.
After asking directions at the post office from an employee who said he’d never been to the castle, we eventually found a big, old turreted bunch of brick on a hill way outside town and pulled into the driveway.
It wasn’t an auspicious start. The parking lot was a little bedraggled, the castle looked more so, and someone was repeatedly shooting a gun, as if target shooting. Not that this would bother me at home, but was someone shooting from the castle? At what?
Never found out, but a pleasant young man greeted us, took a couple of senior tour fees and asked us to wait a few minutes before his tour started.
The story of Wilson Castle, also called Johnson’s Folly, is an odd one and a bit hard to put together since there are various accounts. What matters, I guess, is that John Johnson, a doctor and Vermonter, spent $1.3-million ($33-million today) of his wife’s money building it, starting in 1885. It took seven and a half years to plan and build it.
Why Dr. Johnson wanted to build a castle in Proctor I do not know. He just kept spending money and building, in every architectural manner that existed, until the family (presumably his wife, Sarah’s) said, no more you’re done, buddy.
After all that, John and Sarah lived there just briefly. Because Sarah died. One account of what happened next is that Dr. Johnson couldn’t pay the taxes or maintenance, and the property, which included 115 acres and many outbuildings, was repossessed. Another is that he promptly sold it.
The castle has 32 rooms, 84 stained glass windows, and 13 fireplaces.
It’s easy to see why the place was called Johnson’s Folly. For one thing, a big thing, the bricks to build it were imported from England, though there were kilns in Vermont. Our guide pointed out that the bricks, which are visibly deteriorating, were not suited to the climate. Vermont bricks would have been better. And duh, cheaper?
Dr. Johnson imported the marble from France, though he was surrounded by marble in Proctor. Go figure. Our guide noted that Johnson’s insistence on importing materials from Europe did not endear him to the locals, who were the ones to dub the place Johnson’s Folly, after he either lost it or sold it, or whatever happened.
The property, changed hands multiple times after that, including once being lost in a poker game. It was eventually sold on the cheap to Herbert Wilson, a pioneer in AM radio, who retired from the Army Signal Corps in the 1950s and settled into life at the castle. He died in 1981 and left the place to his daughter Blossom.
The castle is in obvious need of repair, though guides said they’re getting there. The English bricks are pocked, the extravagantly painted or stenciled ceilings caved or scarred in some places.
But most of the original furniture is still there, and the place remains stunningly beautiful, as well as mysterious.
It’s privately owned still, by Mr. Wilson’s granddaughter Denise Davine, who keeps a room there that she uses sometimes, though she has a house elsewhere. Her room is blocked off to the public, as is the third floor with its ballroom.
The place has maybe been saved by the paranormal community, which seeks events there, a guide said. No one in the remaining family had the money to maintain an extravagant castle built with the wrong materials to start with.
Is it haunted? Maybe. One guide said he’s a skeptic, but heard men talking in the billiards room, their final words being, “get out.” Another time, while checking on the place he got a vibe telling him to just go.
Another guide said Dr. Johnson, the original builder, “hates everyone” and still believes the castle to be his.
And, he said, the most paranormal activity thus detected has been in in Sarah’s original bedroom. That’s not surprising, he said. She was a woman who liked to be the center of attention.
I’m not closed to paranormal. But while we were there nothing out of the ordinary happened. Just an old castle with its brick and beautiful ceilings in need of restoration. And obviously, if the paranormal community is contributing to castle maintenance, there’s incentive to encourage them. All the money goes to maintenance and restoration, guides said.
If you Google Wilson Castle, you’ll find a number of videos of people investigating paranormal activity there. I’ve watched a couple, and they’re entertaining but unconvincing, but, hey, folly it might have been, but it’s a spectacular place that should be preserved.
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