Читать книгу More Haunted Hoosier Trails - Wanda Lou Willis - Страница 20

A few years ago, a very sad and unfortunate event occurred at the Wilson-Vaughan house, located at 723 West Fourth Street in Marion—today known as the Hostess House. An elderly housekeeper tragically died there. The circumstances of the woman’s death are well known. Her loss to the community, friends, and family is still very painful. As so often happens in such circumstances, stories began circulating that a ghost had been seen in one of the upstairs windows. Those who say they’ve seen this apparition believe it to be that of the elderly housekeeper. There could be another explanation, however: It could be Lillian “Peggy” Wilson, the woman the house had been built for as a wedding present.

Far more intriguing than any of its residents may be the spirit of the Hostess House itself. The house’s tale of love, rejection, and remorse has endured half a century and no doubt will continue for many generations to come.

The historical Hostess House, rumored to a tragic presence. PHOTO: Peggy McClelland

The historically significant house is considered to be one of Grant County’s treasures. J. Woodrow Wilson, a prominent Marion bank-er, built the twenty-four room mansion as a wedding present for his wife, Lillian “Peggy” Pamell Wilson. Sadly, the newlyweds only lived in the house a short time, when Peggy, at age twenty-nine, became a widow in 1916.

After her husband’s death the young, wealthy, and vivacious widow traveled in the sophisticated circles of New York and Chicago. Noted to be a delightful hostess, she often entertained her rich and famous New York and Chicago friends at her beautiful home in Marion.

While attending a party in Chicago in 1919, she was introduced to the famous poet and author of the Spoon River Anthology, Edgar Lee Masters. He was fifty-one years old. She was thirty-two. Masters, though married, was well known for becoming involved with rich, sophisticated women. Peggy seemed drawn to men of prominence and artistic success. It wasn’t long before their meeting turned into a love affair.

Masters made several visits to Indiana to visit Peggy at her mansion. They also met in Paris, London, and at Masters’s retreat in Michigan. The affair lasted about two years.

In 1921 Masters attempted to obtain a divorce from his wife so that he could marry Peggy. Before the year’s end, though, Peggy’s ardor had drastically cooled. Masters learned that the great love of his life had been seeing other men and indeed, in 1926, she married Dr. John C. Vaughan.

The romance and his life shattered, the embittered Masters “told all” in his book Mirage, published in 1924. Many of Peggy’s Marion friends knew of Masters’s visits to the mansion, but they were unaware of the love affair between the famous poet and the prominent widow until this book came out.

Peggy continued to entertain and travel between Marion and New York, where she died in 1952. Masters and his wife were divorced. He remarried and moved to New York. Ironically, the two ex-lovers, whose romance would live on forever in the pages of American literature, apparently never knew they lived only a short distance apart in their later years.

Has the spirit of Peggy been seen in an upstairs window? Is she remorseful and waiting for Edgar Lee Masters? Or could she simply be waiting to once more entertain the many famous and rich who were a part of her world? Her presence is certainly felt in this elegant and beautiful home.

Perhaps the answer to the question whether Peggy, in spirit, re-mains within in the Hostess House can be found in the last lines of Masters’s 1926 poem titled “Peggy.”

“It’s night now, Peggy, and the electric arc

Throws lavender lights upon your brow;

You are a ghost now, and I bow

Myself into the dark.”