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the widow began to fall in love with the new - but married - man in her life. Soon, the widow’s affection for the farm hand grew more and more difficult to hide.

The worker continued to spurn her advances, though, and she was eventually forced to acknowledge that he had no intention of violating the faith of his wife. Not long thereafter, the farm hand noticed that his own health was starting to fail. He became very suspicious of the widow, and imagined that she was little by little introducing some type of poison to his daily meals. Suddenly, it dawned on him. Perhaps the widow had also poisoned her sickly husband once she had found a new love interest. He immediately quit his job and moved from the widow’s farm.

The suspicions of the farm hand fueled widespread gossip about the widow and the circumstances surrounding the death of her husband. As the lonely widow grew older, local boys would be petrified whenever they were obliged to stay overnight at the stone house during the thunder and lightning storms that frightened the old woman. At least one boy literally ran from the farm house after an overnight stay when the widow offered him a bit of breakfast before he went home.

The eventual death of the widow did nothing to quash the local gossip that surrounded her life. Reports circulated about a strange type of powder that was found near her lifeless body, and about the physical symptoms that were consistant with a suspected death by poisoning.

Many years later, one history buff recounted the legend of the stone house to a group of residents who were warned against taking a strictly literal view of the strange events. But one woman reportedly stood up at the rear of the gathering and insisted the telling was indeed accurate. “I know,” she said, “because the farm hand was my father.”

According to other accounts, the stone house has been haunted by a poltergeist that some believe was the spirit of a young mentally ill woman who murdered her parents and then committed suicide in the house.  (Newspaper clipping from notebook created by Marie "Frenchie" Lefstad, c. 1960 - 2002)
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