Social Science

Bucolic Door County has a rich haunted history of spooky shipwrecks, bizarre tales and ghost stories.

Because Door County received its name from Death's Door, the perilous strait with more freshwater shipwrecks than anywhere else in the world, it should be no surprise that the idyllic county has plenty of ghostly history. In the company of storyteller Gayle Soucek, meet lighthouse keepers whose sense of duty extends beyond the grave. Catch a glimpse of the phantom ship Le Griffon, never seen for more than a moment since it sailed through a crack in the ice in 1679. And it is not just the waters of Door County that carry the freight of haunted tales--Country Road T has its share of spooks, bizarre beasts have caused disturbances in the woods and there are whispered rumors that infamous gangster Al Capone added to the county's stock of ghosts through a handful of brutal murders, including an ex-girlfriend and two unacknowledged children.

Based on Corey Geiger's popular Homesteader's Hope column, On a Wisconsin Family Farm flings the barn doors wide open to a cast of characters who built America's Dairyland.

In 1905, twenty-eight-year-old Anna Satorie, granddaughter of Bohemian immigrants, went against cultural norms and became the sole owner of her family's homestead when she purchased the farm from her father. The next year, Anna married neighboring farmer John Burich, also of Bohemian extraction, and the couple went about building a thrifty family farm. But pioneer life was fraught with trials and tribulations. Polio and tuberculosis claimed loved ones, and the difficulties of Prohibition forced the family to fabricate the death of John's bootlegging brother to keep gangsters away from the farm. Neighbors pitched in as fellow immigrant families helped construct farmsteads and support one another through unsanctioned bank loans, daring dynamite work, and barn raisings. Leaving work aside, this vibrant community also threw parties met by the rooster's early-dawn crow.

Pairing his rural roots with lively storytelling, Geiger captures six generations of farming, family, and faith.

Door County is the home to numerous shipwrecks of pleasure craft and steamers, on a photographic journey of the treacherous waters and those they have claimed.

Door County is the final resting place of many shipwrecks, from the first Euro American ship to sail the western Great Lakes, LaSalle's fabled Griffin that left Washington Island in 1679 never to be heard of again, to modern-day pleasure crafts that find the shallow inlets and bays hard to navigate. Door Peninsula Shipwrecks takes the reader on a photographic journey around the peninsula and back to a time of wooden ships and iron men. From Sturgeon Bay to the east coast of the peninsula to the northern islands and Green Bay, the journey encompasses early wooden sail craft to steel steamers, the brave sailors who sailed the treacherous waters, and the heroic lifesavers who rescued them.

Explore America's Dairyland and the American Spirit

At the dawn of World War II, Wisconsin was home to nearly 200,000 dairy farms. Today, barely 6,000 remain. The ghosts of the missing can still be seen in withering old farms along lonely highways, some restored, many abandoned or decayed, but all with a story to tell. Immigrants dreamed of owning their own farms, only to be fleeced by the promotion of "cutover'? lands in the Northwoods. Freedmen and women arrived in southwestern Wisconsin and became farmers and renowned barn-builders in one of the earliest integrated communities in the nation.

Through hundreds of hours of site visits, interviews, and research, historian and photographer, Scott Wittman extracts the forgotten truths from legend to tell the real stories of those who created The Dairy State.

Milwaukee is best known for its beer - and rightfully so. But in the days of Prohibition, the big alcohol suppliers were not Miller, Blatz, Schlitz, and Pabst.

The Mafia had control, and it made its money by running alcohol as far away as Canada and Indiana, as well as with counterfeiting, the numbers racket, and two of the biggest heists in American history. From then on, the sky was the limit, as the Mafia indulged in extortion, protection rackets, and skimming from Las Vegas casinos. The Cream City had its crooked lawyers, corrupt cops, and even a mayor on the take. There was the blood of those who dared to stand in the syndicate's way, who were found dead in ditches or as victims of car bombs. The members of the Mafia included doctors, real estate men, restaurateurs, tavern owners, funeral directors, union presidents, and the most famous Milwaukee gangster of all, Frank Balistrieri. While now considered extinct, the Milwaukee Family was once a dominant force in the Midwest.

German immigrants are responsible for making the great town of Milwaukee what it is today.

German immigrants began arriving to Milwaukee in the 1830s. By 1859, over one-third of the city was German. They opened schools and churches, started businesses, ran for office, and introduced professional German theater, art, and music to the city. Milwaukee soon became known throughout the United States--and even abroad--as the ""German Athens of North America."" There is a reason Milwaukee is known as the city of beer and brats, why it is here that the biggest Germanfest in the country takes place, and why still today the German language can be seen and heard throughout the city. As the well-known German newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine stated in 2008, ""Deutscher als Milwaukee ist nirgendwo in Amerika"" (There is nowhere in America more German than in Milwaukee).

Drawing on never-before-seen materials, author John E. Kinville unfolds the complex legacy of Women's Klan no.14 aka the Grey Eagles of Chippewa Falls.

In the xenophobic atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s, Ku Klux Klan activity spiked in Wisconsin and gave rise to Women's Klan no. 14, also known as the Grey Eagles of Chippewa Falls. Against a national backdrop that saw the male and female Klan hurl its collective might into influencing presidential elections and federal legislation, quotidian matters often stole the attention of the Grey Eagles. For every minute spent upholding Prohibition and blocking Catholic Al Smith's path to the White House, they spent two raising funds for their order and helping neighbors in need. What unfolds in Kinville's work is the complex legacy of these Chippewa Falls women who struggled to balance their noble intentions against the malicious ideology of the Klan.

Germans in Milwaukee: A Neighborhood History chronicles the stories behind the German footprints in the city.

Like no other large American city, Germans dominated Milwaukee. Their presence inhabits the city's neighborhoods from its buildings and place names to its parklands and statuary. Their influence also lives in the memories shared by local residents. A small Milwaukee neighborhood south of Miller Valley was christened after a farmer's pigs, and a busboy turned beer baron built the famous Pabst Brewery in West Town. A ghost is said to haunt the old Blatz Brewing compound. And the remains of the early tanning industry can still be seen in Walker's Point.

Compiling over 1,200 interviews through their organization, Urban Anthropology Inc., authors Jill Lackey and Richard Petrie share these ground-level perspectives of the lasting German influence on the Cream City.

Frozen custard is more than a dessert in Milwaukee. It's a culture, a lifestyle and a passion. Find the stories behind your favorite flavor at local festivals and homegrown neighborhood stands.

From the stand that inspired television's Happy Days to the big three - Gilles, Leon's and Kopp's - take a tour through the history of this guilty pleasure. Learn about its humble origins as an unexpected rival to ice cream and its phenomenal success as a concession at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933 that made the snack famous. Milwaukee authors and editors Kathleen McCann and Robert Tanzilo launch a celebration of custard lore, featuring a stand guide and much more. Dig into what makes Milwaukee the Frozen Custard Capital of the World.

What unknown spirits lurk among the living in the Gateway to Wisconsin?

oin Candice Shatkins, a founding member of the Paranormal Investigators of Kenosha, as she uncovers the spooky secrets and unlikely legends of Kenosha County. From a secret burial chamber under a library to Wisconsin's very own Wolfman, a shipwreck on Black Tuesday to the haunted observatory tower of a former seminary and boarding school, Kenosha's ghosts are sure to delight visitors and residents alike in this stirring account of the area's historic haunts.

Green Bay has always been a city with a fierce sense of tradition complemented by a friendly atmosphere. Those qualities seem to attract not only living visitors but also spirits of the dead.

Tour the city's haunted past with Tim Freiss as he follows the trail of the tragic, the inexplicable and the just plain spooky. From the desecration of the father of Wisconsin's burial spot to the winery that was a stop on the Underground Railroad to the nightclub haunted by a bullet-riddled love triangle, Haunted Green Bay stirs up the kind of history that keeps us awake a little bit longer once the lights are out.

A history of the Cream City's lost Black neighborhood told by the people who lived there

Some people don't have to imagine what Milwaukee's Bronzeville was like. They have only to remember. They recall Walnut Street alive with businesses serving a hard-working Black population making something out of the meager resources available to them. They describe religious establishments such as St. Marks Methodist Episcopal, St. Benedict the Moor, Calvary Baptist, and St. Matthews CME attending to the spiritual life and remember the Flame, the Metropole, and Satin Doll night clubs taking care of entertainment and secular needs. Above all, they recollect a people looking out for the well-being of all within its realm.

Gathering interviews with residents of the now vanished neighborhood, Dr. Sandra E. Jones reimagines Bronzeville not just as a place, but as a spirit engendered by a people determined to make a way out of no way.