Haunted Victorian in Watseka, IL

DINNER IN WATSEKA

Watseka

ELEGANT DINING IN haunted VICTORIAN SPLENDOR

Travel back in time to the Victorian age with a private dinner prepared by Chef Valentino in this restored, award-winning Victorian Italianate villa, just 90 miles south of downtown Chicago. Come for just an evening or combine a weekend getaway, catered to by nature, history, and your own private chef.

In 2020, this home won Landmarks Illinois’s annual award for restoration, highlighting the owners’ dedication to returning the home to its original detail and splendor.

This home was built in 1868 by the Asa and Dorothy Roff, a family of Sprititualists. After ten years of performing seances and doing Spritiualist rituals in the house, a possession is alleged to have taken place in the home, which was memorialized in the eye witness account called “The Watseka Wonder.” Thanks to this story, this home and its original story of possession has been featured on the Travel Channel, SyFy, and Discovery+. The most notable are “The Possessed” by the Booth Brothers (2009) and “Ghost Brothers,” season 2, episode 1.

This house was also home to a corrupt federal judge who faked his own death to escape the wrath of those impacted by his questionable judicial decisions, as well as the Amelia Earhardt of Iroquois County, an independent woman who, in 1939, came to inherit farmland the size of Rhode Island. To ensure that the 36 farms that comprised her land holdings were being run to her expectations, she learned how to fly, bought an airplane, and took off from the property each morning to ensure that her farms where being managed to her expectations. A significant accomplishment for an independent, effectively single woman in the patriarchal countryside of rural Illinois.

A tour of the home with an explanation of its history is included with the dinner.

Looking to communicate with the other side? Guests can also add on a guided session with a Ouija board from 1919, as well as a session with a trusted medium.