The lore behind the real Rainbow Springs Haunted House

You can’t talk about the Rainbow Springs site in Mukwonago without including golf in the same breath. Stretching roughly 950 acres west of the Wisconsin village, the property once hosted two 18-hole golf courses, known for their beauty, as well as their propensity to steal golf balls. The courses didn’t have sand traps but rather several bodies of water.

Golf became the lure that drove Mukwonago developer, Francis Schroedel, to construct what would have been a world-renowned golf resort and convention center had he not run out of money. He fell $2 million short, with most of the resort, including a 756-room hotel and a 50,400-square-foot central lodge, completed.

The volunteers responsible for bringing the Rainbow Springs Haunted Hotel to life. Pictured: Front row, left to right: Coach Bob, Judy, Pete, Nancy, Coach Nick, Lee. Back row, left to right: Allison, Nicole.

While Schroedel never got to see his dream come to fruition, the property still had functionality. In the 1990s, it hosted one of the state’s best haunted houses. Ironically, and appropriately, it was golf that motivated two local men to bring this spooky structure to life.

The origins of the Rainbow Springs Haunted House

I had the privilege of sitting down with eight people who played a part in the success of the Rainbow Springs Haunted House. These current and former Mukwonago residents told me their stories about creating unique scares while experiencing some unusual moments inside the remains of one of the decaying hotel wings.

The idea to use the old hotel as a haunted house stemmed from two golf coaches, Bob and Nick. The pair held practices for the high school boys and girls golf teams on the Rainbow Springs courses. Like any high school team, funding wasn’t always easy to come by, and the pair realized they could use the vacant hotel as a haunted house. It could function as a local draw while also raising money for the teams.

In 1990, the area already had a haunted house, courtesy of the Mukwonago Jaycees. They used Field Park to stage the scares, but the group admitted that it lacked the elements to make it stand out amongst a crowded landscape. The pair pitched the Rainbow Springs hotel as a new location, offering to run it. Once the Jaycees looked at the property, they realized it was too involved and ambitious for them. So the haunted house concept swung to the pair and their friends to create something unique on the site.

Blank Canvas

Schroedel exhausted his fortune – he burned through $26 million – trying to bring the resort to life. Though most of it was completed, he refused to open it without everything being operational. He wouldn’t take outside investments or assistance. He wanted the property to be solely funded by his own means.

In doing so, the hotel portion of the resort was finished, but not furnished. That left the group with a blank canvas. They were limited only by their collective imaginations.

The group quickly discovered just how eerie the hotel was, especially at night. Not only were the rooms not furnished but they didn’t have electricity. Any work at night would need to be handled with portable light sources, mainly flashlights. The hallways weren’t short either. They stretched forward for what seemed like 100 or more yards.

The group knew they had a special location. If the vacant hallways and rooms could scare them, they could only imagine the terror they would bring when the haunted house was finished. They also didn’t want to rely on gore, either. To them, the best scares came from fears and phobias, and the knowledge that something was slightly off.

The group created several unique scares for the haunted house, many of which are still recalled fondly to this day. The most well-known scare came from a train that would roll towards you. The effect – created by using a shopping cart, a train horn, a light, and sound effects – made visitors think they were on the verge of being flattened as they proceeded down a long corridor.

Another great came from two rooms with fences separating them. The scare would come from somewhere in the first room, which would force visitors to back up into the fence. From the other room, an actor would run a rod along the fence, creating a sudden spark effect. Other noteworthy scares included an alien room, a polka dot room, fishing lures hanging from the ceiling, a real coffin with a vampire inside, and a red-light drenched hallway. A haunted hayride served as an optional part of the experience, allowing visitors to experience a portion of the site’s sprawling acres at night.

The location also created the perfect ambiance. To access the hotel, visitors would need to travel nearly 1 mile into a dense forest down a paved pathway. The twisting road included a covered bridge and bodies of water that would sometimes emit fog under the right conditions.

Community involvement

Great scares are one part of the puzzle. You need actors to sell them. Fortunately, the group turned to locals with a flair for the dramatic and community theater credentials. This elevated the scares and helped keep visitors immersed in the experience. As the group learned while visiting other haunted houses in the area, a few bad actors can spoil the suspense.

The haunted house relied heavily on volunteers, many from the Mukwonago area. Local police officers would assist with security. Other community members would help with ticket sales. They even had members of the high school girls' gymnastics team dress up in polka dot suits and execute some of their moves in the polka dot room. Because they blended into the walls, seeing someone doing a flip or cartwheel created unnerving visual trickery.

With a spooky setting and solid actors, the next thing the group needed to think about was marketing. At the time, social media wasn’t a thing, and the Internet was limited by dial-up speeds. The group turned to the newspapers and local radio stations, using the lore of the location to their advantage.

After Schroedel was removed from the property, he declared, “If I can’t open it, no one will.” New lore had been established. From that point on, other developers struggled to do anything with the property. Additionally, rumors circulated that Schroedel haunted the property, with some claiming to have seen him in his vacant office.

The lore proved useful. Newspaper articles and radio shout-outs brought people out in droves from not only Wisconsin but from the surrounding states. That first year, the group saw as many as 2,000 people a night. While some haunted houses could easily go through that volume, the group prided itself on creating an experience that would last at least half an hour.

They refused to funnel everybody through quickly, which usually led to the common pitfall found in for-profit houses, where one group bumps into another midway through the haunt.

The entry fee for the haunted house was $6, but a $1 discount was offered to those who brought a non-perishable item for the food pantry. As the group recalled, the Mukwonago Food Pantry never had a shortage during the haunted house’s tenure.

With a hit on their hands, the group continued to operate the house for the next decade. To keep the haunted house fresh, they would listen to their customers. If a particular scare or room stood out, they would keep it in the rotation. If something wasn’t working, they would adjust it or replace it during the season. Many haunted houses would only make those changes between seasons, but this group wanted to keep it lively and unique. For visitors, that meant visiting the haunt earlier in the season and then later could yield two different experiences.

The group constantly evolved. They would visit TransWorld, a haunted house expo, to learn about new innovations. New ideas would also flow between the group to ensure that visitors would keep coming back for more.

The haunted house, however, wasn’t without its challenges. In 1996, the A-frame central lodge burned down. The attached hotel wing they used remained intact, but the group couldn’t use the property immediately following the fire. They went to the State Fair to assist with the Haunted Walk in the Woods in 1996 and 1997. After that, they returned to Rainbow Springs until 2001. The next year, another fire destroyed most of the hotel wing, ending any hopes of the haunted house continuing in that location.

The group recalibrated and went to Alpine Valley to run a two-story haunted house for the next two years. Eventually, the demands of life – in the form of family and kids – became too much and the group disbanded. The memories of the Rainbow Springs Haunted House, however, lived on.

Ghost Stories

It was one thing to run a haunted attraction on an eerie location. It was another to spend hours upon hours, year after year, inside an actual haunted house. The group shared several of their stories, many of which chilled them more than the manufactured scares they worked tirelessly to create.

Lake Walkers: “I was coming to Rainbow Springs at 5:30 a.m. As I arrived, a car came flying down the road, and two people stepped out. They were white as a sheet and were freaking out, saying they counted 12 people crossing the lake in the fog. They walked onto the lake and crossed it.”

Car Shove: “We were coming into work one night, driving between the lakes, and my car was pushed. Like someone hit me from behind and tried to spin my car around. I went sideways and had to maneuver to avoid falling into the lake.” 

Schroedel Lives?: “It was early morning and we were in the concession area underneath the banquet room. We had an electrician there that day and he was going to fix some wiring issues. He comes downstairs after working and asks us who the guy was on the balcony. He had a full conversation with him and said he was really nice. We asked him who he was referring to. He looks and sees a picture of Francis. He points and says, ‘That guy right there.’”

Leave The Crayons Alone: “Our daughter had a Halloween party on the property during a non-haunted house night. There were all these stations set up for activities. All of the guests jump on the hayride, as another girl arrives late. I told her she could sort the crayons until they return. A few minutes later, she came running over to me and said, ‘There’s a man there and he won’t let me touch the crayons. He was talking to me and now he’s gone.’”

Floating By: “I was working on one of the rooms. We were sealing off one of the entrances, and I’m on the other side of it by myself in a pitch-black hallway. As they are sealing it, I turn around and see this floating orb coming close towards me. I didn’t stay in that hallway much longer.”

There Will Be Blood: “My friend and I were working in opposite offices, which are at the ends of a long hallway. It was getting dark and there’s no electricity, so we are using our portable lamps in the offices. I hear footsteps coming towards me, thinking it was my friend. He hears footsteps coming towards him, thinking it was me. We realize this and meet in the hallway, where we find a trail of blood. It leads to one of the rooms that we normally keep locked. Only this time, the door was open. We walk inside the room with our lights and see a small hole in the window (this was one of the many standard hotel rooms) and find fresh blood splattered all over the walls and floor. We thought it might have been a deer, but we never found a body. Also, the hole in the window was too small for an animal capable of spraying that much blood.”

Rituals: “We would occasionally see a light go on and off in Francis’ office. One night, this happened when we had two cops with us. The difference is they saw someone near his office. We go up there with them and they follow the trail into a nearby room. When we walked inside, we found a pentagram on the floor with candles around it.”

No Smoking: “We had smoke detectors installed in the hallways that we were using. While working, all the smoke detectors in the adjacent hallway started going off at the same time. When I walked over to that hallway, they stopped. But then the smoke detectors in the hallway I just left started going off at the same time.”