During the long dark nights of October, the chill of a good ghost story has a certain legendary appeal, which is something DJ Slater can certainly appreciate.
A haunted house fan since his childhood days, and a journalist trained in compiling factual information as an adult, the Milwaukee native and first-time book author collected enough legendary material in his life to envision his own spooky story. It took him a career of years, but the result are now tangible and real.
In a new book, “Legend Has It,” Slater, 42, tells a horror story drawn from a real-life legend, creating an adventure within a horror story meant to satisfy readers, and himself. So he looked for a setting to inspire him, and he found one.
But what exactly is so scary about Mukwonago? Therein lies the tale.
Rainbow Springs, a failed resort, rose from the dead as a treasured haunt
Growing up in Franklin, where his parents still reside, Slater remembered haunt attractions as a teenager, and thrived in the mix of fear and fun he experienced.
The typically staged performances called to the actor in him — he’s performed in plays at Sunset in Elm Grove, for instance — and he appreciated from the perspective as a writer, a skill he used in newspaper jobs at the Washington Post, Wausau Daily Herald, Wisconsin State Journal and Green Bay Press-Gazette.
Like a generation of children (and adults) in the latter half of the 20th century, Slater also experienced Rainbow Springs, the resort hotel developed by Francis Schroedel that never opened after it was built in the 1960s. Over time, the vacant hotel took on a creepy air, as most abandoned buildings do, but in this case became a commercial haunt that also benefited from its cursed background.
Without knowing it at the time, Slater, as a senior at Franklin High School in 2001, was inspired. “Whenever you talk about Rainbow Springs, everybody has a memory about it,” he said in a phone interview. “Going to that haunted house, especially, it left its mark on me.”
Buried off the beaten bath off state Highway 83, the property was accessible via county Highway LO — on a path in itself that lent itself well to a genre, at least in Slater’s mind.
“Once you go down LO, and I did this again recently, it’s hard to find the turnoff for Rainbow Springs,” he said, setting the mood. “And then once you get there and you go down this long pathway, especially at dark, you have these trees that are canopying over the sky. It just looks like a place that you are basically being sent off to go die.
“It looks like something out of ‘The Shining.'”
Volunteers, who Slater interviewed at one point, provided the scares added to the depth of the experience. “They really spent so much time on the scares that actually gets you — not the jump-out boo scares, but these scares where it’s like there’s this tension, this foreboding,” Slater said.
But Rainbow Springs, demolished more than 20 years ago after a fire, offered something more: an afterlife of sorts.
Slater’s novel mixes Mukwonago legend into haunted tale
According to a publicity summary of “Legend Has It,” the novel follows six college friends who find a fabled haunted house attraction in Mukwonago. Once inside, they realize every threat is real and must endure 10 floors of sheer terror to reach the exit.
Naturally, there’s more to the story.
For one, in the novel, it’s not at all certain the house is real. The “legend” involves a haunted house that has no home. Instead, it’s one that travels across the Midwest every October. Slater, who studied history as well as journalism for his bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, didn’t fabricate that element. It’s essentially a real-life urban legend, one that has increased in popularity over the decades, he said.
In the book, the central character, Seth McCartney, was once a fan of horror stories and haunted houses before his interests faded as he entered his adult years. His college friends feel he needs one more scare, for old time’s sake. But, in a teasing style, the author suggests “Seth and his friends will soon discover why some places weren’t meant to be found.”
Rainbow Springs’ backstory created the kind of setting for the novel that drove Slater’s narrative, better than other more accessible haunted attractions could.
“Especially in Wisconsin, the other places I have been to, like Terror on the Fox (in Ashwaubenon), are wide out in the open,” he said. “Or abandoned haunted houses throughout the interstate, they’re all places you can (readily) see. But what’s a place that’s hidden and that you would not just stumble upon?”
Slater’s journey finally leads to a writer’s dream: a novel
Obviously, given his background as a journalist (including magazines) and marketing, Slater is no stranger to writing. In his biography summary, he notes that he wrote his first story while he was in third grade.
Despite a career path using his acumen, he didn’t move quickly to the path, dark or otherwise, of a novelist until three decades later. When did he see his destiny?
“I’ve answered this a few different times, but when I was in high school, junior year, I was walking between classes when I had this epiphany,” Slater said. “I was in the hallway and I said to myself, ‘I know what I want to do when I grow up.'”
Actually, while seeing himself as a one-day author, he also thought about himself as an actor. Either way, he knew either career goal was a matter of a simple declaration. Internally, he acknowledged his pursuits would involve years of work and experience, not just academic training.
“So my thought was, I should be a journalist because that way I could get those other skill sets — because, you know, there’s deadline pressures, the critical thinking, and all the different things we have that we don’t think we have,” he said. “And then I let that help me along my career path while I chase the novel dream on the side.”
When he reached the point he felt a novel was ready to emerge from him, Slater, an avowed Halloween fan, didn’t have too hard a time tying his professional experience to his personal experiences. Initially conceived as one in a series of short stories, the book grew as he reached deeper into his imagination.
Like any author, he doesn’t want to give too much of his story away, but he allows one hint: the journey doesn’t end with “Legend Has It” — which was released in September by Rowan Prose Publishing and is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other retail outlets.
A book series? Only he knows for certain where the dark path might lead, but good (and bad) things come in threes.
Contact reporter Jim Riccioli at james.riccioli@jrn.com.