The Secret History of the Hill

West of Crystal Lake, in what is now known as Burnsville, stands a deeply troubled patch of earth. It is a place unmarked on survey maps and unrecorded in the more legitimate history books and chronicles of Dakota County.

It was soon after Irish and Scottish immigrants arrived to settle in the area in the 1850’s that tales, told in hushed whispers, began to spread. There was something unnatural, something unwholesome about a nearby hillside.

For many years this malignant piece of land was avoided. Those travelling on the dirt road which warily skirted its eastern side (much later to become I35) would unconsciously quicken their pace as they approached and let out a sigh of relief once they’d passed. It was not farmed and no one would have thought to build upon it.

This changed in 1891, when a stubborn but wealthy Scot, Hector Cromarty, despite kindly suggestion and firm advice from those familiar with the reputation of the place, insisted on building a home for himself and his ill-fated bride Mary Cromarty. Despite difficulties with shifting soil, an insane roofer and a persistent malodorous fungus the construction of the grand Victorian, Orchard Manor, was completed and in 1892 Hector Cromarty and his new wife moved in.

By 1896 Hector Cromarty’s wealth was gone. Although there was a wide spread economic depression at the time, local farmers still attributed Cromarty’s ill-fortune to “something wicked in the soil.” Cromarty berated them for their “ridiculous superstitions, nonsense and claptrap.” “I’ll not ever leave this hill”, he proudly boasted, a statement that would prove to be all to true.

He and his wife opened ORCHARD MANOR as a bed and breakfast to travelers to help bring in funds. Not even Mary’s Scottish cooking could lure local patronage to the manor.

After Mary’s death in 1901 of an un-diagnosable wasting disease, the few charms of ORCHARD MANOR withered away as well. A stand of trees and dense brush grew up to block its view from the road and only a seriously lost traveler was ever likely to happen upon the place. The food, now prepared by Hector Cromarty, did not encourage repeat business.

Cromarty slipped into madness. His voice could be heard echoing in the night as he railed against “the Evil Stain” and the “Grey Trespasser” that he now insisted roamed his property. The ultimate fate of Hector Cromarty became one of the mysteries of the hill.

By 1910 when the Orchard Garden Township was plotted, two generations had grown-up listening to whispered tales of “The Hill.” The reputation of this accursed elevation to the east was well known to the locals if rarely spoken of to outsiders.

In the 1930’s a man named Baron Zaharia Vasile and his “daughters”, recently displaced from their ancestral home in Eastern Europe, moved into The ORCHARD MANOR property. They left the Bed And Breakfast sign up but made some changes to the menu. The occasional tale of a vagabond, or tourist on a motor vacation vanishing between Burnsville and Lakeville tended to be suppressed by the Township.

A local wit began calling the property the Orchard Manor Dead and Breakfast and the name stuck.

The unwholesomeness which hangs over this land has had some “positive” benefits: the land is cheap and the neighbors are distant.

In 1939 an imposing brick building went up on a dreary slope of wasteland. The construction went slowly. Old-timers shook their bemused heads when lost drivers of trucks laden with building materials stopped in town to ask directions. Bemusement turned to anger when the building opened its doors as the BELLHARM Institute for the Study of the Criminally Insane. A name change in 1950 to the LOVEJOY Institute of Mental Well-Being did little to assuage local ire. When the building was closed and boarded up for good in 1954 following a horrific night of violence locals breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately the respite was short-lived. The asylum residents, though dead, did not depart and the grounds now team with ghastly apparitions. Imagining what still dwells within the decaying brick building chills the blood.

Recently, a reputable firm has developed a plot of land for a paint manufacturing plant in the vicinity. Hopes were high that the kind of healthy American entrepreneurship offered by Deville Industrial Engineering would dispel the lingering disquiet of the area.

Early indications are that this is not the case.

Ignored, shunned, missing on most maps, where you are now standing is a place best forgotten. A GPS device might guide you here but you will find that it is useless in directing you safely home again.

Something thrives here. Something…. Evil.