{"id":345,"slug":"dana-thomas-house-springfield-illinois","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["In 1902 Susan Lawrence Dana — heiress to a Springfield fortune, widow of a mayor, and by the standards of Frank Lloyd Wright's practice a client of almost unheard-of freedom — commissioned the young architect to remodel her family's mid-nineteenth-century house on East Lawrence Avenue. Wright and his Oak Park studio, including Marion Mahony, Walter Burley Griffin, and sculptor Richard Bock, answered by engulfing the old house entirely. The result, finished in 1904 for $45,000 plus $15,000 in Wright-designed furnishings, was the most elaborate residential commission of Wright's early career: sixteen major public spaces, more than a hundred pieces of custom furniture, and over two hundred fifty works of art glass.","Susan threw open the doors that December with a run of holiday parties, then housewarmings for the Women's Club, parties for orphans, dinners for the old-age homes, and a gala for the families of the men who had built the house. Weeks later her mother suffered a heart attack on a train bound for Savannah and died. Susan had now lost everyone she had ever loved, and she responded the way her era provided: she began holding séances in the house. Dana was no recluse eccentric — she was a suffrage-era progressive who used the house for education work and civic causes, and Wright's clientele was usually middle-class businessmen, which made an independently wealthy woman who believed in both democracy and the spirit world a patron the Prairie School never quite got again."]},{"heading":"The documented record","paragraphs":["The séances are not legend; they were a matter of Springfield social life, attended by local elite, and Susan consulted the spirits about everything including her finances — which needed the help. By 1915 her income ran about ten thousand dollars a year against one hundred thirty-two thousand in debts. She lived in the house until about 1928, declined, and the furnishings were eventually scattered at auction.","Charles Thomas bought the property in 1944 — the Dana-Thomas name combines the owners — and the State of Illinois acquired it in 1981 and restored it as a state historic site. Governor James Thompson's executive order of 1983 called it the finest example of the Prairie School's creativity. The Thomases, it should be recorded, had used the house for decades as the office of their medical publishing business and preserved rather than gutted it — the accidental conservation that made the state restoration possible."]},{"heading":"What the volunteers report","paragraphs":["The house staff are careful people. Volunteers at the Dana-Thomas House do not claim the place is haunted — they simply recount what they have seen and heard. The filed reports include humming voices, curtains that move without assistance, a chair reportedly thrown down a staircase, and an apparition of a woman in black whom most identify, tentatively, as Susan.","The pattern the staff has noticed is calendrical: the unexplained events cluster on Susan's birthday, on the anniversary of her mother's death, and on the dates of the three funerals that were held inside the house. The archive notes this as either a haunting with a day planner or a staff that knows its history unusually well — volunteer coordinator Kathy Liesman had logged nearly twenty years of tours when she began hosting the house's first ghost-story evenings — both, in a Wright house, being forms of devotion."]}],"name":"Dana-Thomas House","aliases":["Dana–Thomas House"],"type":"HISTORIC_HOUSE","type_label":"Historic House","cats":["SPIRITUALISM_HISTORY","DISPUTED_HAUNTING","LOCAL_FOLKLORE","HAUNTED_PLACE","HISTORIC_ESTATE","ARCHITECTURE"],"groups":["hauntings","historic-sites","legends"],"desc":"Historic house associated with documented cultural history.","full_desc":"The Dana–Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois, is a 1904 Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie-style mansion built for socialite Susan Lawrence Dana—one of Wright’s largest and best-preserved residential designs, with over 250 pieces of original art glass. It is a National Historic Landmark operated as a state historic site. Staff and visitors have long reported unexplained phenomena attributed to Dana herself and to a former governess, including a woman’s figure on the upper floor and objects moving in the gallery.","address":"301 E Lawrence Avenue","city":"Springfield","county":"Sangamon","state":"Illinois","postal":null,"region":"Midwest","lat":39.791063,"lon":-89.644572,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"UNKNOWN","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"The purported official denial is attributed through a secondary directory, not independently found in the government page. Religious meetings are historical practices, not evidence of paranormal events.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":60.6,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":263,"type":"HAUNTING","description":"The haunted-directory entry for the Dana-Thomas House reports unusual experiences while also noting an official denial of haunting — the site's two reputations held in tension. The DISPUTED flag matters: the same directories that log the footsteps also log the foundation's position that nothing is wrong with the house.","evidence":"DISPUTED","evidence_label":"Disputed","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.7,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Illinois Haunted Places Directory","url":"https://www.hauntedillinois.com/haunted-places-directory.php","publisher":"Haunted Illinois","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":1450,"type":"NAMED_GHOST_LEGEND","description":"Docents at the Dana-Thomas House report a woman's figure on the upper floor — attributed to Susan Lawrence Dana herself, the Springfield heiress who commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece and lived in it for forty years. The apparition is house lore, told with affection rather than dread. Docents tell it fondly.","evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","evidence_label":"Local folklore","entity":"Susan Lawrence Dana","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Dana–Thomas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana%E2%80%93Thomas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":1451,"type":"REPORTED_ANOMALIES","description":"Objects reportedly move in the Dana-Thomas gallery and lights appear after closing — the secondary claims attached to the house's main legend. The reports are anecdotal docent lore, but they're consistent enough that the foundation addresses them rather than ignoring them. The foundation addresses the reports directly.","evidence":"ANECDOTAL","evidence_label":"Anecdotal","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Dana–Thomas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana%E2%80%93Thomas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"Susan Lawrence Dana’s remodeling began in 1902 and finished in 1904. The home later hosted Unity, Bahá’í and theosophical gatherings. A house in Springfield, Illinois with this much documented history gives the dossier substance underneath the lore. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. 'Susan Lawrence Dana' documents the entry. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Susan Lawrence Dana","url":"https://dnrhistoric.illinois.gov/research/digital-dnr/digital-dnr-archive.susan-lawrence-dana.html","publisher":"Illinois Department of Natural Resources","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},{"description":"Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1904 for Susan Lawrence Dana; the largest intact Wright residential commission. A house in Springfield, Illinois with this much documented history gives the dossier substance underneath the lore. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. The detail is preserved in 'Dana–Thomas House'. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1904","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Dana–Thomas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana%E2%80%93Thomas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}},{"description":"Built 1904; the Wright design is documented. Dana-Thomas House's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. Sources including 'Dana–Thomas House' carry the record. It's the sort of fact that gives the haunting reports their context.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1904","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Dana–Thomas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana%E2%80%93Thomas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"Docents at the Dana-Thomas House report a woman's figure on the upper floor — attributed to Susan Lawrence Dana herself, the Springfield heiress who commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece and lived in it for forty years. The apparition is house lore, told with affection rather than dread. Staff describe the encounters as benign.","earliest":null,"evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","source":{"name":"Dana–Thomas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana%E2%80%93Thomas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[{"name":"Susan Lawrence Dana","claimed_identity":"Susan Lawrence Dana","verified":null,"summary":"Susan Lawrence Dana — the Springfield heiress who commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright's 1902 masterpiece — is the Dana-Thomas House's resident presence: docents report a woman's figure on the upper floor, attributed to the house's creator checking on her life's work. The lore is affectionate, not frightening.","behavior":"Docents report a woman’s figure on the upper floor attributed to Susan Lawrence Dana.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Dana–Thomas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana%E2%80%93Thomas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Illinois Haunted Places Directory","url":"https://www.hauntedillinois.com/haunted-places-directory.php","publisher":"Haunted Illinois","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":4},{"name":"Susan Lawrence Dana","url":"https://dnrhistoric.illinois.gov/research/digital-dnr/digital-dnr-archive.susan-lawrence-dana.html","publisher":"Illinois Department of Natural Resources","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"Dana–Thomas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana%E2%80%93Thomas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[{"field_name":"place_type","existing_value":"HISTORIC_HOUSE","incoming_value":"HISTORIC_SITE","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."}],"wiki":{"title":"Dana–Thomas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana%E2%80%93Thomas_House","desc":"Historic house in Illinois, United States","extract":"The Dana–Thomas House is a Prairie style house at 301 East Lawrence Avenue in Springfield, Illinois, United States. Designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, it was built for the philanthropist Susan Lawrence Dana around an existing 1860s house. The main house to the east, at the intersection of Lawrence Avenue and Fourth Street, is connected with a library–gallery to the west. In addition to the main house, the estate includes a carriage house. The building is operated as a historic house museum by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR). The Dana–Thomas House Foundation helps preserve the house, hosts events and programs, and raises funds.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Dana-Thomas_House%2C_Lawrence_Avenue_and_4th_Street%2C_Springfield%2C_IL_-_53323246686.jpg/330px-Dana-Thomas_House%2C_Lawrence_Avenue_and_4th_Street%2C_Springfield%2C_IL_-_53323246686.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":93,"lat":39.79416667,"lon":-89.65138889},"counts":{"claims":3,"history":3,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":3}}