This is a ghost story, and – like all ghost stories – it may be a bit embellished. In fact, we have embellished it a bit ourselves. The Lichty family came to New Berlin in the 1860s when Benjamin established a weaving business on Portage Rd. Eventually, they had a grand house at the corner of Hillcrest and Portage. By the mid-twentieth century, the family was mostly gone. All that were left were the Lichty sisters – twin spinsters who lived in the poorly maintained house. With its peeling paint and short wrought iron fence, local children knew that a house that looked like that had to be haunted. They would sneak up to the windows and peer at the sisters so often that the principal at Portage School had to remind the children regularly to leave the sisters alone. Anyone who watched a scary movie at the theater dreaded a walk home past the house. Finally, one day it was rumored that the sisters were gone. The children who dared to enter the house found the floor covered in blood. The house came down soon after and the city even leveled off the hill to get the bad spirits out. Was it haunted? You decide.