Marie Helen Mayborn was born on December 10, 1915. Her obituary says she was born in Green Bay, but various records list Wisconsin, New York or elsewhere. She was said in news reports to be adopted by George and Caroline “Lena” (Eberle) Mayborn rather than their biological child. (Their last name is spelled a few different ways in various records and news reports; often it appears as Maybourne in the reports of the time, but I have arbitrarily chosen Mayborn as this is how her obituary spells it.)
George Mayborn was a farmer in Delhi, a small town near Omro. (Today Delhi is a ghost town.)
11-year-old Marie started to have strange things happen around Christmas 1925, though it did not make the news for a few months. The first instance was Mrs. Mayborn hearing toys dropping on the floor, even though none were visible. There were also stories of “spirit slaps,” where invisible hands would slap faces. News organizations around the state and beyond picked up the story in March 1926, calling Mayborn the “Phantom of Delhi,” “The Badger Witch” or (inaccurately) “The Phantom of Omro.”
Around April 1, 1926, Harry Houdini was told about the case while performing at a theater in Chicago. Houdini said the story reminded him of a girl named Mary Ellen MacDonald in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where strange voices came from the wall and furniture jumped in 1922. The root cause in that case was not possession but a “dual personality.” This was discovered after an examination by Dr. Franklin Prince, secretary of the American Institute for Psychic Research.
“Of course, persons in contact with the child tell you of the strange things that have happened in their presence,” said Houdini. “They know full well that the girl is strange and right away they allow their imaginations to wander off to unknown points… This dual personality is a remarkable thing. Every now and then the girl imagines she is some one else, a purely mental obsession. It is said when she weeps there is a weird whistling. Have these people stopped to analyze that the whistling may be caused by breath intake during her sobbing?”
He continued, “There is just as much possibility of a girl of 11 being able to fool her parents and physicians as there is if she were twice that age. If she is possessed of the uncanny faculty of ventriloquism or if she has certain mechanical knowledge unusual for a child of her age, the things which have gone on about her recently are not at all unusual… I am willing to set down $10,000 to be given to whatever charity the family desires if I could not get to the bottom of this thing in a few hours.” Houdini said he was on tour at present, but if the experts did not solve this soon, he would handle it himself.
By the end of March, Rev. William Henry Grace of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Winneconne said he had “failed to uncover a satisfactory explanation” and was turning to psychologists. In four different houses Marie had visited, witnesses heard voices, saw various objects move and heard tapping on the walls. Rev. Grace said some things might be ventriloquism or easily explained, but others were not. Marie would sometimes slap herself, and on other occasions said she was slapped by an invisible hand. “I still hope that the case may be solved by the application of natural laws, but I am baffled,” said Grace. “If Houdini or any other expert believes he can solve the mystery of the phenomena surrounding Marie Mayborn in a day, or even a week, I would advise him to save his time.”
He continued, “If he – or they – will come to Omro and stay long enough to make a thorough investigation, it would be highly acceptable and the investigators would receive the heartiest cooperation. About the most definite thing I can say is that I have been unable to assign any scientific material cause for the strange happenings.”
Still further, “When the matter first came to my notice I decided to investigate the matter, with the view to unearthing the hoax, if it was that. In my younger days I took an active interest in the so-called magic, sleight of hand work and the like. I took an active part in a large number of jokes and hoaxes and I felt quite certain I could make some discovery of the expected hoax here. One by one, I traced down, by a process of elimination, the various things that might be suspected, such as ventriloquism, hypnotism, the use of electric wires, even the use of wireless electrical equipment. To make certain that there were no confederates, if the girl was perpetrating a hoax, I had her taken to other places.”
And more, “There have been some manifestations which were so unusual as to be almost unbelievable. In some instances the voice that has been heard has been that of a man. In another instance it was clearly that of a former school teacher in the district, who is living at some distance from the present home. When the girl sang, a second voice would be heard carrying a harmony with her… How do I account for those things?”
Father Grace and the family strongly resisted letting the press take photographs of the house or the girl, and as far as I can tell none exist. The newspaper noted that the case may have a stronger interest in Delhi than in other places because Omro was once a town well-populated with spiritualists. The Mayborns were Catholic farmers.
Marie’s parents pulled her from school, and Mrs. Mayborn said there was an instance where she and Mrs. John Yost tried to hold Marie down, but an unseen force pushed them away. (I believe this was Anna Stein Yost.)
The story was picked up and reprinted all over the country, with the last mention for a while being April 6… One brief mention said deputy sheriff James Stead, who was also the village marshal, was looking into it… but no follow-up there, either. (Stead is probably James Sanuel Stead.)
On May 3, 1926, Oshkosh magician J. C. Walter came forward and proclaimed the girl “just a natural, innocent child who is the victim of malicious rumors.” He said that nobody other than Rev. Grace believed that anything supernatural was going on. Walter visited the home with a doctor and three other men. He found the tapping on the roof to be tree branches in the wind. A vision of two crossed hands was merely the shadow of a weathervane on a window. The doctor found that the girl was not “perturbed” in any way.
Walter told the press, “Spirit phenomena are all bunk. I have looked into all kinds of manifestations and there is nothing to any of them. I have seen all of these strange phenomena duplicated and can duplicate them myself. I would like to believe in the possibility of communication with the dead, but all spirit manifestations I have ever seen can be explained either by plain science or magic, and they are all bunk.”
The doctor, who declined to be identified, said, “The manifestations are merely the result of the imagination of members of the family. The little girl is not in the least perturbed by the supposed strange happenings, and even smiles and laughs at mentions of the doings of the spirits. If she really was the victim of what she is believed to be, she would be a nervous wreck.”
Father Grace said he was still having the American Society of Psychic Research investigating, but the press moved on. Walter, for what it’s worth, was the state president of the magician organization he organized in 1915, later renamed the Wisconsin Houdini Club. Also, in looking into this, I found that the largest collection of Houdini material is in Austin, Texas rather than Appleton, Wisconsin. Weird!
September 17, 1929: After the Oshkosh Savings and Trust Company foreclosed on George Mayborn’s Delhi property, it was auctioned off by the sheriff at Oshkosh. (The legal notice spelled the name “Mayborne.”)
The 1930 census shows the family moved to Fond du Lac, and the 1940 census says they had lived in Spokane, Washington in 1935 before returning to South Byron in Fond du Lac County in 1940. I’m not sure why they would be in Spokane, so this may be an error.
Jump ahead many years… Marie Mayborn, now 24 years old, was involved in a car accident in Oshkosh in April 1940. Also in the car was her mother and driver Ervin Kindschuh, 25. At the intersection of Twentieth and Knapp, they collided with a car driven by Archie Link, 42. Link’s daughter Florence was also injured.
On June 11, 1940, not long after this, Marie married Ervin H. Kindschuh in Lomira (near Lond du Lac). The couple had one daughter, Shirley, and that daughter had one daughter. For privacy reasons I won’t give the granddaughter’s name, but as of this writing (2026) she works in northeast Wisconsin mass media. (Oddly, Shirley’s obituary repeatedly spells the name Kindschuk, which does not seem to be correct.)
In 1950, the Kindschuh family lived at Wanikamiu in Fond du Lac County.
Marie Mayborn made headlines a second time in March 1951, when she saved 10-year-old daughter Shirley from a fire… twice. A fire broke out in their trailer home in Fond du Lac and Marie was able to get Shirley outside. Once out, Marie slipped on the ice and lost her grip on Shirley, who ran back into the trailer. Marie went in and got her again. Ervin was out of town, working as a machinery salesman in Horicon.
January 1972, Marie was living at 64(?) 15th Street and was briefly a patient at St. Agnes Hospital.
By the early 1970s, Ervin was the groundskeeper at the Fond du Lac County Fairgrounds. He was well-respected and was an organizer in the search for Lisa French on Halloween 1973. He was also active in the Jaycees, despite not being a member, and was given an honorary life membership in 1974.
Ervin Kinschuh passed on May 5, 1993.
Marie Mayborn-Kindschuh passed away on February 28, 2000, at ManorCare Nursing Home in Fond du Lac. She was a Methodist and is buried at Ledgeview Memorial Park.