History of Milford Bone: Extraordinary Architecture in the Southern Midwest

4. House the Second

House the second is, in the sense of planning documents and construction permits, the largest house of the four. It has always had midnight-blue paint that never seems to fade, no matter how much sun it has seen. Its size is really quite hard to determine due to its nature. If you stood across the lake from it, though, it often appears as the smallest house of the four. I’ve been told it is a visual anomaly. 

According to oral history passed down in the Reed family, House the second has not an entity living inside of it because the house itself is an entity. Why this would be any different from any of the other houses, who most see as more than the materials they are constructed out with the addition of parasitic forms of some sort of life benefiting from the houses, no one knows. It is how it has been talked about and discussed amongst the Reeds and the other families of Quiet Lake as long as I can remember. 

The Reeds, and other families like them, knew of the Bone, from the oral history of the Potawotami. The Potawotami, according to Reed Family records of both written and oral, settled in the area after the trail of death, leading some of the tribe south. Before the Potawotami, though, its history became unclear. Most believe, including the Potawotami themselves, that the area had been settled by the Wea of the Miami-Illinois tribes. Reed Family members, supposedly consulting French explorer’s records, believe that Quiet Lake was originally a small community of Wea, which was flooded during bad rainstorms. The Potawotami knew of the flooded community and named it after the Wea tribe before changing the name to Manitou. 

House the second has no murals nor paint on its interior walls. Whatever has sheathed the walls, historically, has been unpainted. The floors, though many attempts have been made to cover them, have been elaborately decorated with carvings and drawings in the wood. Every room has its own design. Some have faded over time but traces of them still remain. 

The characteristic most often discussed in House the second is the flexibility of the walls. We are accustomed to walls in structures being fixed and supporting the weight of the higher levels of a house but the walls in House the second seem to move without notice. No human eyes have ever witnessed a wall moving but there are many stories of individual experience. Thomas Bensen, a former friend of the Reed Family, told others that he fell asleep in what felt like a large bedroom on the second floor of the house and woke up with the walls touching the sides of the bed he was sleeping on. He was thankful, he said, that the doorway was open at the end of the bed, so that he was able to crawl out and escape, never to return to Milford Bone again. 

Stories like these often escape the region but are often met with skepticism, especially by those that have never been to Milford Bone. 

Lore connected to House the second is rich and diverse. Some claim that it is the final resting place of the builders, hired by the original architect, of all five original Milford Bone houses, trapped by the moving walls. Many dispute these claims, including a family that lived in the house in the 1980’s that replaced the old lathe of the walls and substituted drywall, saying that no human remains were ever found. 

After replacing all of the walls with new drywall, though, they were never able to get paint to stick. They lived in the house for ten years with nothing but drywall and joint compound showing.