Jack Kilby Weekend — October 12-14, 2001
Great Bend, Kansas

The Victorian house at 1407 Washington in Great Bend is the boyhood home of Nobel Prize winner Jack Kilby. But the microchip inventor isn’t the first thing many people think of when they think of the house. The house has long been rumored to be haunted.

Current owner of the house, Stan Lamb, was skeptical about the longtime rumors of a friendly ghost in the house----until he saw a strange ghostly specter in the upstairs hallway one night. "I got out of bed to see what it was, and I saw a young man dressed in a 1920’s-type hat and suit in the hallway," he said recently.

The specter quickly disappeared, but Lamb and his wife, Kathy, couldn’t help but wonder if the ghost was that of E.R. Moses, Sr., a former owner of the home. E.R. Moses, Sr. built the house, and the house was owned by Moses family members from 1890 to 1967. E.R. Moses, Jr. and Ed R. Moses III later owned the house. The Moses family rented the house to Jack Kilby’s parents from 1934 to 1951.

Living members of the Moses family are agnostic---if not outright non-believers---in the ghost stories. Most indicate that they saw no paranormal phenomena in all the years they were associated with the house. However, many visitors at the house have felt uneasy going back many decades.

When jeweler Loyall Komarek and his wife, Marian ("Bobbie"), purchased the house from attorney Ed Moses III, Mrs. Komarek and some of her daughters reported a friendly ghost, whom they believed to be the spirit of E.R. Moses.

In the 1970’s and 80’s, Mrs. Komarek regaled locals with tales of furniture and other objects that were moved around the house without explanation. A common story among adolescents in the community was that a doll owned by one of the Komarek girls moved it’s arms as if it was alive. The Komarek house was featured in a national book about Haunted Houses, and it is still considered one of the top dozen or so haunted houses in Kansas.

"The spirit seems to reveal itself to women more than men," said owner Stan Lamb. Stan indicated that his wife and daughter have observed more strange occurrences than he or his son. In fact, regarding the prior owners, the men in the Komarek family seemed skeptical compared to the females in the Komarek family, said Lamb.

The Lambs purchased the house from the Komarek children in 1991. The Lamb’s enjoy refurbishing old Victorian houses. A house they owned in Ellinwood was built in 1900 by a young banker named Leo Bockemole. Bockemole got caught embezzling money from an Ellinwood bank in 1908 and promptly committed suicide. The Lambs had a few spooky experiences in that house, also.

The Kilbys occupied the house at 1407 Washington from 1934-51, long before the Komareks, and there are no indications that any of the Kilbys had any encounters with friendly ghosts. Indeed, the very subject of ghosts, unproved by science, seems inappropriate when discussing no-nonsense engineer Jack Kilby.