Short film tells the story of Northwoods man who built a castle

A new short film about a Wisconsinite who built himself a castle will have its premiere this month in Rhinelander.

“Pete’s Castle” tells the story of Pete Kelley, an electrician who has spent decades building a Medieval-style castle in the Tomahawk area. Kelley opens the castle to the public once a year during the Fall Ride, an annual Northwoods gathering of motorcyclists. During the event, castle visitors are greeted by Renaissance Faire-style actors and events.

But for the most part, the project has been a solitary pursuit, a creation Kelley made just because he wanted to build something big.

“I was particularly interested in the mentality and the man behind it, and sort of what type of man creates something like this,” said filmmaker Nate Sheppard, who interviewed Kelley and spent time at the castle for the piece. 

What he found, Sheppard said, was that Kelley had a sense of humor about himself and his unusual pursuit. He was a young man when he set out on the project, which he built on land that has been in his family for more than a century.

“At 19,” Kelley says in the film’s opening frames, “much like a guy who’s in college, I decided, ‘I’m going to build a castle.’”

He used salvaged bricks, dug a foundation and set about making his vision real. That was 1987. Approaching four decades later, the 35-foot-tall castle is functional — but the project, Kelley says, will not be complete in his lifetime. 

“I’ll work till I’m dead,” Kelley says in the film.

Sheppard is a composer and filmmaker who has made two feature-length documentaries and a handful of short films. The Minneapolis native moved to Rhinelander about 10 years ago for a job as a youth pastor.

In 2019, he left the ministry for a filmmaking career and makes his living producing freelance work for local organizations and composing scores for other filmmakers.

He also continues to make his own projects and hosts a streaming talk show interviewing people from the Northwoods. One of his short films, “The Birth of the Modern Snowmobile,” tells the story of the snowmobile’s invention in 1924 by Carl Eliason of Sayner.

Sheppard recently purchased a building in downtown Rhinelander and is working to bring the space up to code in time for the planned Sept. 27 premiere of “Pete’s Castle.” In addition to screening the 18-minute film, he’s planning musical performances and a question-and-answer session about the project.

“Pete’s Castle” will also be available on Sheppard’s YouTube channel.

Sheppard said he was not sure what to expect of a person eccentric enough to build his own castle in the woods. But ultimately, he was most surprised by how normal Kelley was.

“He’s just a guy who wanted to build something and stuck to it,” Sheppard said. “Maybe that’s the most remarkable thing. All of us at some point maybe wanted to do something big like that and then gave up. He was somebody who stuck through.”