By MaryBeth Matzek | Photo: Chippewa River Trolley Company
Looking to add a little fright into your fall activities? Wisconsin has plenty of ghosts, ghouls and haunted places for you to explore.
Walking and trolley tours are a great way to experience a community’s truly haunted sites, and cities big and small across the state offer you a close-up look of spine-tingling stories and sites … if you dare.
DOOR COUNTY
After a full day of fall activities in Door County, hop on Door County Trolley’s Ghost Tour. Catch the trolley in Egg Harbor and prepare for a three-hour exploration of 10 real ghost stories that owner AJ Frank has collected through the years. Prior to launching the tour 22 years ago, he asked around for real haunted tales from Door County and pulled together a collection of the best.
“We tell the stories of maritime spirits, visit haunted lighthouses and cemeteries and take people inside the Noble House in Fish Creek, which is a truly haunted place,” he says. “We get photos sent to us all the time that are taken in the Noble House that show eerie images.”
The tour guides share the chilling tales and history at each location, bringing them to life, Frank says. The tours run nightly starting at 7 p.m. from May through September and starting at 6 p.m. in October and November.
The Ghost Tour is so popular that Frank created a Murder & Mayhem Tour that looks at six murders from Bailey’s Harbor to Sturgeon Bay. That tour runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings.
“These aren’t simple murders, there’s some intricacy to them,” Frank says. “They will definitely leave you scratching your head.”
LA CROSSE
If you prefer to walk while hearing spooky tales, head to La Crosse for the Ghosts of Historic La Crosse Walking Tour. Led by storyteller Michael Scott, you’ll be introduced to some residents who refuse to leave the city’s downtown, including bartenders, restauranteurs and theater patrons.
The walking tours begin at 8 p.m. and are held Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays during October. The tours meet at Friendship Gardens in Riverside Park. Either before or after the tour, head over to Bodega Brew Pub, 122 4th St. S, for a drink. Since the early 1900s, the La Crosse pub has been known for its paranormal activities, including patrons feeling ghostly taps on their shoulders and mysterious chills in parts of the bar while bartenders report seeing ghostly apparitions and hearing strange noises.
EAU CLAIRE
The Eau Claire Dark History Tour returns to the streets of Eau Claire in late September and runs through the first weekend in November. The trolley tour is filled with “100% true stories and provides behind the scenes access to some truly scary places,” says Nick Meyer of the Chippewa River Trolley Company.
Tour attendees learn about the city’s first murder, piles of dead horses and detailed reports of horrors and hauntings while visiting Eau Claire’s oldest grave sites and getting off the trolley to walk a storied — and possibly haunted — footbridge, Meyer says.
The tour includes historic photos and headlines, subtle music and effects and theatrical lighting to create a truly memorable experience.
Meyer says the Dark History Tour is the most popular tour run by Chippewa River Trolley Company and spots fill up fast.
WHITEWATER
Whitewater may not be a large city, but it has some big spooky stories to tell. The Whitewater Chamber of Commerce’s Spirit Tour is filled with tales of witches, ghosts, strange managers and occult practices. The evening tour, which includes visits to cemeteries, “meeting” some of Whitewater’s infamous historic residents portrayed by actors, a visit to the witches’ tower and more. This year’s tours run from 5 to 9 p.m. on Oct. 10 and Oct. 11. There is a bus tour and a walking tour option.
MADISON
The City of Madison has so many scary stories to tell, Madison Ghost Walks offers three separate tours. The offerings focus on the Capitol Square and some of the oldest parts of the city, the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and State Street.
Depending on which tour you take, patrons will hear the truly scary stories of Science Hall on the UW campus, learn who is buried under the iconic Abraham Lincoln statue on Bascom Hill, listen to the legend of Pete the Projectionist at the Orpheum Theater and a businessman’s nightly visitors at his store, which was once a funeral home. All tours are led by expert paranormal guides.
MILWAUKEE
Wisconsin’s largest city, Milwaukee, is home to several haunted spots, which come to life during Brew City Ghosts, a walking tour showcasing downtown spots where the city’s previous residents still hang around. The tour highlights a spooky stretch of Milwaukee’s River Walk, the Hilton Grand Inn, which stands on the site of the Newhall House, where 75 people died in a horrible fire, and The Pabst Theater where disembodied sounds and strange noises are often heard. Tours meet in the parking lot of the Milwaukee Public Market.
You may end up with a real-life scare or two if you spend the night at the Brumder Mansion Bed and Breakfast, a restored Victorian mansion in Milwaukee. Built in 1910, the bed and breakfast is known for more than a few bumps in the night. Through the years, multiple visitors have recounted hearing footsteps or humming outside their door when no one was there, very cold spots in different rooms and other strange occurrences. Whether or not you stay the night, you can check out the mansion’s 55-seat Speakeasy theater in its basement, featuring murder and mystery shows, stand-up comics or a magic show.
Bringing the Dead to Life
Past stories of horror come to life at the Hearthstone Historic House Museum in Appleton. A classic Victorian home built in 1882, Hearthstone is known for being the first home in the world to be illuminated using hydroelectricity from a central Edison system.
While the home has no scary stories of its own to tell, Hearthstone offers Sequential Killers of the Victorian Age each October. (Sequential killers are what we know as serial killers today.) Visitors enter through the lower level’s bulkhead doors where they are greeted with live organ music and examples of memento mori — the items created by Victorians to help them mourn their dead, including hair jewelry and post-mortem photography.
On the home’s first and second levels, the rooms are dressed for Victorian mourning with windows draped in black, stopped clocks, photographs turned over and covered mirrors. Under original Victorian lighting, each room features a vignette about sequential killers and their nefarious deeds.
The vignettes are based on newspaper accounts of the day and introduce visitors to real-life killers and victims.
“The stories we tell each year stay with the guests. They often tell me they think about each vignette for days because they were real people, who did horrible things to other real people,” says Hearthstone Executive Director George Schroeder. “It is gripping theater.”
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