Other stories in "Historic houses & museums"

• Indulging at the holidays
  At old-fashioned feasts, party like it's 1899.
• Tours de force
  For holiday visits, historic mansions up the ante on opulence.
• Feasting in Dubuque
  Guests on a progressive dinner and mansion tour get a good look at what frontier fortunes could buy.
• Illustrious in Iowa
  Among the northeast bluffs, extraordinary people lived and worked.
• Beer and megabytes
  In Chippewa Falls, a colorful past blends seamlessly into the present.
• Galena getaway
  In northwest Illinois, historic village is a favorite destination.
• Barn storming
  Driving tours in three states showcase the simple but cherished buildings.
• Baraboo's gilt complex
  In Ringlingville, the golden age of the circus never ended.
• West Branch's 'wonder boy'
  An Iowa village tells the story of Herbert Hoover, the international hero who became a scapegoat.
• The Gags of New Ulm
  A family of artists puzzled neighbors but went on to great things.
• Hinckley's Fire Museum
  Stories of 1894 inferno still shock those who hear them.
• H.H. Bennett's Dells
  In studio museum, photographs display scenes that made Wisconsin landmark famous.
• Duluth's Glensheen
  Through doors of mansion, tourists walk into life of extraordinary family.

Ghosts of Galena

Around the region, spirits of past turn out to haunt tourists of today.

It's funny how, wherever there are tourists, there are ghosts.

In Chicago, two ghost tours put titillated tourists on the track of Al Capone and John Dillinger, thrill-killers Leopold and Loeb and serial murderer H.H. Holmes, the Devil in the White City. There's enough lingering ectoplasm in Dubuque, St. Paul, Wausau and Winnipeg to keep guides busy there, too, especially around Halloween.

Even sweet little Galena, Ill., has so many ghosts that guides stay busy year-round, telling tourists about beckoning figures and haunted theaters and mysterious taps on shoulders.

"Galena is a very nice place,'' says historian Steve Repp, who leads All About a Ghost tours downtown. "But there's a certain mystery to it.''

The hillside village is a vacation destination today. But in the 1850s, it was the busiest port between St. Louis and St. Paul, and rows of elegant homes were built with lead-mining fortunes. Then demand for lead waned and the river connecting Galena to the Mississippi filled with silt. The town went into a deep sleep until the 1960s, by which point it had become a virtual museum.

Repp starts tours by asking if people are "ready to cross over to the other side,'' but mostly he's talking about the past. He points to the 1855 DeSoto House Hotel, where Abraham Lincoln spoke in 1856 from a balcony, still draped in red, white and blue bunting, and from which Ulysses S. Grant ran his successful 1868 presidential campaign. He points to the 1856 building where Grant worked as a clerk in his brother's leather shop.

"Galena looks much as it did then,'' he said. "Put in some dirt and wooden boardwalks, and you're there.''

The first published account of a ghost was in 1845, when two residents reported a very tall, ghostly figure beckoning on their wall and became convinced it was a veteran of the War of 1812. There were phantoms reported in mines, on a bridge, in boarding houses.

From Main Street, Repp leads his guests to the 1875 Turner Hall, used as a theater. In the balcony, set builders have reported seeing the ghostly figure of an older man with a goatee, rolled-up sleeves and laser-like eyes; a local pastor heard a garbled voice coming from the balcony. The ghost is said to be Charles Scheerer, the hall's longtime business manager and Galena's mayor when he suddenly died in the hall in 1910.

In the 1867 Farmers' Guest House, once a hotel, guests have detected the aroma of pipe tobacco. At Vinny Vanucchi's restaurant, workers have felt taps on the shoulder, heard whispered names and seen a mist-like figure.

At the newer restaurant One Eleven Main, once a mortuary, employees have reported a piano moving on its own and a woman in a white dress. In June, the Chicago Paranormal Detectives arrived to investigate and had quite a night (read their report).

Now, Repp brings his tours into the restaurant to see a photo, taken by a chef, that shows three swooping, wraith-like figures. He says ghost sightings seem to follow remodeling projects.

"When people go into these old buildings and start to disrupt things, I've noticed certain unusual things occur,'' he said. "It makes you wonder.''

At the end of the tour I was on, Repp gathered the group and asked if any of us had had experience with ghosts.

"I've been doing this for five years and I've heard a thousand stories,'' he said. "If you say three-quarters of them were made up to dupe me, that still leaves a quarter.''

One woman had smelled cigar smoke from her recently deceased grandfather. Another told of a little girl ghost who once tugged on her skirt and, she believes, placed a piece of lost jewelry on a counter for her after she'd cleaned the entire house searching for it.

"I think this little ghost had been around for a while; I could kind of see her out of the corner of my eye,'' she said. "I don't necessarily believe in ghosts, but it happened.''

Repp says that sometimes only a couple of people on the tour tell of encounters with ghosts, and sometimes nearly everyone does. He's never had an encounter himself.

"The other day, 15 people told stories of things that had happened, if not to them, to their mothers or sisters or brothers; it was unbelievable,'' he said. "It makes you wonder.''

Trip Tips: Ghost tours

Galena, Ill.: Historian Steven Repp holds All About a Ghost walking tours from the DeSoto House Hotel on Main Street at 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays before Monday holidays year-round, $10. In inclement weather, indoor programs replace the 80-minute tours. Just show up, or call 815-777-9252 for more information.

The Annie Wiggins Guest House also offers a Ghost Tour from the 1846 mansion overlooking the Galena River, across from downtown. The 1¼-hour walking tours go out Fridays and Saturdays from May through October, $10.

There are other frightful things to do in Galena in October. The Galena Art Theatre will present "Arsenic and Old Lace" at Turner Hall Oct. 17-19 and 23-25, $10. The town's annual Balloon Glow along the Galena River will be on Oct. 31, and its Halloween Parade starts at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 1.

Farmers' Guest House will hold Halloween Seance Murder mysteries Feb. 27-28 and March 13-14, 2009. For more, see Galena getaway.

Chicago: Unlike Galena, Chicago always has been filled with gangsters and murderers, including H.H. Holmes, who terrorized young women before and during Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition.

Their ghosts still lurk in Chicago, says author Ursula Bielski, who offers Chicago Hauntings Tours year-round and daily in October. Motorcoach tours leave at 7 p.m. and also 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays from Clark and Ontario in the near North, adjacent to the Rock & Roll McDonalds. Cost is $28, $20 for children 8-12. Nearly all the weekend tours are sold out in October.

Richard Crowe offers Chicago Supernatural Tours on weekends year-round and claims that the motorcoach ghost-tour business he founded in 1973 was the world's first. In October, he offers a four-hour Halloween Special Edition Tour, $49, at 7 p.m. from Goose Island Brewpub in the near North. Available dates are Oct. 19, 24 and 26-30  and Nov. 1-2. Matinees, $39,  leave at 1 p.m. Available dates are Oct. 18-19, 25 and Nov. 1-2.

There are two other tours, Weird Chicago Ghost Tour, $30 for a three-hour tour, and Chicago Ghost Investigations Tour, where participants get ghost-hunting equipment, $45 for an hour and a half. Read a review of the four tours at TimeOut Chicago.

Dubuque: The Big Muddy Ghost Hunters, a group dedicated to the investigation of paranormal phenomena on the Upper Mississippi, are holding a two-hour Ghosts of the River Walking Tour at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through Oct. 25 (Oct. 11 is sold out) along Dubuque's RiverWalk, $10.

St. Paul: Wabasha Street Caves, which made its name with its St. Paul Gangster Tours, offers a 1½-hour Ghosts & Graves motorcoach tour, $18, at 8 and 10 p.m. Oct. 10-11, 17-18, 24-25 and 29-30. Costumed guides tell stories about haunted sites, historic murders and a local cemetery.

Wausau, Wis.: Find out why Larry, Martha, Cyrus, Bob, the Plumers and Eddie refuse to rest in peace on Historic Downtown Wausau Fall Ghost Tours offered by the Wausau Paranormal Research Society on the evenings of Oct. 18 and 25 and Nov. 1. The walking tours cost $5 and last 1½ to two hours.

Winnipeg: In Winnipeg, Heartland Travel offers 2½-hour Historical Haunted Winnipeg motorcoach tours on Tuesday nights all summer and adds Mondays in fall; 2½-hour Haunted Winnipeg Investigates tours are given Thursday nights and also Fridays in  fall. Tickets are $30.50 plus tax, $15.50 for children under 12. Sites include the Legislative Building, Hotel Fort Garry, Vaughn Street Jail and Elmwood Cemetery. It also offers three-hour Vigils, complete with spirit medium, at St. Boniface Museum, but they're sold out for the season.

Last updated on October 21, 2008