Haunted Wisconsin

by Michael Norman

  As Calvert reached to lock the door to the porch, he noticed what appeared to be an older man slumped on the outside bench barely two feet away from him. It was difficult to tell from the rough clothing alone, though—the figure had no head! A black felt hat rested flat on his shoulders where his head should have been. He wore a gray miner’s jacket and dusty denims.

  Calvert quickly locked the door and glanced back out the window, but whatever had been there was no more.

  Oddly enough, during that same week a waitress saw the ghost of a young man, head still attached, in the second-floor bar. He stood alongside the bar rail for a few moments and then vanished.

  The ghost of William Caffee—if indeed it was he who haunted the Walker House—never seemed to harm anyone, nor did it seem that he posed any threat. He didn’t smash dishes or try to set fire to the place, though he did throw a beer bottle or two when no one was looking. However, large crowds did irritate the ghost of the man whose last earthly sight was the raucous mob pushing against the scaffold, eager to see him dance in the air.

  Caffee’s ghost was certainly prankish, and, at times, downright frightening. Yet perhaps he was only trying to be “helpful,” rattling the pans in the kitchen, checking out the bar, and locking up at night. It’s not always possible to understand a ghost.

  And what did Walker Calvert make of his experiences?

  Before he went to work at the Walker House, he scoffed at the supernatural. “Absolutely no way,” he said, shaking his head.

  And after?

  “Now, I’m sure it’s all possible.”

  The Walker House has changed hands several times in recent years. In early 2011 it appeared that at least part of it was again on the market.

  The historic Chances Restaurant in Rochester had just gone through some extensive remodeling, including the installation of a new roof, when co-owner Debbie Schuerman got one of those telephone calls every business owner dreads—an alert that an electronic alarm had gone off and a motion detector had identified movement in the dining room. Even worse, the call came in the middle of a rainy night and the last thing she wanted to do was to accompany the sheriff’s deputies as they checked the premises.

  But to the restaurant she went, not knowing what to expect. A systematic search failed to turn up any plausible reason for the motion detector to have activated. The possibility of a false alarm seemed especially unlikely given that the system could not be triggered by pets or other small animals. Spiders, mice, squirrels, or even most household pets would not have set it off.

  Debbie and the sheriff’s deputies made sure everything was secure inside before they reset the alarm and started down the back hallway to the rear door. At that point she discovered what she thinks was the real reason she had been “summoned” to the restaurant. She felt drops of water hitting her face as the small group walked down a hallway. The water seemed to be coming through the ceiling near a doorway in a section recently remodeled.

  Apparently the roofers hadn’t completely covered the seam between the old section of the restaurant and the newer addition. She decided to call the roofing company the next morning and have them fix the problem. But as she was locking up she saw the real danger—the leak was only a few inches from a light fixture. She got some rags to plug the small crack through which the water was dripping and then shut off the power to the light fixture.

  No doubt the deputies were startled when Debbie turned toward the empty restaurant and called out, “Thank you! I’ll catch you in the morning. Keep an eye on the place!”

  With that she also thanked the puzzled deputies, turned the key in the lock for the last time, and went home.

  And to whom was she speaking?

  It might have been Sadie, the African American cook, or the Civil War soldier, or perhaps his lover, the lady in green. They are just three of the seven ghosts that Debbie and her family believe stand watch over their 150-year-old establishment.

  Debbie has learned to be sensitive to what is not obvious. She thinks the ghosts warn her of potential danger. If there’s a late-night alarm, police look for prowlers but she’ll check for electrical problems or perhaps sniff the air for a natural gas leak or smoke.

  But over the years, none of the alarms has meant a living intruder. The Schuermans have never had a break-in or a burglary while other businesses in the small, western Racine County community have not been so fortunate.

  The owners think they know why.

  Early Racine County settlers Levi Godfrey and John Wade staked a claim on the Fox River near the present site of Chances in the early 1830s and soon built a double log house that was opened as the first tavern in the western portion of the county. Although the quarters were primitive, that didn’t impede travelers from stopping there to share meals and spend the night sleeping on the packed dirt floor.

  According to legend, disgruntled Indians burned the log cabin in the early 1840s. Peter Campbell bought the property and built the existing brick building in 1843. The Union House, as he named it, continued to serve travelers on the old Plank Road from Racine to Janesville. Rochester was the -largest city in Wisconsin at the time and Campbell’s hostelry was one of the most popular stops along what could be considered the interstate highway of its day.

  A large stone addition with eighteen-inch-thick walls was added to the Union House before the Civil War. An expanded dining room was situated downstairs while a two-thousand-square-foot dance hall took up most of the second floor. The original springboard dance floor is still intact and is thought to be among the last of its type anywhere in Wisconsin.

  Unfortunately, the 1850s also brought the decline of business along the Plank Road as railroads bypassed Rochester in favor of nearby Burlington. The Union House closed as a hotel, but it has continued in business as a tavern and restaurant almost uninterrupted to this day.

  Perhaps the Union House’s most fascinating period came during the years just prior to the Civil War when it and the Willard House across the Fox River were purportedly stops along the Underground Railroad. Local legend has it that escaping African Americans were clandestinely taken up the Fox River to tunnels on the riverbank that led either to the basements of the Union House or the Willard House. The escaped slaves hid in the cellars until they could be sent on their way to their next stop and on to eventual freedom in Canada. What looks to be a patched circular hole in an exterior basement wall at Chances is routinely pointed out as a possible entrance to the old passageway.

  Over the past 150 years, the inn has gone through countless owners and several name changes. Until Tom and Debbie Schuerman bought the business, it had been known in the modern era as Big John’s or simply the Rochester Inn.

  “We fell in love with the place because of its history,” Debbie said of their decision to buy the then-closed restaurant. Neither Debbie nor her husband had previously owned or managed a business, but both had familiarity with the food and liquor trade.

  “We jumped in with both feet, thus the name. We took ‘chances.’”

  The couple set about cleaning the well-maintained building, adding a few room dividers and shortening the bar, which once extended into the dining room. Today, the front portion of the inn holds an entrance hallway, the cozy bar, and restrooms, while the rear section accommodates two separate dining rooms. In one of these, Debbie displays her collection of antique dishes and teapots. She wanted it to look like “her grandmother’s dining room,” she said. The second floor is no longer in public use, but it continued to be a dance hall until shortly before the Schuermans bought the business; additionally there was a small apartment at one end.

  The two-story brick and stone edifice on County Road D in downtown Rochester occupies a prominent place in the local business district. Since the building was in “pretty decent shape,” in Debbie’s words, it didn’t take long to get Chances open for business. From the original pressed-tin ceiling in the dining room to the brick and stone walls and period furnishings, the old wayside looks
today much as it did a century ago, as is clear when a visitor studies the old photographs that adorn the walls.

  What the Schuermans didn’t anticipate was that along with the period furnishings and historic architecture would come a few otherworldly residents almost as old as the building itself.

  “We didn’t have any idea that the place had any so-called spirits or ghosts,” Debbie said matter-of-factly. One of their new employees—whose husband’s family once owned the place—told her ghost stories about the place. Debbie didn’t pay all that much attention to them.

  Perhaps she should have.

  It all began with small annoyances shortly after the restaurant opened. Chairs in the dining room were pulled away from the tables each morning when Debbie came in to clean. She had to push the chairs back in just to walk through.

  Then her shoes started to go missing. “It drove me nuts. I wore high heels to work. I’d bring in a pair of flats so that through the night as my feet got tired I’d slip into my flats and put my heels back in the liquor [storage] room. The next day I’d come in and they’d be gone. I think I lost half a dozen pairs of heels before I finally decided I wasn’t going to wear high heels any more.”

  At first, Debbie thought someone was trying to tell her something by playing these peculiar practical jokes. But her high heels continued to vanish even after she started hiding them.

  “I decided I couldn’t afford it anymore so I just kept wearing my flats. My feet were more comfortable and I didn’t have shoes disappearing.”

  It took a long time and a lot of convincing before she thought something, well, odd was going on. Unbeknownst to her, Chances had a ghostly reputation not spelled out in the Schuermans’ purchase agreement.

  “I thought there was always some logical explanation to it. That’s how I felt about it. But within the first year, we would get small groups of people who claimed to be psychics coming to dinner. Some of them would say, ‘They like you.’ The spirits were going to watch over us, protect us, and make sure we’re happy.” Debbie usually nodded politely and smiled when visitors told her that, not quite knowing how to take these compliments, if that’s how they were intended.

  She wasn’t won over until a night a couple of years after Chances opened, a night on which the Schuermans came perilously close to losing all they had worked so hard to build. Debbie was bartending on a Wednesday around eight o’clock when she discovered that she had run out of carbon dioxide gas for pressurizing the tavern’s soft drink and beer hoses. The problem was that the gas tanks that fed the bar’s spigots were located in the basement, a room in which Debbie is decidedly uncomfortable at night. She isn’t necessarily afraid or uneasy, but she usually had another person accompany her down there.

  So with the help of a regular customer who volunteered to help her, Debbie went to the basement room where the gas tanks are located to supervise while he exchanged the empty tank for a full one.

  “Then I heard this hissing sound above my head,” Debbie said, shivering at the memory. “I have a phobia about snakes and I thought that’s what it was.”

  She stayed crouched and backed away but couldn’t resist trying to see the source of the sound.

  She looked up and noticed water leaking through the ceiling. It appeared to be coming from the sinks in the kitchen. It was trickling down on top of a light fixture and had blown the glass off the light bulb. But the filaments were still glowing. The hissing was coming from the water hitting the live electrical wires.

  Once they had quickly changed the tank, Debbie and the customer, also a volunteer firefighter, disconnected the power to the light fixture and capped the wires on what they both knew posed a very real and potentially catastrophic fire hazard.

  The porcelain on the fixture was black and the floorboards above it were the same. The heat was very intense. If they hadn’t noticed it that night the business may very well have gone up in flames.

  Early the next day, the company that maintained the carbon dioxide tanks came out to replace the one Debbie thought was empty. But after checking the tank, the serviceman came back upstairs looking perplexed. He asked why the tank had been replaced the night before. It was half full, had pressure, and had nothing wrong with it. It didn’t need to be replaced.

  Then Debbie remembered the visiting psychics who had told her the ghosts at Chances liked her and her husband and that they would be around to see that no harm befell them.

  “I was being protected. Because I had to go downstairs, we found that hazard.” Since she had been drawn to the basement she was able to discover the problem with the light socket and perhaps avoid a catastrophe.

  It was a few years later that the episode with the leaky roof offered more corroboration that the Chances ghosts have been able to warn the owners when something is amiss or there is danger. Often this has come in the form of the burglar alarm being activated, such as the night of the roof leak.

  Debbie described the times she’s been called after hours when the alarm goes off as “attention-getters.”

  She’s found something wrong most of the time. It makes her nervous when she can’t find any problem. Even on the night three squad cars showed up, she looked over every square inch of the restaurant, including the garbage cans, in case a burning cigarette had been tossed inside one. When the alarm company again tested the system, everything checked out just fine.

  “After a while, I figure that if I missed something, the ghosts will set the alarm off again. That’s the confidence I have. But I want them to make it more obvious.”

  The identity of the seven ghosts who may haunt Chances is as shrouded in legend as befits such a historic place. A fire that destroyed the Rochester town hall took with it city records dealing with the history of many Rochester businesses, including Chances.

  Only one ghost has a name, Sadie, a black woman and supposed runaway slave who cooked at the Union House. The others are known by their physical descriptions, including two women, one wearing a green gown, the other a blue dress.

  Sadie was the first ghost Debbie became aware of.

  “This is where she ended up settling and for some reason she lived in the basement. She would only come up to cook,” Debbie said, adding that what she has learned of the resident spirits has come from previous owners. The ghost had no name so it was Debbie who first called her Sadie.

  She is the “kitchen spirit” because she usually doesn’t go beyond that area. If there are odd things going on back there, it’s Sadie who is thought to be responsible.

  “Our chefs change their clothes in a bathroom back there. I’ve been here when they’ve come running out white as can be and with their clothes in hand because as they’re bending over they were touched. They’re just terrified.”

  Other problems associated with Sadie involve stove burners being shut off while food is cooking, a basement door off the kitchen that will not stay closed, and food that vanishes. In fact she doesn’t like the kitchen staff much at all for invading what she may still consider “her” kitchen.

  Although no one has actually seen Sadie, the same cannot be said for the mysterious entity known as the Civil War soldier, whose haunt is confined to the first floor of Chances.

  Stacy Kopchinski is Debbie and Tom’s married daughter. She works at Chances and helps manage the facility and is one of only a few people who say they’ve seen the soldier.

  For Stacy, the sighting came on a bright, early weekday morning as she vacuumed the carpet under tables in the dining room. “I don’t know why but I turned around, and I saw him sitting there at the bar as if he were waiting for someone to come and serve him a cocktail. He had on a hat with a brim and a long coat. He was dark and looked very much like a real person.”

  So real, in fact, that Stacy grabbed a fork off the table, fearful that an intruder had somehow gotten in, although the doors were still locked. Then he was gone.

  “I thought, what the heck? I looked in the bathrooms and then called my dad and asked him t
o come right down. It was scarier thinking a real person had gotten in.” A cleaning woman is also said to have seen him and promptly quit.

  The soldier displays another irksome bit of behavior—he pinches female customers and waitstaff.

  “He’s a ladies’ man,” Debbie said with a laugh. “We’ve always thought he’s the one who pinches ladies’ butts, or pats your butt all the time. Then you’ll get this chill like something is [back] there and you’re swiping it away all the time.”

  The sense of being touched is annoying, but Debbie hardly pays attention to it anymore since “he’s doing it all the time.”

  Stacy said once she was seating a couple at a table when the woman quickly turned around and glared. “She thought I’d pinched her!”

  The old soldier may long for female companionship because, by legend, his girlfriend in life is the lady in the green dress who haunts the second floor. She is said to have been a prostitute trading her charms for cash at the Union House.

  “The story we’ve been told is that the Civil War soldier and the prostitute were a couple. She fell in love with him but decided she was unworthy of his love because of what she did and killed herself upstairs. But the soldier was so distraught over what she did that he committed suicide downstairs. The two can never get together because they’re on different [spectral] planes.”

  Although Debbie has not seen the spectral woman in green, her daughter Stacy has driven by the restaurant late at night and seen, at least twice, the face of a blonde-haired woman staring out the upstairs windows. Electric Christmas candles in the windows and outside lights have illuminated her face. On other occasions, customers have asked if someone lives upstairs because they “see” someone in one of the windows.

  Debbie told the story of a former bartender who lived in the small apartment at one end of the otherwise unused second floor. He once heard faint harp music. When he looked around for its source, he saw the woman in the green dress standing in a far corner of the old dance floor. It happened more than once. He scurried downstairs each time he heard the music, but eventually decided to stand his ground to see what she would do. Apparently, she floated right to him and passed through his body, leaving him with a cold, clammy sensation. A decidedly unpleasant odor lingered in the air.