Over the course of a long weekend in Milwaukee, I became convinced that Anna Lardinois must be the town’s most famous person. I saw her everywhere. On a Saturday afternoon I heard her read from her newest book, The Ghostly Tales of Milwaukee, at Boswell Bookstore. The next day, she was judging the Brady Street Pet Parade, discerning which dog (or brave cat) had the best costume, trick and tail wag. And finally, a couple of days later, I joined one of her ghostly walking tours. Always she wore her long black dress and cameo broach, a fitting costume for the founder of Gothic Milwaukee.
So who is Anna Lardinois?
Lardinois has loved Milwaukee since she was a teenager making trips to the big city from the western suburbs where she grew up. Now she’s made a career out of introducing people to the city via books and walking tours, with an emphasis on the spooky and scandalous. She’s written history-based articles for Milwaukee Magazine and published a series of ghost and scandal books: Milwaukee Ghosts and Legends, The Ghostly Tales of Milwaukee, The Ghostly Tales of Flint (these ghostly tales books are kid-friendly, part of the Spooky America series) Storied & Scandalous Wisconsin and Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes.
Anna spent a year as a Pfister narrator, a sort of local writer-in-residence program at Milwaukee’s most famous—and Anna would say haunted—hotel. In 2011, she founded Gothic Milwaukee, and has been guiding locals and tourists around the Wisconsin city’s most ghostly sites ever since. And apparently she knows a good tail wag when she sees one.
Taking a Gothic Milwaukee tour
Summer and especially October are prime times to tour with Gothic Milwaukee. But Anna leads private tours all year, for those who want to simultaneously brave ghosts and Milwaukee winters. Her walking tours last about 90 minutes. The Classic Tour focuses on downtown Milwaukee, while the Ghosts of Yankee Hill Tour leads specter enthusiasts through what was once one of the city’s fanciest neighborhoods.
Anna is a welcoming and funny hostess. We started our tour at Cathedral Square. First stop, the Matthew Keenan house, where an apparition of a married lover who killed his young mistress prowls the stairs and hallways of this 1860 Italian villa.
Of course, we had to stop outside the Pfister Hotel. But not inside. Despite Anna’s status as a past Pfister narrator, they don’t want her bringing her tourists inside because they haven’t embraced their ghosts. According to Anna, floors two through sixth, the original part of the hotel, are the most haunted.
The ghost of former hotel owner and baseball fan Karl Pfister is infamous for disturbing the sleep of baseball players. “If you’re a Brewer, you’re going to sleep like a tiny angel,” Anna told us. If you’re playing against the Brewers, too bad. But Pfister doesn’t just stick to spooking athletes. Lots of folks have spent frightening nights at the Pfister, including recording artist Megan Thee Stallion, who recently posted a video of her crew ghost hunting there.
The saddest tales
Two of the saddest tales Anna recounted were the Newhall House Hotel fire of 1883, and the Lady Elgin disaster. The fashionable hotel caught on fire in the wee hours of a January day in 1883. Staff and guests had to either jump out of windows or be burned. Many jumped and died. Others burnt. The death toll was at least seventy.
The Lady Elgin story started with a big drunken party on an overcrowded ship, and ended in the second worst Great Lakes ship disaster. A timber schooner called the Augusta collided with the Lady Elgin. “They swore they just barely scraped it,” Anna told us. “But they hit it so hard every gas light on the ship blew out. Everyone was fumbling in the dark for lifeboats. The crew knew where they were, so they’d already claimed one of three. They tried to lighten the load of the ship, released 50 cattle into the water, nothing worked. Why were there cattle? I have no idea.”
These stories include ghosts, of course. But you should really visit Milwaukee and hear Anna tell those stories herself.
