Join us as we discuss the notoriously haunted Pfister Hotel. We’ll discuss the history of the hotel as well as the paranormal activity reported by some of the guests. Are the Brewers up to Scooby Doo shit?

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• Why Dodgers players refuse to stay at infamous Milwaukee hotel – NBC Los Angeles
• The 5 Most Haunted Hotels in Milwaukee
• The Phantom Patrons of the Pfister Hotel: Milwaukee's Haunted Hostelry - Spooky Stories to Tell in the Dark
• Baseball's Most Haunted Hotel: The Pfister's Century of Terror - Weird Darkness
• Ghostly Visitors at Historic Hotels: Halloween at The Pfister, Milwaukee | Five Star Alliance
• Milwaukee Wisconsin Pfister Hotel
• The legend of the Pfister Hotel ghost | WUWM 89.7 FM - Milwaukee's NPR
• Guido Pfister (1818-1889) - Find a Grave Memorial
• Major League Paranormal Activity at the Pfister Hotel | MILWAUKEE GHOSTS BLOG
• Ji-Man Choi is the latest baseball player to be haunted by a ghost at Milwaukee's Pfister Hotel | MLB.com
• Haunted Pfister
• MLB haunted stories
• Hauntings at the Historic Pfister Hotel | Milwaukee | TheHauntedPlaces
• Baseball's Most Haunted Hotel: The Pfister's Century of Terror - Weird Darkness
• Tweet
• Fire breaks out at The Pfister Hotel
• Pfister Hotel - Conrad Schmitt Studios
• Heaven Above: A Paradisiacal Ceiling Mural is Refurbished in Milwaukee | National Trust for Historic Preservation
• $1,000,000 in 1893 → 2025 | Inflation Calculator
• About The Pfister | Boutique, Historic Wisconsin Hotel & Spa

So today we are going to be talking about the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee. We're going to talk about the hauntings, if it's Scooby Doo shit. And who's having the most activity while staying at the hotel. Hi.

Welcome to True Creeps, where the stories are true and the creeps are real. We'll cover stories from grotesque gore to the possibly plausible paranormal to horrifying history.

To tense and terrible true crime and.

Everything else that goes bump in the night. We're your hosts, Amanda, and I'm Lindsay.

And we want you to join us while we creep.

We cover mature topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello, everyone. Today we are going to have our first spooky travel episode of the year. Yay.

This is one of my favorite topics.

It really is. I think that there is a world where Amanda and I just do this, like, just do spooky travel episodes.

It takes a lot of restraint for us to be like, not every episode is a spooky travel episode. We have to slow release them so that we don't just do those. Right.

Because, I mean, I'm constantly looking at haunted locations just for fun, and so it's really fun to be like, oh, I just. This came up, and now I know all about it. But today, we are traveling to Milwaukee, and we're going to a hotel called the Pfister Hotel.

And I was just trying to find a hotel that I had never heard of, because, as I said, I look up spooky places all the time. And this one came up, and I'm like, you know what? I know nothing about this hotel.

I love that. I love it. Fresh one.

Yeah. Yeah. And part of it is because I'm not a sports person, because apparently this hotel is talked about in sports all the time.

We're. We're sports girls.

We're sports girls now.

Sports girls.

I can name a few positions in baseball and six people in baseball.

Now scrum. That's rugby. That's just me a try.

But, yeah, we're gonna go into that. You'll. You'll know why in a moment. But it's an interesting hotel, and I will say it's absolutely gorgeous.

Like, looking at the pictures I just kind of went through, and I'm like, oh, I want to go just to, like, walk around and look at it, because it's just so pretty.

Yeah.

And before we get into it, though, if you have a haunted place that we should cover and to give us another reason to do a spooky travel episode. Always reach out. Reach out. Our deets are at the end of the episode, but we want to know where we should go next.

And it was Guido's vision to have the finest hotel. That's what he wanted. It's just like the best hotel. I like that.

I feel like if you're opening a new business, you should want it to be great. Right, right.

Were going to make this hotel.

I love that.

And his vision was to have a people's palace. And the pair wanted to have an elegant hotel where the lobby could be like a grand living room. Like they envisioned everyone coming to gather.

There and hang out.

Also, the vision was that the hotel would show hospitality and service no matter what the social status.

Love it, Love it.

So they wanted to create a place where everyone could go gather, have a good time, throw parties, do whatever, but also that it was gonna be like super fancy. Now when it opened, it was, and it's kind of nickname was the Grand Hotel of the West. And it was the most lavish hotel of its time.

I know we say that a lot, but this one, I feel like there's a little bit more to it. Now it costs 1 million. I've seen 15 million too, in some sources, but around a million. And in today's money, that would be about 36 million.

Fuck. That's an expensive hotel.

That is an expensive hotel. It originally had 200 rooms, and the structure included brick and stone detailing. Some sources say also limestone.

Uh oh.

Which we've talked about a lot in a lot of haunted places. Marble floors and columns, heavy hardwood staircases and plaster walls with ornate moldings.

So a lot of, like, high end materials were used to make this hotel too. And it was super futuristic for its time. So we talk about this a lot with, you know, haunted hotels. But it had fireproofing.

Smart, smart, smart.

Just start it from the beginning. It also had electricity throughout the hotel and individual thermostat controls in each room. Could you imagine, like, not having that?

Yeah, it never occurred to me that they weren't always there. Right, right.

And then I saw in some sources, not in all, but that it had its own power plant as well. Damn interesting. So Guido and Charles were also super big art fans and they collected tons and tons of art.

So all of the art ended up going into this hotel. And it became the largest Victorian art collection of any hotel in the world.

Also not then, but now there's like a really gorgeous mural in the lobby. So Charles was very hands on and he operated the hotel until he physically could not.

I've seen in some sources that he suffered a stroke and then another that he did it until he died. But I want to say it was until he had a stroke and then he kind of let go of the reins of it.

But during his time at the hotel, he did everything from greeting guests to even personally hiring the employees. So he just like, really, he's like, if our name is on this, it's going to be great. I'm going to make sure every little aspect of it is great.

He also, from what I saw, stayed in one of the suites, so. So like he really, really dedicated his time to this hotel for a while.

When Charles was no longer able to run the hotel, a longtime employee, Ray Smith, took over. Unfortunately, it wasn't doing well after the war and it ended up at a bankruptcy auction.

He bought it at the auction that we mentioned a moment ago with the intention of renovating it. Its original beauty. And as part of this renovation, a 23 story guest room tower was added. There was also other restorations.

Yeah.

Yeah. And if you guys remember the photos of the Biltmore in Los Angeles that I shared a while back, also a haunted hotel.

This hotel really reminds me of it. Like with the detailing, I feel like I could just walk around and look at the details and the murals and the paintings and everything for hours.

Is that crazy?

Yeah, it's over half a year for one person. I'm sure they have many people at the same time, but hot damn. So today it still has its old charms, but has been renovated.

There's gorgeous chandeliers, staircases, ornate moldings, and just overall, there's so many details that make it just gorgeous. It has 307 guest rooms and 82 suites and has even made the National Register of Historic Places.

It's had some famous guests over the years too, some of which we'll bring up in a bit. But some of the entertainers include Joan Rivers and Elvis. There's also lots of athletes like Thurman Munson and Louise Tiant.

It's also, it's the spot to stay for many MLB teams, NBA teams, and most performers for concerts and large events stay there. Also, some of the MLB players like Mookie Belts or Tessa Scara Hernandez have avoided staying there because of it being haunted.

And we'll talk more about athletes in a little bit. So Bets has said, I don't believe in ghosts, but I don't want to find out that I'm wrong.

Fair, though. I like that. I like that.

He's like, look, just in case. Right? Like. And there's a lot of people who, they might not believe in the supernatural, but they do believe in a good just in case.

Because, yeah, worst case scenario, you're protected. Best case scenario, you're right. Good for you.

You know.

Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah.

And Hernandez has said that he stayed there before, but his wife did not want to. But after hearing the stories, that was enough for him. Fair.

Yeah.

It's also proved by the Secret Service for the President to stay there. And basically all of them after McKinley have stayed there.

That interesting?

Yeah.

And because we usually put it in our history, this one has not burned down.

Hell yeah. Look at them. Good for you, that fireproofing.

No internal damage was done. Just thought it was interesting because usually we're like. And then it burned down six times.

Yeah, this one didn't.

They did a good Job. And the funny thing is, is, like, I didn't see anything about fires. So I specifically was like, but when did it have a fire? I'm missing this.

It's not in the history.

What you're like, are they hiding it? Like, not like, oh, it could. Maybe it didn't have one. It's like, no. Where's the fire?

Exactly.

Where's the fire?

Yeah. So I, like, specifically was Googling, like, the fire at this hotel, and I was like, oh, I found one. But, like, it was minor.

It wasn't like a big thing, like, a lot of the old hotels. So props to them. They did a good job. So that history notice, we didn't really say any, like, horrific tragedies. Nothing crazy, right?

Nothing too weird.

Nothing weird yet.

But we're going to jump to the hauntings now because Historic Hotels of America has ranked the Pfister Hotel as one of the top 25 most haunted historical hotels.

Hot damn.

And the Travel Channel ranked it as the creepiest place in Wisconsin.

I like that.

Interestingly, we looked. We couldn't find any deaths or disasters or tragedies or anything like that that took place in this building in any reliable source.

That's the key word there. One mentioned that there were some unexplained deaths where some guests were just found dead in their rooms and no one knew why or how.

But, like, there was no additional information. There was no names, there was no dates. There's literally nothing.

I don't like that at all. That freaks me out.

Yeah. So I'm like, that's weird. And I feel like if there was a ton of, like, back to back unexplained deaths that would be in some sort of paper.

That would be something. But nothing. So I thought that was interesting, all of that to say that doesn't mean that no one has died at the hotel.

As we've discussed in other episodes, hotel deaths usually do not make the papers or the news unless it's like, you know, has some crazy element to it. Yep. But typically you're not going to see those. So perhaps someone's died there, we don't know.

Now, speaking of what spirits may be in the building, a lot of people believe that they see Charles Pfister himself in the lobby. There have been some sightings also of Guido sometimes making an appearance.

But Charles did not die at the hotel, nor did Guido, from what I understand. But Charles spent a lot of his time here. So, like, he loved this building and it was like his dad's vision.

So I could See, like his dad coming to check in on things occasionally.

Yeah, yeah. And I like that though.

Yeah. And he has been said to be spotted in the lobby as well as on the staircase the most.

So, like, when someone sees him, it's usually in one of those two spots. Now the way that they describe him is that they've seen a quote unquote, portly gentleman.

Portly gentleman, yeah.

Standing on the hotel's grand staircase observing the lobby. So, like, he's like standing there watching the lobby from the staircase as well as walking through the gallery above the ballroom.

So, like, he's just checking on things. The funny thing is some guests have described the same man on various floors as well.

But the way that they usually describe him is well dressed and smiling. So he's like having a good time. Yeah.

And then when, you know, they're like talking to one another because, like, he's wearing interesting clothes for the time. Right?

Yeah.

Then they walk by a portrait of Charles and they're like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Yeah.

Like, that's how I would be too. Yeah.

Yeah. So a lot of people share that story with others because they're like, yeah, I like, saw someone that kind of stuck out.

And then I was walking around, I'm like, oh, wait, that's the guy. So I mean, it's cool that they could like see a picture and be like, oh, I know who I saw. I just don't know.

Like, can you imagine staying there? And you're like, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. I just saw a dude. And then you're like, I saw a dead dude. I saw that dude. He's supposed. He's not.

He's not real.

Yeah. So interesting. I thought that was kind of cool and like a, you know, like a happy.

Yeah.

Sighting. No one's trying to, like, hurt anyone or scare anyone.

Staff and guests seem to think that the second floor is also haunted as there's a lot of activity. But it also could be Charles because he roams up and down that grand staircase.

So it could just be like within his path of where he's going all the time.

Yeah, it's on his route, if you will.

Yeah, yeah.

There have also been various reports of objects moving on their own. Knocking on doors and walls when no one is there. Things turning on and off by themselves and full on apparitions.

Some people have spotted shadows or ghostly apparitions near the hotel's elevators or walking out of the elevator, then disappearing. That would fuck me up.

If you're like, say you're on the elevator with someone, and then, like, the person next to you gets out and they just disappear. I would be like, am I okay?

Right.

I don't know what I would do.

I think I'm trying to think of which hotel it was.

I think it's the Driscoll in Austin that has similar stories of, like, they see someone walk out of the elevator, and then all of a sudden the person's gone.

I think that we have talked about some place where a person had interacted with someone in an elevator, and then they just were like, poof. But speaking of the elevator, other people have reported that they've gotten cold chills while riding in the elevator.

And of all the places to get cold chills and feel that kind of way. Just an enclosed space that you cannot escape immediately is not the place that I want. Right, right. Yeah.

But I don't know what soothing self talk I would do if there was a ghost in the elevator and I knew about it.

Yeah. Yeah. Another layer to elevator horrors.

A new fresh fear.

So in room 209, there have been some specific instances that people have reported, like, people having things moved in the room, hearing strange noises, and just the general feeling of not feeling alone. One guest even woke up in the middle of the night to see a shadow figure standing at the foot of their bed. I just want to know, why is.

It that ghosts want to stand at.

The foot of your bed? I don't know, be someplace else. You don't need to be there.

I just feel like they have better things to do than, like, watch someone sleep.

I mean, if you're gonna watch someone sleep, at least don't do it from the foot of the bed. Like, why do you have to be right there? You could be sitting in a chair. Go into the hallway.

Honestly, if you want to be creepy, get real close, you know, like, stand. Stand next to them. Get on into the bed.

Why not?

You know, sit. Crisscross applesauce on their fucking feet. Like, go for it.

You know, speaking of getting in bed for a ghost, we're gonna talk about that in a little bit.

So there's also a story of President Grover Cleveland staying in a room and waking up to see a figure at the end of his bed, too. So ghosts even like to watch President Slate this story.

He said that he saw a woman in a flowing pink gown, and he reached out to her and she disappeared. Most of the time, when you see stories like this involving a public figure, we find the same story on many different sites.

But this was only on one blog, so we're skeptical of this one.

Yeah.

Can you imagine waking up and there's a ghost, and you're like. You reach out, like. I'm not gonna reach out.

Hell no.

I'm gonna reach in. I'm gonna curl into myself. I'm gonna pull up the blankets.

Right, right. And he's just like, ah, there's a person. Let me touch them.

Yeah. No, thank you. The ghost is like, ew.

He's like, I like your pink gown. Yeah.

And she's like, ew, don't touch me.

Yeah, Fair.

Okay. So earlier we mentioned athletes not wanting to stay there.

A lot of the stories come from athletes, specifically who have stayed there over the years.

And there's a pretty big list of them that have publicly said that they would not stay there because of the hauntings, and that many that have stayed there have shared their encounters. And as a reminder, because this is a great hotel. Fancy, snazzy, all the things. Everybody who comes to town is staying here.

So that's one of the reasons why there's, like, this aggregate.

Yeah.

But anyhow, so Rangers infielder Michael Young shared his stories a couple of years ago with ESPN magazine, and he said, listen, I'm not someone who spreads ghost stories, so if I'm telling you this, it happened a couple of years ago. I was lying in bed after a night game, and I was out. My room was locked, but I heard these footsteps inside my room stomping around.

I'd heard all the stories about this hotel, so I was wide awake at that point. And then I heard it again. These footsteps on the floor. So I yelled out, hey, make yourself at home. Hang out. Have a seat, but do not wake me up. Okay.

After that, I didn't hear a thing for the rest of the night.

I just let him know he was welcome, that we could be pals, and that he can marinate in there for as long as he needed to, just so long as he didn't wake me up.

I love that.

Totally fair. Just don't be a bad roommate. Yeah.

If I'm gonna be here in your room, like, please don't wake me up.

Also, like, if you're a professional athlete, you need your sleep.

Yes.

Not only just, like, play well, but to be able to, like, physically recover from the strenuousness of playing a game, I would imagine, I say as a sports girl.

A sports.

Sports girl.

Yeah. Also, while doing this research, these names, like, a lot of articles, are just like, this person Said this, and I'm like, who the hell is that?

Who the fuck is that? Stop talking. Like, I know that I had to.

Look up, like, everyone, and it was like, the most famous player from the sports team.

And I'm like, you're like, oh, obviously cool.

But tell me about your ghost. Like, now. This is why I know your name is your ghost story not for anything you've done with sports.

Yeah. And also, I will not be remembering your name outside of this context.

Oh, for sure. For sure. You're like, oh, do you know Michael Young, the Rangers infielder? I'll be like, yes.

Yeah, he saw a ghost.

He has ghost stories.

And he's a brave boy.

He's a brave boy.

Brave boy.

So another one is Bryce Harper. Clearly, everyone knows Bryce Harper. Classic Bryce from the Phillies.

Setting himself up.

Everything's ready.

Love it.

I can get five more minutes of sleep. You know the whole number. Well, when he woke up in the morning, things were not as he had left them.

His clothes were on the floor, and the table was on the opposite side of the room against a wall. Obviously unnerved, he thought that someone may have been in his room. So he searched, didn't find anyone.

But he wanted to note that the door was still locked and the latch was still intact.

Mmm.

There's no way that someone would've come in through that door. Yeah, he thought maybe a teammate somehow was playing a joke on me. But no one ever came forward, and he ended up requesting a new room. Fair.

I, too, would request a new room.

Now, another sports ball story, right? Sports boy center fielder Carlos Gomez heard voices in his room when he was alone.

Then when he got out of the shower, he heard his ipod turn on, and it was playing really loud static. It was on a table across the room.

And then the ipod, I don't know if it was from it playing it so loud, but it was, like, kind of vibrating and sort of shimmying off the table as it was vibrating.

Oh.

He didn't want it to, like, fall on the floor and break, so he ran to grab it before it fell, and it immediately changed to a song. So being freaked out, he did what any of us would do. He ran out of the room to the lobby before even putting his pants on again.

As One would.

Yeah, yeah. And when talking about the hotel, he later said, I'm scared to go there. They should change the hotel. Everyone here doesn't like the hotel.

Why do they always put us in the same hotel when you can't sleep?

They're like, it's haunted.

Everything's scary. Everything in the hotel, the paintings, the pictures. It's a lot of old crazy stuff. No good, man.

I love just how Frank, you know.

He'S like, shit's fuck. I don't want to go there.

Yeah, but I thought it was.

Yeah. An interesting story. Also, electronics can malfunction, and if they can, they will.

Yeah, right.

Like an ipod going off. It could simply be the ipod being stupid. Yes. But I love that he was like, it's the ghost. Fuck this. I'm out.

And another story from Mike Cameron, center fielder for several teams. I was, like, trying to look up what all these people do, and I'm like, there's just too many.

They.

They change teams too often.

They do sports things, and they do things with, like, a baseball baby.

They do sports things now. He was once interviewed discussing the hotel.

He was told that people and teammates often wake up in the middle of the night and feel like someone's in the room with them. And sometimes the door is even open. And he said that that's enough to keep him away.

He said that some of the guys have told him that they will lock their door and wake up to it being open, which, like, I would not like my door, my hotel door open, like, to anyone. That's terrifying. He says that the halls feel hollow and that it has creepy floors. And I thought that that was just kind of funny.

I think it's just like the old materials used, perhaps like that just give it that creepy vibe. But creepy floors. Okay.

In an interview, it sounded like him and his wife have stayed in the hotel before, but she got creeped out and they ended up moving hotels.

So the house that I grew up in, the upstairs hallway had wood paneling.

And just suspiciously wooden.

Not suspiciously wooden, just classic wood paneling. Kind of like what I have in my basement. But what I have in my basement presumably has cinder blocks.

I don't know what the fuck you build a basement of, but it has building material behind it. Right.

You're no builder.

Yeah, I'm no builder. I'm no buildologist. You know what I'm saying?

You're a sports girl.

I'm a sports girl. Classic, classic sports girl knowledge. But anyway, this.

This hallway had with paneling, but it kind of Sounded like there was, like, nothing behind this wood paneling. It also sounded hollow.

Interesting.

When you would walk down, the way you could hear it was just so different, and it was so distinct. So it was very clear when someone was walking down the hallway. I can remember that sound still.

Like, I don't know how to describe it, but it's just like, hollow wood paneling. I'm like, oh, hollow. I understand. I understand exactly what you're saying.

Interesting. I was more like, a hallway would be hollow in a sense, like. And it would be echoey and all of that.

But, like, okay, That's a different, like, thought process.

I think it's probably the walls.

Yeah. But he doesn't want to stay there, and his wife doesn't either.

So the wives are like. And no.

Well, what I thought was interesting is that a lot of sports journalism has written about how so many players do not want to stay at this hotel. Like, it's something that's talked about.

And then, like, even the announcers at some of the games have discussed that the players stayed in the haunted hotel.

I love that. That's what I want them to talk about at sports events. Hauntings.

Right, Right. But, like, I guess it's, like, a common thing to talk about in Milwaukee. And I was like, interesting.

Like, I don't watch sports, obviously, but, like, this would be the only interesting thing I'd find about it. Which haunted hotels are sports players staying in?

Yeah.

To do the sports.

From his interview, he claimed that he had seen ghosts before. Love that.

First off, he mentioned that his sleep was not good because of the restless spirits, but also that he feels comfortable when ghosts are present.

So from what we understood, his experience was that he was laying on his side, and he felt a ghost kind of, like, crawl up behind him, and then it gave him a hug, and it started murmuring in his ear. This is not a unique experience. The other players have seen this. I just love the dude version of it.

Came behind me and hugged so that they don't have to say I was a little spoon, because that is little spoon behavior. You're the little spoon in that situation. And I will tell you that in my house, I have felt something similar.

Interesting. Well, I just thought it was funny that, you know, like, you were just saying, like, why are you standing at the foot of the bed?

Sometimes the ghost is like, you know what? I'm gonna get in Bed with you.

Yeah.

And we're gonna hang out.

If you're gonna be about it, be about it. Get up in here and cuddle.

Let's go.

Don't just stand there and lurk. My ghosts are like, hurt, sweetheart.

Right?

And then some of the sources like his stories in various places, including MLB.com, which I thought was funny, that they're like, hell, here's ghost stuff on mlb.com but at one point he was like, I'm hoping it was a girl spirit.

It definitely wasn't.

But interesting. It's get. They're getting in bed with ghosts.

You know what? For sure, let's just look. They just want to cuddle a baseball player.

Go for it and murmur in their ear.

They're whispering sweet nothings.

They're like, I love the sports. I like that.

He said that he felt generally comfortable with ghosts being present because, yeah, my experience with growing up in a haunted house, I could. I always had that sensation of feeling like there was more there. And when I moved out of it, I felt that absence.

So if you're used to it, it feels weird because it feels like it's missing something because you're so used to it.

Yeah.

They all ended up saying in Francisco Pina's because they were freaked out. He said, if the ghost shows again, we're all going to fight together.

There's another article we found that said Martinez also claimed he was touched by a ghost at the hotel. He played horribly the next day and blamed the fister ghost.

Some legends say that Charles likes to haunt visiting teams playing against the brewers to ensure the home team wins. I just love the idea of that. It has varied summer camp vibes, the first part of it, doesn't it?

Yeah, no, we're gonna.

We're gonna fight them together. But also the idea that the ghosts have a favorite team and they're like, no, we're gonna fudge with you.

But then third, I just want to imagine what in the Scooby Doo is going on here. How funny would it be if the brewers hired someone to come? You see what I'm saying? If it was an actual person, like, not ghosts.

They have, like, trap doors or something, and they just hire people to fuck with the posing team.

They only put the visiting team in specific rooms, and they, like, have the rope and they, like, pull them up to the window so they could break in at night.

Yeah.

Or they have snuggle them a little.

They have, like, a projector for the edge of the bed, and they have, like, something in the bed so that, like, it feels like an indentation or like a weighted blanket so it falls in a certain spot.

Yeah.

How funny would that be?

And then they grab all their shit for the next day and throw it on the floor and leave.

Yes. Amazing.

Okay, so the brewers were on to you.

The brewers are brewing up haunts. So Clint Hurdle, the former Pirates manager, had to settle down a player after he experienced something in his room.

The unnamed player called Clint because a ghost kept turning on his tv. It happened twice. The player was so scared that he came up to Clint's room, and Clint had to go back to his room with him.

And it didn't happen again, but he was pretty freaked out. And again, I just love the idea of being like, there's monsters in my room. Will you come check?

If you haven't ever encountered anything like this or thought about it, like, it is really scary, but I just love that he was like, I'm going to get my dad.

Right. Right.

What's Clint going to do?

These are grown men that people, like, ask for their autograph and, like, look up to. Yeah. Like, there's a monster in my room. Come help me manage it. Yeah.

I love it, though, and that they're, like, bunking together because they're scared we're.

Going to fight it together. It's like, are you. Are you going to run from the room, scream together?

Oh, all four of them?

Absolutely.

Or however many there were.

They're in matching PJs, by the way, in this.

Oh, for sure they are. Yeah. In my head, they were, too. So C.J.

wilson had an experience at the hotel, and he has also shared a friend story, and his friend was Colby Lewis, his experience. So I love that. Not only is he's like, there's ghosts here, but let me tell you, my friend had an experience.

He didn't want to come out publicly, but I'm going to tell you about it.

We all had ghost stories. I mean, fair.

But Wilson said that he was staying there and he was in his room on his computer.

He was, like, checking email, and I think he said, like, editing a photo or something like that, but just, like, doing basic computer things, when all of a sudden the light started flickering. And he remembers thinking to himself, I'm gonna be so pissed if my computer dies.

Hell, yeah. If you were editing. And then you had to restart. Fair.

Exactly. Then the lights just shut off. Then the TV shuts off. After that, the lights turn back on, but the light by the door then turns on.

It's like, go to bed.

Right. So he yelled out, really? And went back to his computer. About 30 minutes later, he heard scratching on the walls.

I don't like a scratching on the wall.

That.

That freaks me out.

Yeah. Now, he also shared Lewis's experience, and according to Wilson, Lewis said that he saw a skeletal apparition around 1:30 in the morning.

It freaked him out so much that he saw the team chaplain and then he even ended up missing a radio appearance the next day.

I mean, look, if you are experiencing something like this for the first time and you did not purposely avail yourself to it, I could see how this could be very jarring and it could mess with your sense of like, what the world is like and your spiritual beliefs. It's jarring to have this type of encounter. Especially again, when you didn't, you weren't signing up for it.

You were signing up to play baseball, not ghost hunt. Right, Right.

There is actually in one of the articles I saw that some of the players have really leaned into it and now they bring ghost hunting equipment when they stand up.

Amazing. 10 out of. Would love to see that. Would love to be a part of it.

Right.

If you're a baseball player or any sports person and you want to ghost hunt with us, we would love that. We also will protect you.

When he went out to investigate, no one was there. Then the TV and the air conditioning continually turned on and off by themselves. He's like, you know what? I'm going to go to bed.

So he goes to bed and then he hears pounding noises from the other side of his headboard. He took a bat to bed with him that night for protection.

Fair. Honestly, fair.

And said that he slept about two hours over the course of his three night stay.

I just feel like you leave if you're really, really, really not gonna get sleep like that. I would just go because. And that's also.

You know, Amanda and I have talked before when we went to Villisca, we stayed at the Elms Hotel and we did an investigation there. And it had never really occurred to me that I don't want to sleep in a place that I'm doing an investigation. I just can't get productive rest.

And I Feel like if I know a place is haunted, I actually kind of don't want to sleep there because I just, my brain is going to be doing things. It's going to be active all night and I'm not going to get any meaningful rest.

If I was a sports person specifically, like, I would be like, no, I need to be able to like get some sleep. I want something that was built three minutes ago that no one has ever brought an antique into.

Yeah. And it's new land that has no history.

Yeah, new land. It's built in the clouds.

Yeah.

I'm actually gonna be on a houseboat. Perfect.

Yeah, perfect. The only spirits of what fish.

Perfect, huh?

The size of 12 year old boys.

The size massive catfish there, you know.

But yeah, a lot of the players too. I saw a lot of them are opting for like Airbnbs in different places because they don't want to deal with it.

But like, from what you said too, I feel like I don't mind staying in a haunted hotel because like I get more investigation time out of it, but I don't want to have anything important planned the next day. I want to be able to sleep the next day.

Yeah. I guess my thing is if I'm staying there, I'm staying there for an investigation. I'm not staying there for rest.

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Or I'm planning to sleep during the day because I think I could sleep in a spooky space in the day, just not at night.

So they didn't want to stay alone. They asked if they all could like sleep in the same room, which I thought was funny.

Slumber party, right?

They had a slumber party. The ghosts cuddled with them. It was great.

Yeah. Big spoon though.

Big spoon, yeah. Brendan Ryan of the St. Louis Cardinals saw a strange apparition during his stay.

He said he saw a moving light that passed through, through his room followed by a temperature drop that gave him the chills. After seeing this, his room just got colder and colder, like unsettling.

Don't like that.

However, for his story, from what I saw in a couple articles, his statements were later retracted.

Interesting.

So I don't know if it's like either he didn't want to be associated with the spooky stuff or like maybe he made it up. I don't know.

Yeah. No, no. And that feels like Scooby Doo shit.

Right?

Like, with the scratching on the wall. Feels like Scooby Doo shit too.

It does, yeah.

And also, an unknown rookie ball player once told their manager, Phil Roswicks, he would name the player that he woke up in the middle of the night to his blinds and windows being open. So he's like, that's weird.

Yeah, I don't like it.

He went, shut them, went back to bed. The next morning, they were wide open again. That's how the brewers were getting in, remember? Through the window.

Yeah, yeah, obviously. So all I had to say is, whoa.

And I think that anything that purposely makes it creepier automatically dilutes the accuracy of an investigation. Unless you are particularly working with children specifically. That's what I was gonna say.

Yeah. If there's rumored to be children, perhaps they'll interact with it more.

Yeah.

Because it's less scary.

But even still, like, you're telling me, like, a Victorian child's gonna know what My Little Pony is? They're gonna be like, what the Is that troll? What is that goblin you've brought me?

So one guest had a super eventful experience while staying at the hotel. He had issues with the room phone, so he went to call for room service, and it started making static sounds, then disconnecting.

Then he heard knocking at the door, thought it was the room service. He answered. No one was there. He was like, maybe there's kids there doing, like, a little, like, knock, knock, runaway, if you will.

So when he brought it up to the hotel, they were like, there were no kids on your floor, and there were only three other people on your floor. Generally, that would have been bizarre. Then his toiletry bags, items were scattered all over the floor.

They must have thought he was a baseball player. While he was sleeping, the clothes he had set out were tossed onto him, and he saw a shadowy figure at the end of his bed.

He also said that the figure pushed him down at one point and he heard laughing. So he then was like, can I switch rooms? And they let him. And nothing else happened. I just feel like he got Bullied by a ghost.

They really must have thought he looked like a baseball player.

It was the brewers in a sheet.

Yeah. Like, it was the whole team.

All of them collectively under one.

Yeah. Yeah. So another story that's been shared is that some say they see a man working at a desk at the lobby occasionally.

And stories say that it's a man named Thomas Worth who was once a bookkeeper for the hotel. However, we couldn't find any reliable sources showing information about a Thomas Worth ever having worked at the hotel.

We also found stories about some of the hauntings possibly being tied to the art there. Fascinating. One claimed to be that it was a crying boy painting, which one of our really early urban legends episodes has.

We talk about a crying boy at painting. Fascinating. The story says that guests have heard actual crying when they're near the painting and that it brought them bad luck.

However, we couldn't find anything that proved that one of those paintings was there. But they do have a ton of art, so it could be that it was there at some point and has been moved to storage.

So, yeah, they. It looks like they, like, have residencies there as well.

Yeah.

And, like, different artists and things.

But I feel like a crying boy painting like, that if they had a specific type of painting that people know of, like, the average person may know of this, that it would come up somewhere. And I just could not find that.

Crying boy paintings are very specific. Like, it's a specific type of painting versus a painting of a boy crying. It could be that it was a painting of a boy crying.

That's true.

And that people are like, there's a painting of a boy crying, and I hear crying. I would also be like, those are related. Yeah, that's fair.

That's fair. So let's talk about some ideas as to why it may be haunted. Outside of the possible undocumented deaths that may have taken place there.

And possibly Charles and Guido still watching over their hotel. There is another reason that some believe the grounds are haunted.

So Anna Lardinois, the former Pfister narrator and owner of Gothic Milwaukee, researched the area of the hotel. Now, we were like, what the hell is a hotel? Narrator.

Yeah, yeah. What is a hotel? Narrator?

It's kind of like what it sounds like from what we could find. The Pfister Hotel popularized a program called Narrator in Residence. And what it is is they hire a writer to, quote, unquote, experience the hotel.

They interact with guests. They capture stories, history, and the atmosphere of the hotel, and then write blog posts, social media posts, and cover events.

So it's like they actually get the real feeling of being in the hotel to be able to write about it in a better way than, like, the average person.

I like that. Yeah.

I was like, that's a really cool position and like, a really cool thing.

If you love a business and you want someone to write about it the right way and experience it and then be able to tell people about it, that's exactly what you do. Right. But I thought it was interesting.

I'd never heard of it. Yeah. Is you give them the opportunity to do that. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyways, she did a lot of research and found an old article about a man named Charles Milwaukee Severe.

And he said when he was interviewed that before the hotel was there, he lived in a log cabin that was on the land and that it was also a private burying ground.

Okay. I mean, that would provide some context.

It would. It would.

According to Charles, when they were breaking ground for the hotel, he went back to the property to look for bones of some of the buried people, and he couldn't find them. So I don't know if he was just like, like, did a thorough search or, you know.

Yeah.

I don't know. A lot of it's an old timey article.

My brain's having a hard time, like, processing that too. How would you look for the bones?

That's what I don't know.

But how thorough of a job can the average person do looking for bones?

But interesting, like, if that is a thing that was on the grounds of the land. Because, of course, there's always other people that have lived on the land.

And a lot of the time when we talk about our history, it starts at certain people's history, not everyone's. And so I think that's part of this.

Yeah. If you're starting with colonists or settler history, we're missing a part of it.

I also don't ever want to fall into the trope of, like, haunted Native American burial ground.

For reals. Yeah.

It's difficult to find the balance in between those things. Yes.

Yes.

We want to acknowledge it, but we also don't want to, like, play into it, just further that silly trope.

Yeah. But also, if it was. That sucks that they're just like, you know what?

That doesn't matter.

Let's put our building here. Yep. But I don't know. But if that is it, it definitely could explain some of the things.

I don't know if they'd give a About haunting sports ball players.

Yeah.

Okay.

Like, all y' all Fair.

Right, Right.

So Anna has also commented on the haunting in regard to it being likely, Charles, she said, quote, I think that the legend is a delightful one, especially when you think of the things it could be. You know, it's not a terrible murder. It's not anything gruesome.

If you think about the Fister ghost as Charles Fitzer, just with a careful eye watching over his hotel, it's actually quite delightful. Yeah. And like, so far, there's not a lot of other things. Right. That, like, we know of.

Of course, normally the sinister stuff is very clear and very evident and you know about it. So it's like, why is it, I think, something brought in, you know, or maybe the location itself or the fact that it's made of limestone.

Or maybe ghosts are following around sports players and they just stay there, you know?

Well, think about it. They're in stadiums full of so many people, and they probably go to the most interesting places. So the. The hitchhiking ghosts.

Imagine you're a little ghosty or whatever that is, like, attached to someone and you go to a baseball game with them and you're like, what are these guys up to later on? It's like, literally the baseball players are bringing the ghosts with them and then.

Getting freaked out by it.

Yeah, you're. And it's like, sweetie, the problem is you. Because ghosts are following you because you're interesting.

Yeah. And blaming the brewers or the Scooby.

Doo shit going on. Okay. So there are some tours in the area that talk about the Pfister Hotel, but the hotel itself doesn't offer ghost.

Tours, at least on their website at all that I could.

Yeah.

Now, on one source, not the hotel's words, someone mentioned that the hotel doesn't allow paranormal investigations because they don't want their spectral residents disturbed by annoying people that may generate complaints and behavior that would be hard to calm down and hide from the public.

Additionally, they welcome Charles to watch over his hotel, and the staffless owners don't want to disappoint his expectations of hospitalities to real people. Or the spectral residents, which I kind of like the idea that they're like, we have spectral residents.

We want everyone here to be happy and we don't want people coming to, like a bother you. If you're a famous person, you don't want people coming up and bothering you while you're eating.

And if you're a ghost, you don't want people coming and bothering you while you're haunting.

Yeah.

So with all that being said, there are some videos that guests have taken while they've done their own investigations. Some showed strange EMF readings in places that would likely not have interference from electrical wires.

And many have said they just felt like they weren't alone.

Yeah, I watched a few videos, and I was like, also, I just wanted to, like, walk around the place, you know? Yeah. And there's a few where I'm like, huh, that is interesting.

But then there's also some where, like, one person was holding an EMF reader, and the person, like, talking about them was like, and they're holding a ghost finding device, and then they're, like, holding it up to where I would assume electrical wires would be. Yeah. And I'm like, huh. Okay. Okay, this works.

I also just think that, like, a lot of times people will pick up equipment and be like, you just use it. It's like, no, don't just use it. Like, think about how it works. Explain how it works. Make sure you're not getting a false positive.

You kind of make everything seem a little bit ridiculous when you don't treat it like an actual measuring tool. But anyway. So, Amanda, do you think it's talented?

Okay. I have a few different, like, thought processes for this.

Is it Scooby Doo with the brewers?

Yeah, we're starting a whole rumor now that the brewers have been breaking into hotel rooms.

I just also like the phrase Scooby Doo shit, because you know exactly what I mean when I say Scooby Doo shit.

Could that somehow be in the description? And are the brewers up to Scooby Doo? Yeah, I think.

I think it should be. That'll be one of our, like, Instagram stories. So if nothing else, go to our Instagram stories to tell us. If you think the brewers are up.

For some Scooby Doo, we're on to you.

For liability purposes, we are not saying that the brewers giving you shit. Don't sue us, please. We're just saying you can consider things.

No, I just want them to send us a picture of them all in a collective sheet. Yeah.

One sheet together, two eyes. You have to pick who your eyes are. That's on you, not me.

Scooby Doo shit.

Scooby Doo shit.

Anyways, so I do think that maybe Charles or possibly Guido do hang out or maybe, like, check on their hotel. Like, that makes sense. Or if it's not them, maybe their energy is still hanging around. Yeah, right.

Especially if he cared for making sure, like, his dad's vision continued or something like that. Maybe. As far as what's happening in the rooms, though, I'm not sure. I guess it could be the Brewers.

But it's interesting to me that the group that has the most stories are related in some way. Yes.

There's a common theme.

Yeah. That's like, going into it and experiencing something. And my thoughts are these guys. Right.

They work together, they likely hang out together, and they share these stories, whether it's from their team or other teams. And maybe that's influencing what they're experiencing.

Like, instead of a noise being, like, you know, it's an old building, it's automatically that was a ghost tapping on the wall.

You just assume it's that. You're telling me that these guys aren't fucking with each other too.

Right. Right. Yeah. That is like, the footsteps in the room. Like, if there was someone with kids on the bottom or top floor above them.

Yeah.

Sometimes the way that footsteps sound sound a little crazy. I don. To, like, diminish.

Like, or another tv.

Yeah. Or another tv. But, like, I don't want to diminish their story and what happened to them.

But also, like, if we're talking about ghost stories and we're like, these ghosts do this, they do this, they do this. And then you're put in a setting where you're like, oh, the ghosts are going to do this.

Perhaps you're not going to write off things that you might have otherwise.

You're going to put everything in the ghost bucket. Because it's an option.

Yes. Yes. Or kind of like we brought up, maybe the hotel is just, like, a cool spot for hitchhiking ghosts to hang out.

Because there's a lot of people and it's like. It's not even just, like, a lot of people. It's a lot of celebrities and it's a lot of sports people.

Like, people that you want to know the deets on, right?

Yeah.

You want to know the gossip on these people. So maybe it's just, like, a fun spot to hang out. Or blame the limestone.

It's always the limestone.

It's always the limestone. But either way, old hotels have, like, a way of creeping you out, whether they're haunted or not.

Just being in a building that old does have energy either way.

Yeah, I agree. I agree.

What do you think?

I think it's, like, a mixture of everything, Right. Maybe. Maybe not. Scooby Doo ship, maybe Scooby Doo. I don't know. I love the idea of a ghost that's, like, advocating for their home team.

I find that very endearing. Again, you're gonna put things into buckets. As you will, because it's gonna. It's confirmation bias. You think this is gonna happen, that it happens.

You're like, it happened. But also, I do think ghosts can travel. I don't think that a place being new or old or having a traumatic history makes it.

I don't think you should rule out a haunting because. Or. Or some type of paranormal activity because of its age and its lack of, like, locational trauma.

Because it could be that, like, it's attached to something.

Right.

There's a reason I don't want haunted dolls into my house. It's because I don't want to bring haunted dolls into my house. It's because I think that things can attach to actual objects.

And if that's the case, art people. People bring in stuff. Antiques. Like, if you're restoring an old hotel, chances are you're going to bring some old stuff in. That's old stuff.

Yeah, that's true.

It could also be loops, right. Energy residual. Like, especially, like, you think about the people who worked there. What was it, 1, 105 hours of painting that ceiling.

Probably one of the most amazing things that I've ever done. You're telling me as a ghost, you wouldn't be like, I'm gonna go visit my painting? Fuck yeah, you would.

Yeah. Yeah. Or yeah, if you watched over. That was you and your dad's hotel? I check up on it.

Yeah.

How's it going? Are they running it the way that I want it or are they fucking shit up? And if so, I'm gonna hop on.

Yeah. Like, do I need to come do some Scooby Doo shit? There's.

Yeah. Yeah. So I. I thought it was like. It's different from the hotels we've covered. Yeah.

In a sense that, like, the stories come from a group of people that you don't really pair paranormal stories to.

No, you really don't. But I. I like that, though. I like, like, a little twist.

Right. They probably stay at tons of haunted hotels.

Right.

They go around the country all the time.

Yeah. And the fact that this sticks out, I think, is its own interesting little point.

Yes, agreed. So we want to know, what do you guys think? Would you stay here? Is it haunted? Who's haunting it? Also, have you stayed here?

I want to know your experience. Always. I went through and always a bunch of, like, reviews looking for stuff, and it was like, hit or miss.

Yeah, yeah.

But if you have any requested spooky travel locations, please reach out. Like we said at the beginning, this is one of our favorite topics.

And Also, it gives us ideas for where we could visit next because for this year we already have a haunted location picked out.

We do. We do just one. So so far. Right. Maybe we'll find more as well. And it also doesn't need to necessarily be a hotel. It could be.

No.

Anywhere.

Yeah. Spooky travel anywhere.

Yeah. We've done parks before too. Like, which I thought was interesting as well.

And we've investigated a park. Really cool experience.

Yes.

But with that, have a great weekend.

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I beg of you. Right, Right.

We have elevator issues. Where were we? Didn't we think we were going to get trapped in an elevator?

Oh my God. Where was that?

Oh, it was at Warped Tour. The elevator freaked out at the hotel we were staying at.

At the hotel. You are right at the hotel. It did.

I've also I got trapped in an elevator at the Air and Space Museum when I was a teenager and I had to climb out the top and I was with my ex boyfriend at the time. And then like 7 years ago I was in a parking garage and the elevator froze and I was stuck in it and I called Ben and I was like, I need.

I was like so calm. I was like, hey, can you go push the elevator button? And he's like, yeah, why? And I was like, oh, because it's not moving and I'm stuck in it.

And he was like, okay. Like I was too calm for that situation. And then when I got out I was like, you know, because I was like panicking is not going to help me.

And it's fine. It's just going to go down because he's going to push the button. Everything's going to be fine. Yeah, but I don't know.

I don't know what soothing self talk I would do if there was a ghost in the elevator and I knew about it.

Yeah. Yeah. It another layer to elevator horrors.

A new fresh fear. The ghost is like, ew. I'll bring big mama. She's a very large flashlight, and she'll make you feel better.

That sounded like I was, like, coming on to someone, but I'm not. It's a legitimate flashlight. Like, I was like, she'll make you feel better. It's just sounded. It sounded like something.

You know what I'm saying?

She's literally a flashlight. Calm down.

A flashlight Flash.

F L A S H.

I had.

To just make sure. Yeah, I, I As I was saying it, I was like, oh, no. It's just getting worse. It's getting way worse.

Okay, so more the story says the ghosts have heard actual crying when they're near.

The ghost, yes. Not the ghosts.

No. The ghosts hear it too. Everybody hears it.