Doors Open Milwaukee: Mikayla Husting

I ended up not making it to either day of Doors Open Milwaukee, but I did some research on the tours that were offered and found out that there is a "Haunted Third Ward" tour every Friday night that meets outside of the Public Market.

The tour lasted about one hour and the guide took us to several locations in the Third Ward and told ghost stories about those locations. My favorite story was about a girl (I believe her name was Kate or Katie) who worked in the Newhall Hotel (which no longer exists). Apparently the Newhall Hotel was on fire, a lot. It got to the point where the workers stopped telling the guests that the hotel was on fire because the fire was usually put out in a short period of time. Well, one night the fire got out of control. Guests were trapped in their rooms and were forced to jump out of the windows onto the sidewalk below. Katie risked her life to save the guests as she would help a group escape and run back into the hotel to try to save more people. After quite a few trips, Katie must have became exhausted and collapsed because she did not make it back out of the hotel. I guess I forgot what she is believed to haunt now... the guide told the story next to a parking garage that used to be where Katie's house was?

I was disappointed that the tour did not take us inside of any of the buildings, but the stories were still very interesting. I learned a lot about Milwaukee's history, even the non-ghost related history. The Third Ward was often referred to as the "Bloody Third" because there was a lot of violence (and a lynching) during the mid-1800s when thousands of Irish immigrated to Milwaukee during the potato famine. The tour guide told us that there were many more fires than just the major one that happened in October 1982. He said that it was possible that the Italian Mafia was behind the fires (ARSON?!) because after most of the Third Ward burned down, it was the Italians that moved in and rebuilt.

Another interesting ghost story is that members of the Italian Community Center often hear children playing in empty hallways. There used to be a school in that area, which the guide said could explain that activity. He also stated that the ICC was built over an area that used to be filled with railroad tracks, which many people died on (either on accident or on purpose). Something that made that story very eerie is that a block away from the ICC, there is a five to six foot section of railroad tracks still embedded in the ground.

I also learned that the "bull" symbol you can make with your hands (think Breakfast Club) originated in the Italian community as a way to protect oneself from the "evil eye". The symbol was meant to block bad energy from entering the body.

Here is a question for the MIAD students: Do you ever feel pressure on your body (specifically your chest) or an overwhelming feeling in the fourth floor gallery? The guide told us that a man had a heart attack there and students have reported experiencing that feeling.

There were some other interesting stories, including a UFO with recorded sightings on April 10, 1897, from Milwaukee all the way up to Sheboygan, a river serpent (which could have possibly been an escaped sea lion from the Chicago zoo), and Charles Pfister's ghost haunting visiting baseball teams. Even if none of the ghost stories were very exciting (can they really be when the tour is limited to a few blocks), I learned quite a lot about Milwaukee's history that I never knew before.