Dowling House

The oldest house in Galena, built in 1826 from local limestone. Simple and sturdy, it's been standing since before almost anyone else in town showed up.

The Dowling House, built of limestone in 1826, is the oldest stone structure in Illinois and Galena's oldest surviving building. John Dowling, an important community figure who served as a member of the town's board of trustees, alderman, and two-time mayor, constructed the house when Galena was a frontier trading post. The first floor served as the only trading post in the city for many years, while the Dowling family lived upstairs. The house hosted many fur traders in its primitive living quarters.

After the Dowling era, the house was abandoned for several decades until rehabilitation in the 1960s. It was recognized as a contributing property to the Galena Historic District in 1969 and opened to the public in the 1970s.

The Dowling House is a popular haunted attraction not just because it's the oldest building in town, but because it offers some of the best opportunities to capture ghostly photographs. Locals believe the house is haunted by its former occupants and the fur traders they hosted in the mid-1800s.

Orbs of light have been documented, and countless photographs from the 1960s through the present day show figures in the top-floor windows and standing on the porch. Visitors report encounters throughout the historic structure that they can't explain. Perhaps most intriguing are the numerous reports of a ghost cat wandering the premises--spectral feline footsteps and glimpses of a transparent cat have been experienced by multiple witnesses over the decades.

The phantoms of the Dowling House's former occupants appear locked inside its limestone walls. Their fleeting figures might be spotted in the upstairs window, where they seem to live out their afterlives watching over Galena.

Now a museum, visitors can choose between a historical daytime tour or a haunted evening tour offered by local ghost tour companies. The "Dowling After Dark" tours take visitors inside at night, going lights out to discover the spookier side of Galena's history.