The Great Dane Pub & Brewing Co.

The former Fess Hotel (1858), now a brewpub in downtown Madison, where the old hotel switchboard lit up and called for service in rooms that no longer existed during the conversion. Staff report a basement "spooky room" with oppressive energy, pool cues jumping off racks one by one, and a pest control worker who fell to her knees in the attic saying "something horrible happened here."

During the conversion from hotel to restaurant, the old switchboard lit up and called for service in rooms that no longer existed. Phantom guests requesting things from a front desk that had been torn out.

The Great Dane Pub and Brewing Company occupies the former Fess Hotel at 123 East Doty Street in Madison, a building that's been standing since 1858. George Fess, an English immigrant who arrived in Madison in 1842, built it as a "hotel for the common man." He ran it until his death from "brain fever" in 1875. His wife Anna took over and managed the thirty-four-room operation until she died in 1895. The hotel stayed in the family until 1972, making it one of the longest family-run hotels in the city. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The Great Dane opened in 1994.

The basement is where things get strange. Staff call one storage room the "spooky room," a small space with stone walls that stays cold and damp year-round. An oppressive, heavy feeling settles over anyone who enters. Some employees refuse to go down there after hours. One staff member was sitting in the basement break room, finishing credit card receipts after close, when a voice asked "what time is it?" from somewhere behind him. Nobody was there.

Two hostesses saw a floating torso of a man in the basement beneath the pool hall. Two bartenders watched pool cues jump off the wall rack one by one, as if invisible hands were flicking them. Around three in the morning, a manager noticed a Sharpie marker suspended by string start spinning violently in a circle, grabbed by something nobody could see. An employee saw a full figure walk up the stairs and vanish.

A pest control worker climbed into the attic storage space, stepped off the ladder, and immediately fell to her knees. "Something horrible happened here," she said. She had no prior knowledge of the building's history.

In 2005, a psychic medium investigated and found multiple spirits. In the basement break room, an elderly male presence politely interacting with staff. In the spooky room, something darker and angrier. Local shamanistic practitioner Kathy Gritton-Eich examined the building and described it as "teeming with psychic energy," confirming what employees had been reporting across multiple floors and rooms.

The men's room door slams on its own. A waitress lost a small amount of money from her till, and it turned up later in an impossible spot, as if returned. Glasses slide across the bar. Doors in the former hotel rooms upstairs swing open without cause. George Fess died in this building 150 years ago, and the staff who close up at night would tell you he's not the only one who decided to stay.