Hotel Chequamegon

Hotel Chequamegon in Ashland, Wisconsin sits on a site that once held a bordello and funeral home from the 1800s. Guests report a man in a top hat roaming the halls, activity in Rooms 312 and 314, and a bar named after Molly Cooper, the city's first suspected madam, where bottles crack open on their own.

A liquor bottle behind the bar at Molly Cooper's cracked open on its own one night. No temperature change, no vibration, no one near it. Bar staff member Nikki Melland heard the sound from across the room and said it went off like a gunshot.

The Hotel Chequamegon sits on Lake Superior's Chequamegon Bay in Ashland, Wisconsin, and the building you see today opened in 1986, modeled after the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. But the land underneath it has been busy for a lot longer than that. The original Hotel Chequamegon went up in 1877, built by the Wisconsin Central Railroad during the logging and mining boom that turned Ashland into a Great Lakes boomtown. That hotel burned down on New Year's Day 1958. Before the hotel, the site housed a bordello and a funeral home, both operating through the rougher decades of the 1800s when lumbermen, sailors, and working women packed the waterfront.

The current hotel used reclaimed wood from the nearby ore docks in its construction, and Victorian antiques were sourced from around the world to furnish it, including an armchair from an 1880s French castle. The name comes from an Ojibwa word meaning "spit of land," which describes the bay's geography.

Rooms 312 and 314 get the most attention. Housekeeping staff avoid the third floor when they can. Guests in the turret suite have found blankets rearranged after stepping out for a few minutes, closet lights turning on by themselves, and door handles jiggling at night. One guest described something crawling over them in bed, with real weight and mass, but nothing visible.

The figure most people talk about is a tall man in a top hat. He walks the hallways, usually on the upper floors, and at least a few guests have spotted him in the hotel bar. The scent of perfume drifts through rooms that have been empty for hours. Cigar smoke lingers in the halls despite a no-smoking policy.

Some staff believe the presence is connected to Molly Cooper, who was Ashland's first suspected madam. Her name lives on in Molly Cooper's Bar and Grill in the hotel's lower level. One version of the story claims Molly's daughter jumped from the third floor, though that's unverified. Another theory ties the activity to the old bordello and funeral home that occupied the site, suggesting the antiques brought in from various estates might carry their own attachments.

In 2009, the Minnesota P.R.O.P.H.E.T. paranormal team, led by Brian DeLong, ran an overnight investigation. They set up equipment in Rooms 312 and 314 and the attic, which staff describe as the most active area. Ceiling creaks and the sound of people walking overhead come from the attic regularly, even though nobody has access. The team captured EVP recordings including phrases they interpreted as "We are here" and "Reporters, where are you in investigating?" Flashlights placed on tables turned on and off in response to questions.

Carrie Suminski, the assistant general manager with 20 years at the hotel, has seen enough to stop being surprised by any of it. The lobby clock from the original 1877 hotel was saved from the fire and now sits in the Ashland Museum, one of the only surviving artifacts from the building that started all of this.