TLDR
Two firefighters died in the 1992 IAC fire while Mike Tyson's jury was sequestered upstairs. The knocks at condo doors haven't stopped.
The Full Story
The Indianapolis Athletic Club fire started with a faulty refrigerator wire on the third floor on February 5, 1992. By the time it was out, three people were dead: Corporal Ellwood M. "Woody" Gelenius, 47, and Private John J. Lorenzano, 29, both Indianapolis firefighters, plus one overnight guest. The whole country watched it happen because the jury in Mike Tyson's rape trial was sequestered in the building at the time.
Residents of the luxury condominiums that now fill the building say the knocks haven't stopped.
The banging wakes people up. Loud, insistent knocks at apartment doors in the middle of the night, the way trained firefighters knock when they're trying to get sleeping people out of a burning building. Tenants get up, look through the peephole, open the door. The hallway is empty every time. Some hear a young man's voice telling them to get out of the building, which is either residual energy or, if you believe the framing most people use, Private Lorenzano still running the evacuation he was running when he died. He was 29.
Dark shapes move through the third-floor hallway where the firefighters were trapped. Electronics on that floor fail for no reason. The basement feels wrong in a way multiple construction workers and security guards have described in almost identical language. One security guard working alone at night reported coffee pots and lights turning on and off all evening. His management made him take a drug test. It came back negative.
The clubhouse itself is a nine-story Italian Renaissance building at 350 North Meridian, designed by Indianapolis architect Robert Frost Daggett and opened in January 1924. The Indianapolis Athletic Club was incorporated in 1920 to promote clean sports, amusement, and sociability, and by its peak it had more than 2,000 members, including Eli Lilly, Eugene C. Pulliam, Frank McHale, and Governor Paul McNutt. Inside were sleeping rooms, a swimming pool, a basketball gym, billiard lounges, dining rooms, and a separate apartment for women. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.
The club itself closed in 2004, done in by the decline of private-city-club membership generally. A developer converted the building into more than 80 luxury condominiums and kept most of the original architectural features. The new residents got historic detail and a ghost story that isn't really a ghost story. It's a firefighter story. Two Indianapolis firefighters died trying to get guests out of a burning building, and now, according to the people who live there, they still are.
Every year during the Indianapolis St. Patrick's Day Parade, the Indianapolis Fire Department stops at 350 North Meridian and salutes them.
Researched from 7 verified sources. How we research.
