Karsten Inn

Former owner William Karsten Sr. is said to still haunt his old suite on the second floor, making his presence known in ways guests don't forget.

The site at 122 Ellis Street in Kewaunee has hosted travelers since 1858, when Charles Brandes built the Steamboat House, a wooden hotel whose large ballroom served as the Kewaunee County courtroom until 1873. The property passed through Edward Decker and John Erichsen before William Karsten Sr. purchased it in November 1911. Karsten was a retired sea captain who had made his fortune establishing Pabst Brewing Company operations in Kewaunee and serving as mayor. Just months after his purchase, a kitchen fire destroyed the wooden structure in four hours. Karsten responded by building a luxurious three-story brick hotel at a cost of $60,000, featuring 52 rooms, an elegant lobby, a dining room and ballroom seating ninety, and an impressive tap bar with original wooden fixtures and stained glass. The Hotel Karsten opened on Valentine's Day, 1913.

Karsten weighed 375 pounds, suffered from arthritis, and spent his later years in his second-floor suite overlooking the harbor and Lake Michigan. His wife Catherine died in 1928, causing him to withdraw emotionally, and his closest companion became his five-year-old grandson William "Billy" Karsten III. The two were described as kindred spirits who spent considerable time together at the hotel. On January 4, 1940, William Karsten Sr. died of a heart attack in his suite. Three weeks later, Billy died of complications from Haemophilus influenzae meningitis at age five.

Three named spirits inhabit the hotel. William Karsten Sr. manifests most frequently in rooms 210 through 215, his former personal suite. He announces his presence with the scent of cigar smoke that drifts through the corridor and into other floors. When annoyed or frustrated, a sour smell pervades the area. When sad, according to psychic astrologer Rita Ann Freedman who conducted readings at the hotel in 1988, he emits the scent of an unwashed person. Freedman described him as anchored to the hotel through his personality and deep love for the building. Bar patron Bonnie Jeski watched a white form of a man wearing a workman's or fisherman's hat, sitting at the bar on a barstool drinking beer from a stein, who vanished when she turned to show her husband.

Billy's ghost runs up and down the wide second and third-floor hallways and plays in the basement. When children stay at the inn, they often claim to play in the halls with Billy, then identify him unprompted in a historic photograph displayed in the hotel. Investigators Chad Lewis and Terry Fisk captured intelligent EVPs of Billy's voice on the second floor. His energy is described as friendly, gregarious, and not shy, and he frequently visits his grandfather's suite, maintaining the bond they shared in life.

The third spirit, Agatha, is the most active and unpredictable. Born in the early 1900s, she was raped in 1921 by a drunk neighbor, and her parents raised the resulting child. She found refuge as a hotel housekeeper from 1925 to 1937, developing an unrequited attachment to William Karsten Sr. before leaving to care for her ailing father. She died of cancer in 1954, never having married. Freedman described her as "an omnipresent, possessive entity who could be nasty" and extremely opinionated. Room 310, her former room, is the primary hotspot: guests have been awakened by books dropped beside their bed, observed a misty female form crossing the room and disappearing into the wall, and seen a woman's face looking down from the corner. Old-fashioned gray hairpins appear in the room with no explanation. In 1988, hotel manager Barbara Pelnar was shoved hard from behind by an unseen force while standing on the second-floor landing and fell down the stairs, the only major violent incident on record. In 1991, during a third-floor redecorating project, Toni Charles heard footsteps in the hallway, opened the door, and found fresh footprints pressed into the carpet proceeding down the empty hall. Staff have seen Agatha reflected in mirrors wearing a 1930s maid uniform with her hair in a period bun, and she's been observed sweeping the second and third-floor hallways. She sets the kitchen alarm clock to ring at midnight, plays with stove burners, knocks over salt shakers and sugar bowls in the dining room, and is particularly hostile toward workmen on the upper floors. During the 1966 restoration by the Schmitt brothers, activity intensified dramatically, and construction has triggered heightened phenomena ever since.

The Wisconsin Ghost Investigations Team declared and certified the inn as haunted in 2002 after capturing evidence on tape. A HauntedHouses.com team investigated on March 2-3, 2013, with psychic medium Lori Manns communicating with William Karsten about his worries for the hotel and capturing numerous EVPs, ghost box phenomena, and a photograph possibly depicting Agatha in a mirror where a workman had previously seen her ghost. During a Chicago Paranormal Investigators session, a camera tripod was flung across a hallway, and the team captured images of two shadowy figures, one of which lifted a team member's hair off her shoulder. The inn continues to operate as the Karsten Hotel at 122 Ellis Street, one block from Lake Michigan, with 23 guest rooms bearing the accumulated presence of over 160 years of continuous hospitality.