Karsten Inn

Three named ghosts haunt this 1913 brick hotel in Kewaunee: founder William Karsten Sr. fills the halls with cigar smoke, his five-year-old grandson Billy plays with visiting children who later identify him in historic photographs, and former housekeeper Agatha shoves managers down stairs, drops books beside sleeping guests, and leaves old-fashioned gray hairpins in room 310.

Children who stay at the Karsten Inn sometimes come downstairs and tell their parents about the boy they played with in the hallway. When shown a historical photograph displayed in the hotel lobby, they point to him without hesitation. That's Billy. He's been dead since 1940.

William "Billy" Karsten III died on January 25, 1940, three weeks after his grandfather, William Karsten Sr., suffered a fatal heart attack in his second-floor suite. Billy was five years old, killed by complications from Haemophilus influenzae meningitis. The two had been inseparable at the hotel, described by family as kindred spirits who spent most of their time together. Grandfather and grandson died within weeks of each other, and neither, apparently, left the building.

The hotel traces back to 1858, when Charles Brandes built the Steamboat House on this site at 122 Ellis Street in Kewaunee. The ballroom doubled as the Kewaunee County courtroom until 1873. William Karsten Sr. purchased the property in November 1911. He was a retired sea captain who'd made his fortune establishing Pabst Brewing Company operations in Kewaunee and serving as mayor. A kitchen fire destroyed the wooden structure just months later, burning it down in four hours. Karsten replaced it with a three-story brick hotel at a cost of $60,000: 52 rooms, a dining room and ballroom seating ninety, 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 final years in his second-floor suite overlooking the harbor and Lake Michigan. His wife Catherine died in 1928, and he withdrew into the hotel. His closest companion became Billy. When Karsten died on January 4, 1940, the hotel lost its owner. When Billy died three weeks later, it gained two ghosts.

The grandfather makes himself known through smell. Cigar smoke drifts through the corridor near rooms 210 through 215, his former suite, and filters into other floors. When he's annoyed, a sour smell replaces the tobacco. When he's sad, according to psychic astrologer Rita Ann Freedman who conducted readings at the hotel in 1988, the odor is of an unwashed person. Bar patron Bonnie Jeski watched a white form of a man wearing a workman's hat, sitting at the bar on a barstool drinking beer from a stein. He vanished when she turned to show her husband.

Billy runs up and down the wide second and third-floor hallways and plays in the basement. Investigators Chad Lewis and Terry Fisk captured intelligent EVPs of his voice on the second floor. His energy is described as friendly and gregarious. He frequently visits his grandfather's suite, maintaining the bond that death apparently didn't break.

Then there's Agatha, and Agatha is the one who keeps things interesting. Born in the early 1900s, she was raped in 1921 by a drunk neighbor. Her parents raised the resulting child. She found refuge working as a hotel housekeeper from 1925 to 1937, developing an unrequited attachment to William Karsten 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."

Room 310, her former room, is ground zero. Guests have been woken by books dropped beside their bed. A misty female form crosses the room and disappears into the wall. Old-fashioned gray hairpins appear with no explanation. Staff have seen her reflected in mirrors wearing a 1930s maid uniform with her hair in a period bun, and she's been spotted sweeping the second and third-floor hallways. She sets the kitchen alarm clock to ring at midnight, plays with stove burners, and knocks over salt shakers in the dining room.

In 1988, hotel manager Barbara Pelnar was shoved hard from behind by something invisible while standing on the second-floor landing. She fell down the stairs. It remains 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 trailing down an empty corridor.

Agatha is particularly hostile toward workmen on the upper floors. During the 1966 restoration by the Schmitt brothers, activity spiked, and every renovation since has triggered the same response. During a Chicago Paranormal Investigators session, a camera tripod flew 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 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. They captured EVPs and a photograph that may show Agatha in a mirror where a workman had previously seen her. The hotel now operates as the Karsten Hotel with 23 guest rooms, one block from Lake Michigan. Three ghosts, 160 years of continuous hospitality, and a housekeeper who takes her job very seriously.