Old Baraboo Inn

This 1864 Baraboo boarding house turned Prohibition-era brothel and speakeasy houses an estimated 30 spirits, including a prostitute named Mary who appears behind the bar and was independently seen by two different witnesses. The Food Network named it one of the ten most haunted locations in the United States.

A 200-pound griddle moved across the kitchen on its own. Nobody was near it. At the Old Baraboo Inn, that barely qualifies as noteworthy.

The building at 135 Walnut Street was built in 1864 as the Bender House, a boarding house founded by George Bender, a German immigrant who came to Wisconsin to brew lagers. Sitting directly across from the railroad depot with easy access to Chicago, the place cycled through identities over 160 years: brewery, saloon, billiard hall, hotel, restaurant, and, during Prohibition, a brothel and speakeasy. Al Capone, who kept a summer hideout near Couderay in northern Wisconsin, passed through Baraboo on his trips north. Members of the Southern Wisconsin Paranormal Research Group claim to have captured his voice on EVP recordings at the inn.

As many as 30 spirits occupy the building, according to investigators who have worked the site. The one people encounter most often is Mary, a prostitute who bled to death inside the building around the early 1900s. She shows up dressed as a saloon dancer. Waitress Peggy Tobias saw her behind the bar. Tenant Brooke Schonenberg saw her behind the bar on a separate occasion, neither knowing about the other's experience. Former tenant Johnny Flores moved out after three weeks, driven away by voices calling out names from empty rooms. At least two other prostitutes and former owners died inside the building over the decades.

Author Amelia Cotter documented the full history in her book "Where the Party Never Ended: Ghosts of the Old Baraboo Inn." The title is apt. Cowboys, several children, and previous owners are among the spirits that investigators and psychics have identified as regular presences. The inn sat vacant for thirteen years before owner B.C. Farr invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in renovations and reopened it as a restaurant and bar in 2002. The renovation kicked everything into higher gear.

Dishware flies off racks. Brooms float across the kitchen. Doors open and close on their own. Piano music plays when nobody's touching the instrument. A woman's voice calls out names. Customer Charlie Lotte watched a rug on the dance floor get cut by something he couldn't see. Water dripped from a kitchen cabinet that held nothing and connected to no plumbing. Staff and patrons report the clinking of phantom glasses as if an invisible party is happening in the next room, taps on the head from unseen fingers, and sudden temperature drops.

The Southern Wisconsin Paranormal Research Group conducted a formal investigation, collecting electromagnetic field readings and temperature data. The inn has appeared on Discovery+, the Food Network, and the Travel Channel, and the Food Network named it one of the ten most haunted locations in the United States.

B.C. Farr died in February 2023. His sister Shelly took over and continues his work, keeping the doors open for patrons and spirits alike. The inn operates one night a week now, six hours, offering mini ghost hunts where visitors use specialized equipment to try communicating with whoever is in there. Thirty ghosts in a building that's been a brewery, a brothel, and a bar. The party, by all available evidence, has not ended.