Old City Hall

A ghost called Gus terrorizes new employees by knocking every bottle off the shelf (they never break), while the memorial bells in the ten-story campanile ring themselves in the early morning hours with no one inside. Tacoma's 1893 Old City Hall has a basement jail where one cell is still marked SIBERIA.

A ghost named Gus has a signature move at Old City Hall in Tacoma. Every time a new employee started at the Tacoma Bar and Grill on the first floor, Gus would knock each bottle of alcohol off the shelf in assembly-line fashion, right in front of the newcomer. The bottles never broke. Not once.

The building earns its hauntings honestly. Designed by Edward A. Hatherton (who resigned as City Architect of San Francisco in 1891 to relocate to Tacoma) and Colin McIntosh, Old City Hall was completed on April 23, 1893, at a cost of $257,965. Eight-foot-thick ground floor walls of local Wilkeson sandstone support a facade of red brick faced with yellow Roman brick that originally served as ballast on ships sailing from China, Belgium, and Italy. The freestanding ten-story campanile on the southeast corner has walls that tilt slightly inward to enhance the illusion of height.

On Christmas Day 1904, Hugh C. and Mrs. Wallace donated a two-and-a-half-ton Westminster chime-clock and four bells totaling 8,000 pounds of silver metal, cast by the McShane Bell Foundry in Baltimore. The bells were a memorial to their daughter Mildred, who had died the year before at age twelve. Wallace later served as U.S. Ambassador to France and signed the Treaty of Versailles.

For sixty-four years the building housed city government, the Tacoma Public Library, law offices, and in the basement, a city jail. One cell door still bears the faded word "SIBERIA" beneath layers of paint. After city offices relocated in 1959, the building sat vacant for over a decade and nearly got demolished in 1962 before the women of the Delphinium Garden Club intervened. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

Nobody knows who Gus actually was. No historical records connect the name to a specific person, but based on his contempt for authority (particularly security guards and police) many believe he was a petty criminal who died in those basement jail cells. On the restaurant's opening day, the stove simply stopped working. Nothing was mechanically wrong with it. It resumed on its own without another hitch. When staff spoke to Gus directly, acknowledged him by name, the pranks would stop. An entity that craved recognition.

Since the 1970s, police have responded to Old City Hall on numerous occasions: lights flashing on and off, fire alarms and burglar alarms triggering, noises of unknown origin. Officers have never found evidence of forced entry or any living intruder. In 1978, a security guard called police twice in one night because the elevator kept changing floors despite being locked for the evening. An officer named Ortiz corroborated the activity. Security guards have chased shadows down hallways to dead ends and through the building only to find empty rooms. Several have quit rather than keep working night shifts alone.

The bell tower has its own entity, separate from Gus. Despite the bells being mechanically controlled by a clock with a twelve-foot pendulum on a forty-foot wire, they ring at random in the early morning hours when the building is empty. A building manager once spent an entire night inside the tower trying to catch whoever was responsible. He found no living person and left convinced a ghost was the culprit. A visitor to the clock tower's gear room described being overwhelmed by something and witnessing a repeated vision of a man falling or jumping from the top.

Shadows of former Tacoma officials have been seen moving through the old council chambers, figures rushing through hallways like they're conducting urgent civic business decades after leaving office. Near the chambers, a man's cough and the sound of someone nervously clearing their throat have startled people who believed they were alone. Tenants experienced spontaneous lockouts, doors slamming shut, and the feeling of someone rushing past in the corridors. Outside observers have watched lights turn on and off in sequence through the building's windows, though rooms are always dark by the time anyone checks inside.

A cell door marked SIBERIA, memorial bells that ring themselves at 2 AM, and an invisible prankster who introduces himself by smashing every bottle on the shelf without breaking a single one. Old City Hall has been empty since the 2008 financial crisis, undergoing renovation, but the current tenants don't seem bothered by construction.