Single Brothers House

Built in 1769, the Single Brothers House was a boarding home for unmarried young men in the Moravian settlement of Salem. The meticulous Moravians documented nearly every aspect of daily life - including supernatural encounters that persist to this day.

The Single Brothers House in Old Salem was built in 1769 as a communal residence and workshop for the unmarried men of the Moravian settlement. The large half-timbered building housed craftsmen who practiced trades essential to the community -- potters, tanners, tailors, and shoemakers -- living, working, and worshipping together under one roof until they married and established their own households. The building was expanded several times as Salem grew, and it was during one of these expansions that the settlement acquired its most famous ghost.

Andreas Kremser arrived in the Moravian communities from the north in 1766, settling first in Bethabara before moving to Salem in 1772. He was a shoemaker by trade, a small man known to wear a distinctive red cap. When the Single Brothers House needed a deeper cellar, Kremser volunteered to help with the excavation. On the night of March 25, 1786, while digging by lantern light in the sub-basement, a bank of earth collapsed and buried him alive. Workers pulled him from the rubble, but his injuries were too severe. Andreas Kremser died around midnight, just hours after the cave-in. His death was recorded in the Moravian community records, the meticulous archives that documented every significant event in the settlement's history.

According to those same records and the oral tradition that grew around them, Kremser's spirit returned almost immediately. The first signs were auditory: the unmistakable tap, tap, tap of a shoemaker's hammer echoing from the cellar where he had died. Then came the sightings. Residents reported seeing a small man in a red cap or red jacket scurrying through the hallways, always just at the edge of vision, always vanishing when pursued. The ghost became known as the Little Red Man, and he would haunt the Single Brothers House for nearly two centuries.

The most remarkable encounter involved Little Betsy, the granddaughter of a widow who lived in the house sometime after its use as a communal residence. Betsy had been left deaf from a childhood illness, though she could still speak. She knew nothing of the ghost or the story of the cellar accident. One day, she rushed excitedly in from the garden and told her grandmother about a small man wearing a red cap who had beckoned her to come and play. The description matched Kremser exactly -- a detail Betsy could not have known, since the ghost had never been described to her.

The Little Red Man continued to be seen and heard by residents, visitors, and workers in the building for generations. His appearances reportedly ceased sometime around 1950, after a prominent community member witnessed the ghost while showing a visitor through the cellar and a minister subsequently performed a ritual to lay the spirit to rest. Whether the ceremony worked or Kremser simply decided he had tapped his last sole, no further sightings have been documented.

Today the Single Brothers House serves as offices for Old Salem Museums and Gardens, and it remains one of the most visited buildings in the historic district. Staff still trade stories of odd occurrences -- doors that do not stay closed, cold drafts in rooms with no windows, and the occasional faint sound that might, if you listen closely, be the tapping of a shoemaker's hammer rising from the cellar where Andreas Kremser met his end nearly 240 years ago.