The Pfister Hotel

MLB players have been reporting ghost encounters at Milwaukee's Pfister Hotel for decades: Bryce Harper's furniture moved overnight, Adrian Beltre took a bat to bed, and by the 2024 NLCS, Dodgers players refused to stay there. The ghost is assumed to be Charles Pfister, who finished building the hotel in 1893 and died in 1927.

"When I woke up in the morning, I swear on everything, the clothes were on the floor and the table was on the opposite side of the room." That's Bryce Harper, describing a night at Milwaukee's Pfister Hotel. He changed rooms immediately. He is far from the only MLB player with a Pfister story.

Adrian Beltre heard knocking on his door in 2001, found nobody there, watched the AC and TV switch off on their own, then got woken by pounding from behind his headboard. He took a bat to bed. Michael Young heard footsteps stomping around his locked room and eventually yelled into the darkness: "Hey! Make yourself at home. Hang out, have a seat, but do not wake me up." Brandon Phillips came back to his room, sat on the bed, and the radio turned on. He turned it off. It turned itself back on. C.J. Wilson had the lights flicker, the TV shut off, and then heard scratching inside the walls. Pablo Sandoval's iPod started playing music on its own while he was in the shower. After that trip in 2009, he stayed elsewhere.

The list goes on. Justin Upton slept with every light on and the blinds open. Giancarlo Stanton called the place "freaky as shit, with the head-shot paintings on the walls and the old curtains everywhere." Carlos Martinez blamed a poor pitching performance in 2018 on the ghost touching him. By the 2024 NLCS, Dodgers players Mookie Betts and Teoscar Hernandez refused to stay at the Pfister altogether.

The hotel opened in 1893, designed by architect Henry C. Koch in Romanesque Revival style. Guido Pfister conceived it but died before construction finished. His son Charles completed the project, spending over $1 million (roughly $36 million today) on a building that had fireproofing, electricity, and individual thermostat controls in every room. The original structure used Wauwatosa limestone for the first two floors and cream brick above, with Indiana limestone and terra cotta trim. Charles ran the hotel until a massive stroke in the spring of 1927. He died that November.

The ghost is assumed to be Charles. Anna Lardinois, a former Pfister Narrator and founder of Gothic Milwaukee, put it simply: "Charles Pfister is so closely connected with this hotel, he becomes kind of the spokes-ghost." Guests and staff have described a shadowy figure matching Charles's description moving through the hallways, usually at night.

There's a wrinkle in the origin story, though. According to an 1893 Milwaukee Daily Sentinel interview with Charles Milwaukee Sivyer, the hotel sits on the site of private burial grounds. Workers broke ground and searched for remains but found nothing. Whether that matters depends on what you believe about disturbed graves and $36 million hotels built on top of them.

Ben Marcus bought the Pfister in 1962 and added a 23-story tower behind the original building. The Marcus Corporation still owns it. The hotel holds a AAA Four Diamond rating (since 1978), membership in Historic Hotels of America, and the world's largest hotel collection of Victorian art. Shane Victorino, the one notable skeptic in this story, dismissed the whole thing: "C'mon, I don't believe in all that shit. It's not haunted. There's nothing wrong with that hotel." The Pfister's ghost would probably appreciate the endorsement.