Ruebel Hotel

Grafton's Ruebel Hotel, built in 1879 at the confluence of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, is haunted by a little girl named Abigail who died either of tuberculosis or in the 1912 fire that destroyed the original building. She steals small objects, runs through the upstairs hallway at dawn, and has been recorded on EVP equipment in Room 11.

Small things vanish from guest rooms at the Ruebel Hotel. A phone charger left on the nightstand, a hair tie on the bathroom counter, a pen on the desk. Guests find them later in odd places, or they don't find them at all. Staff blame Abigail.

Abigail is the ghost of a little girl who died at the hotel, though nobody agrees on exactly how. One version says tuberculosis took her while her family was staying in one of the 32 rooms during the late 1800s. Another says she died in the fire that burned the original hotel to the ground in 1912. Both stories circulate, and neither has been confirmed with a death record. What the staff and guests do agree on is the behavior: a child running through the upstairs hallway before dawn, soft footsteps in the twilight hours, curious smells with no source, and the habit of stealing small objects like a kid playing keep-away.

Michael Ruebel built the hotel in 1879 at 217 East Main Street in Grafton, right where the Illinois River meets the Mississippi. Grafton is a river town, and in the late 1800s it was a working one. Quarrymen cutting limestone for the Eads Bridge, dockworkers loading barges, and riverboat crews passing through all needed somewhere cheap to sleep. Ruebel gave them 32 rooms at a dollar a night. The hotel was the center of town life for over three decades.

The 1912 fire destroyed the building. It was rebuilt the following year on the same foundation, and the new Ruebel picked up where the old one left off, serving river workers and travelers heading up and down the Great River Road. The hotel is now on the National Register of Historic Places, the last surviving hotel from Grafton's river heyday.

Room 11 is where Abigail is most active. Guests have captured EVP recordings there and photographed a mist forming in the room with no explanation. Unexplained orbs show up in photos taken throughout the hotel, but Room 11 produces them with unusual frequency. One guest described the bed bouncing or jumping at the foot while a chain hanging from the ceiling fan stayed perfectly still. Another reported a sudden, violent banging noise, like a shotgun firing multiple times right next to their head.

Abigail isn't the only ghost. An old man has been seen in the hallways, though he's far less documented than the little girl. Karen Khamee, one of the hotel's owners, once woke up in the middle of the night with chills and heard running on the floor above her.

Grafton has taken its share of hits over the years. The Great Flood of 1993 devastated the town, and the rivers that made Grafton a hub also made it vulnerable. The Ruebel survived that too, same as it survived the 1912 fire. The hotel leans into the ghost stories now, and guests book specifically hoping to encounter Abigail. She seems to prefer winter, when the hallways are quieter and there are fewer people around to interrupt her.

The confluence of two major rivers is a dramatic spot for a hotel. Two hundred years of river workers, travelers, quarrymen, and floods have passed through this ground. A little girl who takes your phone charger and runs the hallway at 5 a.m. is, honestly, the least of it.