Stones Throw

A 1893 Romanesque building in downtown Eau Claire where a bartender once watched a solid-looking man stand up, shake out his coat, walk to the exit, and dissolve into nothing. Multiple staff have reported bottles launching off shelves, chairs rearranging themselves, and footsteps on the empty balcony.

A bartender working the close saw a man sitting at a table. Solid, real-looking, wearing a coat. The man stood up, shook out his coat, walked toward the exit, and dissolved into nothing. The bartender quit and never came back.

The Stones Throw sits inside the Barnes Block, a hulking Richardsonian Romanesque building at the corner of South Barstow and Eau Claire streets, designed by architect Henry Laycock and erected in 1893. Three stories of stone and brick, originally home to the Chippewa Valley Bank, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since January 22, 1982. The building has been a department store (Samuelson's, 1930s through the 1970s), a stained-glass artist's restaurant (Frank Stone, 1979), and a live music venue since blues musician James Solberg took over the lease in 1986.

The ghost stories center on two deaths that paranormal researchers Chad Lewis and Terry Fisk documented in The Wisconsin Road Guide to Haunted Locations. A man hanged himself in the building sometime in the early 1900s. A second man was murdered and dragged to the basement. Lewis and Fisk couldn't verify either incident through historical records, but the stories have circulated among owners, bartenders, and regulars for generations.

Long-time bartender Matthew Gehler described a night when an argument broke out between patrons and a glass bottle launched itself off the shelf into a wall. Nobody was near it. Gehler's interpretation: whatever lives in the building wants people to know it's there. Other staff have reported beer bottles thrown across the bar or shattering on their own, objects vanishing and turning up in weird spots, doors opening and slamming shut, chairs rearranging themselves between closing and opening, and jackets flying off hooks.

The upper floors add their own noise. Footsteps cross the empty balcony. Voices carry through deserted corridors and bathrooms. People catch a ghost's reflection in the large mirror behind the bar. After the last customer leaves, lights click on by themselves. Staff believe the entity is most active when the building is quiet.

In 2008, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire students Natalie Saeger and Frank Pellegrino investigated for the campus newspaper The Spectator. They brought a Ouija board and a bartender as a guide, touring every level after closing. Doors slammed, bells chimed, locks clicked shut on their own. The entity refused to communicate through the board, but by the end of the night both investigators were convinced something was happening they couldn't explain. Devon Bell later covered the haunting in Haunted Chippewa Valley, drawing on employee testimony and the building's long oral history.

The Stones Throw is one of the oldest structures left standing in downtown Eau Claire. It hosts live music most weeks. Staff who pull late shifts say the activity tends to pick up around performances, as if the entity prefers a crowd.