Two Brothers Roundhouse

The Two Brothers Roundhouse in Aurora, the oldest railroad roundhouse in America (1856), is haunted by at least three full-body ghosts including a little girl with a lantern and possibly Walter Payton himself. A 2023 investigation led by Dale Kaczmarek captured spirit box responses about fire and trains while a WBBM reporter heard an unseen voice call her name.

The brewmaster refused to stay late by himself. That was one of the first signs, shortly after the grand opening on March 21, 1996. He'd hear sounds he couldn't explain, and dark shapes would move through the hallways of the oldest section. He clocked out when the sun went down.

The Two Brothers Roundhouse in Aurora sits inside an 1856 limestone building, the oldest railroad roundhouse in the United States. Levi Hull Waterhouse designed it using locally quarried Batavia limestone for the Chicago and Aurora Railroad (later Chicago, Burlington and Quincy). Steam locomotives were repaired and stored inside for over a century, until the building was decommissioned in 1974. It sat empty and crumbling for two decades.

In 1995, the Aurora City Council voted to let an investment group led by Chicago Bears legend Walter Payton purchase the ruin. Restoration began on March 17, 1995, and a year later it opened as Walter Payton's Roundhouse Complex. Today it operates as Two Brothers Brewing, but the spirits don't seem to care whose name is on the sign.

Two full-body ghosts have been identified by employees. One is an older man. The other is a young boy. A little girl carrying a lantern appears to workers on closing shifts. Manager Jim Olson has witnessed the girl and the man with the lantern himself. In the Lager Room, employees have seen dark silhouettes that seem to be dancing long after the last customer left. There is a hallway that staff won't walk down after dark. Nobody had to be told. They figured it out independently.

On October 22, 2023, investigator Dale Kaczmarek led a team into the building with REM Epods, K-II meters, multiple Ovilus devices, ghost boxes, a Phasma Box, 4K cameras, Sony Nightshot camcorders, and green laser grids. They brought model trains as trigger objects, gambling that the spirits of railroad workers might respond. The gamble paid off. Spirit box responses included "fire," "help fire fire," and "oh yes" when asked about trains. WBBM Newsradio reporter Arielle Raveney was on site when an unseen voice called out her name. Kaczmarek personally observed "a dark shadow figure behind the cozy bar" that appeared briefly before vanishing. K-II meters reacted throughout the evening, especially in the ballroom and banquet room. Multiple investigators reported their batteries dying in fully charged devices. One investigator felt their pants being pulled in the banquet room.

There are stories about a "depthless hole" somewhere in the building where, according to local legend, the devil lurks. At least one couple's romantic evening in the building was interrupted by something they couldn't explain and didn't want to describe in detail.

And then there is Walter Payton. "The Spirit of Sweetness," people call it. Payton championed the roundhouse restoration project and died of bile duct cancer in 1999 at age 45. Tour guide Diane Ladley, who wrote the book on haunted Aurora, leads 90-minute lantern-guided tours through the building. The sweetest story she tells is that Payton came back to check on his project, that the man who saved the building from demolition couldn't quite let it go.

The sound of hammers rings through the roundhouse at night. Phantom footsteps cross the stone floors. Voices come from rooms where the lights are off and nobody is scheduled. Over 160 years of railroad work, and then 30 years of people, and all of it layered on top of quarried limestone that's been holding sound since before the Civil War.