Walrus Ice Cream

At Walrus Ice Cream in Old Town Fort Collins, Colorado, the staff blame the missing scoops, the swinging clocks, and the root beer keg handle that turns itself mid-service on a man named Charlie. They mean Charlie Dinnebeck, and they're not joking. He ran a cafe in this building, and by their account he never left it.

Dinnebeck was born in Missouri in 1867 and came to Fort Collins in 1902. He opened a barber shop that year, bought a cafe and boarding house in 1914, and on August 22, 1919 opened Dinnebeck's Cafe at 125 W. Mountain Ave., known, his own ads said, for "quick service, cool atmosphere and courteous attention." He worked the place until he died on December 26, 1940. The building outlived him and became an ice cream shop.

When John and Lisa Paugh bought it in 1999, the early years were the rough ones. They report a front window broken, a dipping cabinet knocked over, doors closing on their own, the feeling of being watched. An employee, Jake Anderson, described a clock that "didn't just fall, it literally flew off."

The Paughs dug into the building's history, brought in a psychic, and came out with a name: Charlie. Lisa Paugh's read is that he's "simply sticking around to assure his legacy of great customer service lives on." So they hung his photograph on the wall, family pictures too, and by their account the violence settled into something gentler. Now it's just clocks coming down and that keg handle turning.

The basement is where it lives, off-limits except to staff and the ghost tours that stop here. A K99 reporter filmed down there with a manager and walked out rattled. "We definitely saw something," he said.

Whatever it is, the explanation Lisa Paugh keeps coming back to is the simplest one. A cafe owner so proud of his service that 80-some years later, he still hasn't accepted that the work is done.