Walrus Ice Cream

Charlie Dinnebeck still runs the cafe he opened in 1919. Walrus Ice Cream inherited his building, his clocks, and a Frenchman who tugs women's hair.

The staff at Walrus Ice Cream have three theories for when a root beer keg handle turns itself on in the middle of service. The leading theory is Charlie. The runner-up is 'Charlie's in a mood.' The last one is a shrug, because by this point they've stopped being bothered.

Walrus Ice Cream sits in a storefront on Old Town Square in downtown Fort Collins. Before it was a scoop shop, it was Dinnebeck's Cafe, opened in 1919 by a man named Charlie Dinnebeck. Before the cafe, the same walls held Dinnebeck and Hill, the barber shop Charlie ran with his partner starting in 1902. Charlie was born May 1, 1867, in Missouri, and he spent most of his adult working life standing inside this one building on College Avenue. He has, apparently, not felt any need to leave.

When current owner Lisa Paugh and her team took over the space, the activity started immediately. The first year of renovation was the worst of it. Front windows smashed. Heavy cupboards tipped over. Clocks coming off the walls without being touched. Paugh has said publicly that Charlie was upset about being ignored and got aggressive until the new owners acknowledged him. They did. They dug into the building's history, found the Dinnebeck records, brought in a psychic investigator, and confirmed what they already suspected. After that, things calmed down considerably. Charlie's hauntings today are more charming than destructive: clocks off the walls again, root beer keg handles turning, objects nudged slightly out of place. The staff talks about him the way they'd talk about a regular who never pays but also never causes trouble.

He isn't alone. The psychic flagged at least two other entities. The building also housed the Flowers Millinery Shop, and the two women who ran it, Orlando Flower and Mable Alexander Rogers, have both been tentatively linked to the second and third signatures in the space. One or both of them may still be upstairs, keeping an eye on where the hats used to go.

The third entity is the Frenchman. Described by the psychic as tall, extremely good-natured, loves women, and in the habit of tugging women's hair as a small greeting. That detail is so specifically weird it has become part of the shop's lore. Either you roll your eyes or you're sold on the whole operation. Walrus staff have mostly landed on sold.

The full ghost roster at Walrus reads less like a tragedy and more like a recurring cast. A cafe owner pulling small pranks. A milliner or two keeping watch. A Frenchman who tugs hair. Most haunted buildings in Colorado run on death, murder, or illness. Walrus runs on professional pride and a little light flirtation.

Walrus put the ghost on the menu. Their website has a dedicated 'Our Ghost Story' page. Charlie gets tagged in social posts. Old Town Fort Collins ghost tours stop at the front window. The owners welcome people who come specifically for Charlie and don't mind admitting when a piece of equipment does something it shouldn't. It's the rare haunted business where the ghost and the business actually like each other.

Charlie Dinnebeck died in 1940. His cafe has been serving ice cream for longer now than it ever served coffee.