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Every haunting in this section arrives the way Fort Wayne's hauntings actually survive: in print, with a date on it. The section opens on Saturday, 30 October 1915, when the Fort Wayne Daily News put a haunted-house party on its front page, twenty schoolteachers braving the Aveline House on the Leo Road for Halloween. The Bell Mansion on West Wayne Street, built in 1893 for Robert and Clara Bell, carries the city's newest ghost literature and the longest tenancy behind it. Brookside, John Bass's mansion above the St. Joseph River, has a helpful ghost in the telling of the university that now keeps the house. And Catholic Cemetery contributes monument lore with no ghost at all, which the record notes as carefully as the sightings. The section reports who told each story, when, and what the houses themselves can verify.
Haunted Places — A Century of Ghost Stories in Print
Fort Wayne's ghost lore is, before it is anything else, a publishing history. The city's hauntings were not first whispered on porches and written down later; several of them were born in print, in the city's own newspapers, and…
The Aveline House on the Leo Road — The Haunted House of 1915
On Saturday, 30 October 1915, the Fort Wayne Daily News put a ghost story on its front page. The headline was "SCHOOL TEACHERS TO BRAVE HORRORS OF HAUNTED HOUSE," and the occasion was a party: twenty young women who taught at the…
The Woman in White of the Main Street Bridge
Fort Wayne's best-known ghost was a newspaper story before she was a legend. In the last week of August 1883 the Fort Wayne Gazette reported, on three successive days — 27, 28 and 29 August, page 7 — that a woman in white had…
The Phantom of the Allen County Courthouse
The building is real enough to anchor anyone's imagination: the Allen County Courthouse of 1897–1902, Brentwood S. Tolan's Beaux-Arts landmark on Calhoun Street, its cornerstone laid on 17 November 1897 in what the marker calls…
The Embassy Theatre and the Ghost of Bud Berger
The Embassy opened on 14 May 1928 as the Emboyd, Clyde W. Quimby's $1.5 million movie palace at 125 West Jefferson Boulevard — A. M. Strauss's building, John Eberson's Spanish Revival interior, 2,763 seats, and the 1928 Grande…
The Old Fort — Lantern Tours and a Borrowed Horseman
The Old Fort on Spy Run Avenue is a reconstruction: Historic Fort Wayne, Inc., established in 1964, rebuilt the American post of 1815–16 from Major John Whistler's 1814 drawings, and the new fort opened in the Bicentennial year…
Lindenwood Cemetery — The Politician in the Top Hat
Lindenwood, at 2324 West Main Street, is Fort Wayne's famous burying ground: 175 acres bought by the trustees on 5 July 1859 for $7,627.50 and laid out by John Chislett of Pittsburgh's Allegheny Cemetery in the picturesque manner…
Catholic Cemetery — Monument Lore Without a Ghost
Catholic Cemetery, at 3500 Lake Avenue, is the city's second famous burying ground. Bishop Joseph Dwenger bought its 120 acres in 1872 along what was then Maysville Road, a mile outside the city; it opened for interments in 1873…
The Pfeiffer House — The Piano Note and the Salt Shaker
The Pfeiffer House was built in 1905 as the Fort Wayne home of the Pfeiffer family and later became a restaurant. It enters the ghost record through a visit: Wanda Lou Willis came to the house in the course of collecting for her…
The Lincoln Bank Tower — A Ghost on Every Floor
The Lincoln Bank Tower was Fort Wayne's first skyscraper: ground broken on 16 August 1929, weeks before the Crash, built straight through the Depression's onset by the Lincoln National Bank and Trust, and opened on 16 November…
The Bell Mansion — The Newest Haunt in Print
The Bell Mansion, at 420 West Wayne Street, was built in 1893 for Robert and Clara Bell to designs of Wing & Mahurin. Robert Bell died in the house in 1901; the house passed to the Noble family, and then began the tenure that…
Brookside — John Bass and the Helpful Ghost
Brookside, the mansion John H. Bass built above the St. Joseph River — the ironmaster's country seat, with its artificial lake — passed after years standing empty to the University of Saint Francis, which renovated it and made it…
The List-Makers' Tail — More Named Places
Beyond the places above, the published canon names a tail of sites whose traditions rest on a single list, directory or tour script. They are gathered here at the weight their evidence carries — named, sourced, and not enlarged.
The Ghost Economy — Books, Tours and Directories
Fort Wayne's hauntings support a small, durable industry, and its history can be told in three media. The first was the newspaper: the Gazette's Woman in White in 1883 and the Daily News's haunted house in 1915 were October…
