The Ghost at the Brewer's House: The Hacienda Tale

In print by 1992 · 706 Lincolnway West

The place: Mishawaka's one ghost tale with a standing address in the national compilations belongs to a restaurant: the Hacienda in Adolph Kamm's house, the 1853 brewer's mansion inside the Kamm & Schellinger brewery complex at 706 Lincolnway West, where the restaurant chain was founded in 1978 — the house's documented course stands in this history's Businesses and Food sections. The tale told of it exists in two documented layers, and the layers do not name the same ghost.

The first layer — the brewer himself, 1992: the earliest telling this section could reach is a newspaper's. The South Bend Tribune of 29 October 1992 reported the haunting as the restaurant's employees told it: they had seen a ghost in the house, “in either blue overalls or a Civil War Union suit,” and they believed it was Adolph Kamm, the founder of the Kamm and Schellinger Brewing Company — the brewer walking his own house in work clothes, a proprietor's ghost, checking the plant. The 1992 report is carried here through the Tribune's own later telling of it, the paper's 1999 “Michiana Roots” column on researching haunted houses, which cites the date and the detail; the column's framing is the record's own: “Many Michiana residents think the Hacienda Restaurant on Lincoln Way West is haunted.”

The second layer — the maid: in the tale's modern compilation form the brewer gives way to a romance. As the haunted-place directories and roundups now tell it — hauntedplaces.org's Mishawaka list, which gives the Hacienda as the one entry inside the city; the HowStuffWorks haunted-Indiana survey; the Halloween-season station roundups — the house is haunted by a maid: she had an affair with the mansion's owner, became pregnant, was shunned by him, and hanged herself in the attic; the owner's spirit is said to manifest in the basement, where he is believed to have taken his own life. Lights, water and appliances turn on and off on their own. The tourism version, in Visit South Bend Mishawaka's October 2025 “Stranger Things” roundup, with its information provided by The History Museum, tells it one degree softer — a maid employed by the home's owner “perished in an upstairs room,” strange occurrences followed, and the manifestations continued under the restaurant, lights and bathroom faucets named — and the chain's own website has acknowledged the house is “said to be haunted,” as the 2023 roundup notes. Between 1992 and the compilations, then, the ghost changed sex, story and floor of the house: the tale grew the way the princess's did, by accretion, each carrier keeping the address and replacing the dead.

The record beside the tale: the checkable part has been checked, on the record, by the region's own broadcaster: WSBT reported that there is no evidence of anyone dying in the house. The one death the report names on the brewery ground is of a different kind and place — a young man who, while the brewery was still operating, fell to his death from the brewery tower: a documented industrial accident at the works, in the tower at the complex, not a death in the mansion, and no maid and no suicide stand anywhere in the house's record that the check could find. The house itself is documented without them: built in 1853 in the brewery complex, the brewer's residence, the complex National Register-listed in 1979 and converted as 100 Center — Businesses' and Food's records, which carry no death in the house either. The tale is printed here at tale size, as the city's standing ghost story; the dedicated haunted-places pass of this history will test the address in its own form when it runs, and nothing in this entry pre-judges that pass beyond the papers shown.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune, 29 October 1992 — the employees' ghost “in either blue overalls or a Civil War Union suit,” believed to be Adolph Kamm; as cited and quoted in the Tribune's “Michiana Roots” column (1999) on researching haunted houses, indexed in the ProQuest newspaper file.
2. Visit South Bend Mishawaka, “Stranger Things in South Bend | Haunted Stories & Local Legends” (30 October 2025), information and stories provided by The History Museum — the maid who “perished in an upstairs room,” the lights and faucets under the restaurant, at 706 Lincolnway West.
3. Haunted Places (hauntedplaces.org), Mishawaka, Indiana — the Hacienda as the list's one in-city entry: the maid, the affair, the pregnancy, the hanging; and HowStuffWorks, “Exploring Haunted Indiana” — the attic and basement form of the tale.
4. WSBT reporting, as carried in the 19 September 2023 haunted-places roundup (newstalk1280.com) — no evidence of anyone dying in the house; the brewery-tower fall as the documented death on the ground; the chain's website acknowledging the house is “said to be haunted.”
5. This history, Businesses and Food sections — Adolph Kamm, the 1853 house in the Kamm & Schellinger complex at 706 Lincolnway West, the National Register listing of 1979, the Hacienda founding of 1978.