Gothic Milwaukee Offers Look at Sordid Side of East Town

Tonight, when the clock strikes 7 p.m., on a corner at Cathedral Square will be Anna Lardinois, of Gothic Milwaukee, and a group of people ready to hear historical tales and ghost stories of Milwaukee.

They will embark eastward into the night. As they keep their distance from one another due to the current pandemic the group is eager to have Lardinois show them some of the most spooktacular sights in East Town.

When people think of ghost tours and haunted cities, our thoughts often travel to New Orleans, Salem and other cities across America, rich with a history in the occult. Rarely, if ever, does one think of Milwaukee.

“It is very much a walk downtown that focuses on history and architecture,” according to Lardinois. “As well as some sordid tales of our past.”

“It’s like a mixture of history, education and ghost stories,” according Arturo Diaz, a tourist in the group. “It was perfect to me.”

While Lardinois says that her tours are not just haunted tours, and she has several historical tours including audio ones you can do on your own, her own interest in ghost stories and ghost tours are what led her to creating Gothic Milwaukee.

“I used to be a high school English teacher and every year I would go on a spring break road trip,” said Lardinois. “I would be in a different city and go to a different ghost tour every night.”

After years of being just a fan, Lardinois determined Milwaukee needed something like this. In East Town alone you have what many people consider Wisconsin’s creepiest and most haunted building, The Pfister Hotel, according to the Travel Channel. Here the past owner of The Pfister, Guido Pfister, is said to roam the halls between floors two and six in the old part of the hotel. Mr. Pfister is just one of several ghosts who dwell in the many rooms and hallways of the old part of the hotel. Lardinois also emphasizes and shows that there are many great historical stories of unexplained phenomena in East Town besides just the hotel’s hauntings.

The hour-and-a-half tour takes you on a walk starting at Cathedral Square that goes down to the Riverwalk and back. There are frequent stops throughout to hear stories such as one about a Psychic, who was known as “the American Sherlock Holmes”, who helped Milwaukee Police figure out who was behind a rash of citywide bombings in the thirties. Another story focuses on maritime accidents, one which left over 1,000 children orphaned.

The only thing more sordid than the tales Lardinois tells you are the circumstances under which she currently does so.

Lardinois, like many small business owners and members of the tourism and hospitality industry, has been hit hard by the pandemic. Lardinois said that before it started this year a lot of things had started to line-up and come together due to her hard work, only to have the pandemic bring things to a crawl.

“This has been a really, really hard year for tourism and hospitality,” said Lardinois. “For most of the summer I just did private tours.”

Now as the calendar has turned to fall, Lardinois has been able to start doing public tours again for the Halloween season. However, despite doing private tours all summer, and being able to continue them year-round, it may not be enough. The lack of tourism from out of state, which was expected to be huge this summer with major events like the Democratic National Convention taking place in Milwaukee, due to the virus has been hard on her business.

“I’m not seeing any traffic like I’ve seen in previous years,” said Lardinois. “I’m just trying to keep the doors open for next year at this point.”

Jenna Davila and Arturo Diaz hope that they do. Davila and Diaz are both hospital employees from Illinois and are both ghost story enthusiasts who enjoy the “spooky season.”

“I just like out-of-the-box type things, because now you’re not going to bars, you’re not going to restaurants,” said Davila. “It’s time to be more creative.”

Being creative meant a haunted walking tour of Milwaukee for Davila and Diaz. Diaz said that the biggest thing was finding an activity that took place outside. Normally they would have gone to a haunted house on a Friday night, but after looking at great reviews on google and checking Gothic Milwaukee’s website, his worries were quelled.

“One hundred percent it makes us feel more comfortable,” said Diaz. “That’s what kind of pointed us over here to try, as she said, something outside-of-the-box, something different.”

After arriving back at Cathedral Square and having their worries of their hotel room being potentially haunted dismissed by Lardinois, Davila and Diaz were both very enthusiastic about the tour and had nothing but praise for it when asked if they would go again.

“Absolutely, I think Anna was funny, and I’m not huge into history, but she was entertaining, and it was really interesting,” said Davila. “All the stories were in-depth, and you felt like you actually learned something.”

“I would do it again, I would do this one again, and any other tours Anna has,” said Diaz. “You could paint a picture in your head even though you weren’t there, you learned the details, it was perfect.”