On their first campus tour, University of Wisconsin students become aware of the possibility the campus is haunted. SOAR guides are quick to point out the strange history of Science Hall, and hint at the possibility of other spots being cursed. While some may be trying to scare newcomers, others believe that there is some truth to the stories being told.

With its creaky, maze-like hallways, bat-infested attic, underground tunnel system, and a basement that was once a morgue, University of Wisconsin’s Science Hall has all the ingredients for a haunted house.
The original Science Hall burned down in 1884 and the current building was rebuilt upon the same foundation. One man was killed and several were injured during the construction of the building. Frank Lloyd Wright worked his first construction job as an architect’s assistant for the rebuilding of Science Hall, which was designed to be fireproof.

When it was completed in 1887, the Hall became home to the UW Anatomy Department and human cadavers potentially outnumbered the living in the building’s corridors. Medical students were allowed 24-hour access to the cadaver laboratory in order to practice their surgical skills, and they disposed of dissected corpses by way of a four-story body chute.

Many feel that the spirits of those cadavers still roam the building. Security guards and custodians were rumored to have refused to work the night shift in the building because of “creepy” occurrences.

During the 1970s, rambunctious UW students would climb up the body chute in the dead of night for the fun slide down, perhaps unaware of the chute’s morbid function. As late as 1974, students were finding human bones in the attic of the building, which now serves as a storage room and a home to many bats.

UW librarian Tom Tews, whose book-laden, vaulted ceiling office is located in the Geography Library in Science Hall, said human leg bones were found in a wall that was being torn down in the building. There have also been many reports of beakers falling one by one off shelves without explanation.
According to L.J. Jones, a paranormal researcher for the Madison Ghostseekers’ Society, a feeling of not quite being alone, cold spots, or household objects disappearing then reappearing later at a different location, are all possible signs there is a ghost on the premise.
“People are usually alerted to a possible haunting by subtle means,” Jones said.
Still, some like Tews are skeptical of the possibility of a haunting.
“I don’t think that there are ghosts in the building today,” Tews said. “When you are here alone at night it is dark, the building creaks, the water pipes make noises, and there is sometimes a bat flying around, but it is an old building. What do you expect?”
Jones said that people tend to be skeptical of signs of a haunting at first, but when things happen repeatedly, people become suspicious.
“Logically the mind would take any single one of these subjective and objective phenomena and explain it away,” Jones said. “But when they happen again and again and in combination, it becomes more difficult to explain away.”

Such is the case at The Bar Next Door, 232 E. Olin Ave., believed to be home to many ghosts. Once a roadhouse for the Touhy Brothers, rivals of gangster Al Capone, the building was built with bulletproof brick more than a foot thick and has windowsills that were once hiding places for the gangsters’ weaponry.

As a registered national historical place, The Bar Next Door must maintain its original facade and appearance. Inside, the walls are adorned with paraphernalia from the bar’s first incarnation as a speakeasy. Menus and pictures recall the aging connection the building holds with notorious criminals.

The building is complete with a tunnel system to the lake, “in case things got too hairy,” said a regular of the bar. With the right persuasion, the friendly bartender used to lift the heavy cellar door and offer brief tours into the tunnels, which began to cave during the construction of John Nolen Drive.

After a certain point, the bartender proceeded with trepidation and commented on the tangible presence and freezing chill in the air, mentioning noises he has heard coming from the tunnel.

Employees and regulars say there is at the very least one person buried in the bar’s second floor fireplace, and that while no one can be sure how many more people are entombed in the building, the spirits of the notorious still linger.

“Everyone who has ever worked here has had some experience with a ghost,” a regular of the bar said. “Everyone has said they sometimes see someone out of the corner of their eye when they are alone and have already closed up and locked all the doors.”
The bartender ? who was at first skeptical of the idea of ghosts ? said that many unexplainable things have happened to him since he began working at the bar. While closing the bar with one of the owners one night, he passed a man he had never seen before on the stairwell.
“I asked him how he was doing and he looked at me and just kept walking up the stairs,” the bartender said. When he asked the owner who the man was, the owner said that he had locked all the doors an hour earlier and no one had come in the bar since. The owner and the bartender went upstairs and saw no one, but felt a strange presence.
Other bizarre occurrences have happened in the bar. Many times when a bartender has already locked up and turned off the lights in the bar, he will see the neon beer lights in the windows mysteriously turned on again when he is outside in the parking lot ready to leave. Once, when a bartender had locked up for the night, a loud thump from upstairs shook the light fixtures above him. When he went upstairs to see what it was no one was there and there was no object around to account for the loud thump.
Those who frequent the bar embrace the possibility of a ghost, saying haunting adds to the ambiance of the establishment and that it is just another part of the bar’s history.
“Most people think it quite neat to have a resident ghost once they get confirmation of an anomalous situation and they aren’t going crazy,” Jones said.
Most believe that whoever is haunting The Bar Next Door is a member of the Touhy gang, someone who offended the outlaws, or someone who used to work there. As long as the building is serving alcoholic spirits to customers, staff members said they will feel the presence of lurking paranormal spirits.
“If the building ever turns into anything other than a bar I think whatever it is will make their presence more known,” the bartender said.

The Memorial Union Theater has a similar history; a history of death in a building is where most ideas of a haunting originate. Conventional folklore wisdom holds that the likelihood of haunting increases to almost a certainty when someone dies in a theater, and this is why some believe that the UW Memorial Union Theater is haunted.

Two workers were rumored to have died in the theater’s construction when a wall collapsed.

In 1950, while the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra was playing at the theater, a drummer suffered a heart attack onstage right before intermission. He managed to crawl offstage but by the time a doctor from the audience was able to reach the man he was dead. The orchestra, unaware of what was going on, continued to play. When an announcement of what happened was made, the conductor proceeded to lead the orchestra in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony as the shocked crowd gasped in horror and exited the theater.
Despite the morbid happenings of the past, Fred Fisher, who works at the theater, said that he does not think it is haunted.
“I do know that despite what people say, the stage isn’t haunted now,” Fisher said. “I’ve worked in haunted theaters and this isn’t one of them. Maybe there [were] one or two ghosts here in the past.”
However, some believe that ghosts do not come and go so easily. In the words of Feldman, “Haunted it was, and haunted it remains.”