Galena’s “Murder Bordello” being resurrected February 8, 2013
Posted by Ron Warnick in Ghosts and Mysteries, History, Preservation.5 comments
Renovations have progressed rapidly on the former Staffleback bordello in Galena, Kan., since it started in January. (Photo courtesy of Russ Keeler)
A long-abandoned former bordello on Route 66 in Galena, Kan., owned by a serial-killer madam is being restored and will reopen next month as a site for guided tours.
Russ Keeler, who operates After Midnight Paranormal Investigations, or AMPI, in Siloam Springs, Ark., persuaded the home’s co-owners in January to spend thousands of dollars to restore the circa-1890 structure and install period furniture and landscaping.
Keeler plans to hold regular guided tours of gothic-looking house for $10 a head, starting with a special grand opening of what he calls Galena’s Murder Bordello on March 16-17 that includes a dinner and tours of other ghostly sites in the region.
In addition to being a house of prostitution, it was where its madam, Ma Staffleback, and three accomplices killed and robbed perhaps dozens of clients during the 1890s. Staffleback died in a Kansas prison in 1909.
The house’s burst of new life occurs just months after the City of Galena condemned it. However, after a public outcry and the mayor expressing a desire to preserve it, the home at Main and Front streets was spared from the wrecking ball.
Keeler thinks he can take advantage of Route 66 tourists who stop across the street at 4 Women on the Route. But first, the bordello must be shored up. After talking to locals, Keeler estimates the home was abandoned since the 1970s. Only its stout construction kept it from collapsing years ago, he said.
“The whole interior is made of rough-cut 2-by-4 oak wood, or else it’d be on the ground.”
The former Staffleback bordello in Galena, Kan., before renovation work began.
Workers recently put on a new roof, and are making replicas of the 3-inch siding and windows. A stained-glass window will be installed in the second-floor front archway.
Contractors already are putting in 12-hour days, and Keeler says a night crew will be hired to make sure it’s in tour-worthy condition by March 16.
Keeler declined to name the home’s current owners. He said they prefer to stay out of the spotlight.
City records of the home’s origins are sketchy or nonexistent, so it remains unknown who designed or built the structure. However, Keeler said date stamps on the pocket doors show the home was built in 1890. Contractors also found letters from the family that imported the home’s ornate wooden staircase from Germany.
Keeler also said he’s “in talks” to use the home’s backyard as a site for weddings.
Keeler, who makes his living in the overhead door business in Siloam Springs, said he began AMPI as a hobby and doesn’t charge for checking a site’s paranormal activity. He’s reluctant to call a place “haunted”; he instead calls it “active.” Because of the home’s reputation for paranormal activity, Keeler thinks tours will attract such fans as well as Route 66 enthusiasts and history buffs.
Years ago, 4 Women on the Route talked of buying the home and turning it into a bed-and-breakfast. Keeler says it’s an enticing idea, but not possible for now.
“It would take a lot more maintenance, work, and permits to make it habitable, than just opening it for tours,” he said.
Ma Staffleback was the longtime owner of the bordello and became known as “Galena’s Bloody Madam.” She, two sons, and her husband were charged in 1897 with murdering Frank Galbraith, a miner and bordello client, and dumping his body into a mine shaft. All were convicted of various charges stemming from the killing.
Staffleback and her cohorts reputedly ran a rob-and-murder scheme that involved up to 50 victims, although the number was never verified. Finding a mark, Staffleback would drug them or get them drunk, and an accomplice would kill the victim with a blow to the head with an ax. After removing the valuables from the body, they dumped it down one of the town’s many lead-mine shafts.
Some of the details can be read with this scan of a Chicago Tribune article.
CLARIFICATION: In a Facebook message, Keeler said tickets for daytime house tours can be purchased from 4 Women on the Route. He also said Renee Charles of 4 Women on the Route was instrumental in introducing him to the owners and getting the ball rolling on the home’s renovation.
“Mater and the Ghost Light” commentary October 9, 2012
Posted by Ron Warnick in Ghosts and Mysteries, Movies, Restaurants.add a comment
This is fascinating. John Lasseter and Dan Scanlon provide director’s commentary audio about the Pixar animated short, “Mater and the Ghost Light,” which came out during the DVD release of the 2006 Disney-Pixar film “Cars.”
They prominently mention Eisler Bros. Store (aka Old Riverton Store) in Riverton, Kan., on Route 66, and “Route 66: The Mother Road” author Michael Wallis during their remarks.
“Mater and the Ghost Light,” as Lasseter mentions, is inspired by the Spook Light phenomenon just off Route 66 near the Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri state lines.
Waylan’s Ku-Ku restaurant in Miami, Okla., still provides maps to customers if they want to check out the Spook Light for themselves.
A closer look at Lincoln’s Ghost Bridge November 2, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Bridges, Ghosts and Mysteries, Preservation, Restaurants.add a comment
Alas, the Decatur (Ill.) Herald & Review didn’t post this until after the event. But this video shows the legendary Ghost Bridge of Route 66 in Lincoln, Ill., and the Ghost Bridge Walk that became a fundraiser for The Mill in Lincoln.
Is Barney’s Beanery haunted? October 30, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Ghosts and Mysteries, Restaurants.add a comment
Barney’s Beanery, a fixture on Route 66 in West Hollywood, Calif., since 1927, is known for many things. Home to the Second-Best Chili in Los Angeles. Hangout to Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and scads of other music and movie stars. A focal point in the fledgling gay-rights movement during the 1970s and ’80s.
But the old bar/restaurant may have some other notoriety as well. Several employees interviewed by the Los Angeles Times insist that Barney’s is haunted.
Restaurant manager Jonah Dumont says he’s often watched a strange figure walk past the rooftop office as he finishes the bookkeeping after Barney’s closes at 2 a.m. nightly.
“I’ve seen it 20-plus times. At first I assumed it was a busboy in a white shirt walking by,” said Dumont, who started working there a year ago.
Oddly, the figure walking past the office’s open doorway failed to trigger the rooftop’s motion sensor-controlled floodlights. [...]
When Dumont mentioned his experience to others, he found out he was not the only one who had experienced strange things.
A bartender also saw the rooftop figure, and reported that the beer system mysteriously malfunctioned. Another bartender said that as she was checking beer kegs in a downstairs cooler, someone walked past, turned, and walked past again before vanishing. A waitress felt a presence behind her when fetching pickles from the cooler. A cook heard kegs being dragged across the floor.
Speculation abounds that it’s the wandering souls of Joplin and Morrison, who died during the early 1970s.
Or maybe someone was sampling too much of the product from the kegs. (Wink.)
(Hat tip to Kevin Hansel)
Is The Mill haunted? September 27, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Events, Ghosts and Mysteries, Preservation, Restaurants, Vehicles.add a comment
I doubt it. But a Spirit of Tours ghost-investigation event on Oct. 8 at the Route 66 landmark in Lincoln, Ill., is bound to be entertaining, reported the Lincoln Courier.
Spirit of Tours, based in nearby Bloomington, wants to check out The Mill, a 1929 restaurant that’s being renovated for future use as a tourism center.
Having such a great history, the building is sure to hold some “spooky” inhabitants, according to medium Deborah Carr Senger, who will lead the event.
Also, the group will host another event later that month:
Spirit of Tours will return to Lincoln on Oct. 22 to host the Ghost Bridge Ghost Walk. Partcipants will walk down an abandoned stretch of old Route 66 to the Ghost Bridge in Lincoln and visit the grave of Coonhound Johnny, who, legend has it, smuggled hooch up and down this storied highway.
Participants will hear infamous and rare stories of spirits and unexplained events up and down the Mother Road.
Reservations for both events can be obtained by going to the Spirit of Tours website.
Also, The Mill is hosting a car show from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. The $5 registration fees to the annual Cruise-In raises money for The Mill’s ongoing restoration efforts.
Visitors that day can also participate in tours of The Mill.
The Route 66 Heritage Foundation of Logan County is sponsoring the events.
Writer plans book about ghost stories on Route 66 July 25, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Books, Ghosts and Mysteries.2 comments
Richard Southall plans to write a book about ghosts and paranormal activity along Route 66, and is searching for additional such stories in Arizona, reported the Kingman Daily Miner.
Southall has written another book, “How to Be a Ghost Hunter,” with Llewellyn Publications. He wants his Route 66 ghost stories book in stores by 2013.
Southall wants to go beyond common urban legends and publish personal accounts from residents, business owners and tourists. In his early research, he collected several stories from Illinois, California, Kansas and Missouri, but he is still looking for more Arizona stories.
There are 401 miles of Route 66 in Arizona, he said, so there has to be some good stories out there. [...]
In addition to the stories, Southall wants to add a directory that lists paranormal groups on Route 66, so interested readers can learn more.
“It’s going to be a fairly large book,” Southall said.
Southalll asks that people with a story they would like to share or a paranormal group or tour they want included in the book to please email or write him as soon as possible. Email him at [email protected] or write to P.O. Box 8212, Nutter Fort, WV. If sending an email, put the state that the story originates from in the subject line.
One of the stories that undoubtedly will be included is the death site of Sam Kinison. The comedian and actor died in a car crash on old Route 66 near Needles, Calif., in 1992. According to Southall, locals say they sometimes glimpse Kinison’s white Trans Am on that stretch of road. Also, the sound of screeching brakes and crashing metal sometimes is heard there.
Another book, “Missouri’s Haunted Route 66,” was published a few years ago. And “Haunted Highway: The Spirits of Route 66″ remains in the marketplace. However, the latter volume was published in 1999 and hasn’t been updated, to my knowledge.
Documentary being filmed about haunted Route 66 sites February 7, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Ghosts and Mysteries, Movies, Music.2 comments
A couple that proclaim themselves as experts about paranormal activity recently traveled Route 66 to film a documentary about haunted locations along or near the Mother Road.
Patrick Burns and fiancee Marley Gibson began in November their journey in a recreational vehicle for a film titled “Spirits of 66.” The couple maintains a website at Haunted Highways. Their Facebook account is here, and here’s their Twitter account.
“I plan to pitch the concept (of the film) to various networks, but if they don’t bite, it will be available streaming online and as a DVD release,” Burns said in an e-mail.
Burns said they didn’t strictly stay on the Route 66 corridor searching for haunted sites, but remained within the towns the Mother Road traverses. Here are a few of the spots they investigated:
- “We investigated the alley in Chicago were notorious gangster John Dillinger was gunned down by the FBI.”
- “Resurrection Cemetery in the Chicago Suburbs – home of Resurrection Mary - the famous hitchhiking ghost.”
- “Abraham Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Illinois.”
- “Lemp Mansion in St Louis.”
- “Joplin Spook light, near Joplin, Missouri.”
Burns even recorded his own version of Bobby Troup’s “Route 66″ for the film project. Appropriately, it sounds a bit spooky: