Fire's Getting Hot Upstairs on Beltane

After having some heavy activity on my tours this past weekend, I wanted to stay upstairs overnight. My fiancé and I spent the night on the third floor - the spirit of Molly Brennan's penthouse suite.

I was really excited because I'd been wanting to do this since before I even started working at Shakers. I have always felt a strong connection to Molly's spirit. We couldn't have picked a better night, so I thought, as it was Beltane and the veil between the living and the dead is said to be as thin as it is on Halloween. Being very spiritual, my fiancé and I knew we were in for an experience.

We hung out on the main level for a while with a friend until around midnight. We headed outside to grab our stuff, came back to the bar to do a nightcap shot, and off we went upstairs.

We were both super excited. Almost right after getting up to the third floor, I turned on my Spirit Box (a paranormal research device used for spirit communication by detecting EVPs) and immediately started getting some strange stuff. The first word the spirit box picked up was "seventeen." I asked Molly if this was her speaking.

"Yes."

"Were you murdered when you were 17?"

"Yes."

My fiancé felt super drawn to the room with the blue lighting, so he went in there and smoked a cigar. I asked the spirits if there were any other A-Girls that lived up there besides Molly. I was using the divining rods in addition to my Spirit Box, and the rods crossed for "yes." I then asked for a name. The Spirit Box recited, "Lucille." I asked if she was the A-Girl that threw herself out of the window in an attempt to take her own life. I just had a feeling that she was the one. The rods crossed, "yes."

"Did you live here after Molly Brennan?" "Yes."

"Did you experience Molly's ghost while living here?"

"Yes."

I sensed that there was another presence in the room, so I tried to address it to see if it would talk to me.

"Please get out," the Spirit Box said.

I asked if this was another A-Girl (yes) and for a name. "Florence." Through a series of questions and answers using both devices, I learned that Florence was apparently the A-Girl prior to Molly. She didn't want to talk anymore, so I couldn't get many more answers from Florence. In our short conversation, she seemed disturbed by our presence.

The Spirit Box spoke again, "There's three of us," and then, "My body is around here." It repeated that several times. Knowing the history of the building, I figured perhaps I was talking to someone who was buried in the cemetery before the building was built over it. Or, perhaps it was Molly, Lucille or Florence.

I was feeling very tired after all this. I put the rods away and we got settled for bed. My fiancé turned off a couple lights and we just kind of laid there, not sure what to expect. I actually wanted to sleep, so I was trying to force myself to drift into slumber. I was right on the verge of falling asleep when my toiletry bag, sitting on top of Molly's dresser, falls off the dresser all by itself, jolting me awake. This really frightened me, because I placed the bag in the center of the dresser specifically so it wouldn't fall off - yet, somehow it still managed to. This promptly woke me up, and both my fiancé and I felt like we couldn't sleep at that point. Any second either of us began to doze off, we heard a shuffling, or creaking, or a noise from somewhere in the room that was trying to keep us awake.

I truly believe this was Molly's spirit trying to keep us up, maybe so that a more malicious spirit couldn't harm us.

Around 2:45am, it happened again. I'm on the verge of falling asleep when I wake up with a HUGE pit in my stomach. I started sweating bullets and feeling extremely lightheaded. I told my fiancé about it, and he said he was feeling abnormally warm, too. The room itself was cold. We were right by the windows which - typical for an old Milwaukee building - are not well-insulated. Cold air was leaking in right next to us.

This feeling is something I'll describe as primal. This was a fight-or-flight type of feeling, and I was feeling flight. Almost like a feeling of intense dread. A feeling that if we didn't leave, something terrible was about to happen, and soon. I felt delirious, but like I only had a few minutes to get out of there before things got extremely bad. I legitimately felt like my safety was at stake here. I told my fiancé that we needed to leave immediately. We packed up and quickly headed out. The second I got out into the fresh air on the street, I felt better.

I've had experiences with ghost several times in my life, but this was just so strange. I've never felt so unwelcome in Molly's space before, and I felt so disappointed that we couldn't make it through the night. Maybe we just picked too active of a night due to the thin veil, or maybe we made something very angry somehow. I'd like to spend the night again someday, but I'm not sure if it'll be anytime soon!

- Paris Wolf (Tour Guide)