Photo Credit: Dave Zylstra
It’s a cold rainy Saturday night, and the wind whips through the streets of the Third Ward―it’s the perfect ambiance for hearing some great ghost stories. A crowd of 15 to 20 people shifts about Tea Krulos, a local non-fiction writer of the weird and unusual, and who tonight is our tour guide for the Milwaukee Ghost Walks.
Some of the attendees stand under the protection of large black umbrellas, their unlucky counterparts are forced under the overhang of the Milwaukee Public Market, peering into the warm glow of its interior. Savory smells waft from through the front door as visitors come in and out. Finally, as the last attendees check-in with Krulos, we walk over to the first stop on our tour. Beyond the stories of ghost children playing with bocce balls in the Italian Community Center and a tortured artist haunting the Marshall building, there is something beyond the pulp: the history of the Third Ward.
Allison Jornlin
“I met Alison while working on my book Monster Hunters, and I admired her love of history and ghost lore,” says Krulos of Allison Jornlin, the creator of the Milwaukee Ghost Walks. Jornlin has had a lifelong passion for the paranormal. Inspired by her childhood hero Richard Crowe, who founded the first ghost tour company in Chicago, Jornlin created the initial tour of the Milwaukee Ghost Walks in 2008.
“I wanted to do the same [that Crowe had done] for Milwaukee,” says Jornlin, back in the daylight of a bustling Starbucks over the shrill sound of coffee grinding. “There’s heritage that’s lost if you don’t put it in a tour, and this is what other cities are doing, they’re embracing their hidden histories.” For Jornlin, one of the most important purposes of the tour is to reclaim local history and celebrate folklore.
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“I think ghost stories have always been an important way for us to remember the dead,” says Jornlin. Through these stories, she also hopes to keep the diverse history of Milwaukee alive and “to make sure every culture has its unique voice,” says Jornlin.
“There are a lot of things about Milwaukee that people don’t know. And there are stories that people need to know,” continued Jornlin. By the docks against the glittering Milwaukee river, Krulos, on the tour, recounted just one such story of the Lady Elgin. The steamship was arriving in Milwaukee from Chicago when it collided with an unlit schooner, the Augusta, which resulted in the deaths of more than 300 passengers. It is only in the last 10 years that a plaque memorializing the event was erected in the Third Ward. It is through the oral histories shared on the tour that Jornlin hopes to not only entertain with stories of the paranormal and the unusual but also educate and memorialize our history and our dead.
However, Jornlin was quick to mention that mining history for tragedies and the paranormal can quickly turn exploitative and disrespectful. “There is a tour in town that deals with the exploits of Jeffrey Dahmer—that’s not what I do,” says Jornlin. “I want people to know all of the history, but you still have to be sensitive.”
After Jornlin encouraged her brother, Mike Huberty, he, with her assistance, set up three tours in Madison. Huberty then later set up the American Ghost Walks which franchised the ghost tours of his sister. Now, the company has locations in Minnesota and several areas in Wisconsin, and they plan to expand across the Midwest by first getting a foothold in Illinois. Since leaving her position as an elementary school teacher, Jornlin has been working full time on the Ghost Walks and has just added a Brady Street tour to the Milwaukee Ghost Walks tours.
Later in the night, the cold begins to penetrate even the thickest of coats. Krulos leads the group back to the Milwaukee Public Market. The rain has stopped for the most part and the market is closed, but the streetlights still shine on passing pedestrians and cars rumble past. The world is still moving forward, but even for just a moment, the tour has pushed some of those in attendance to look back and remember where they came from.
