Читать книгу Haunted Hoosier Trails - Wanda Lou Willis - Страница 10

ALLEN COUNTY

Created in 1823 the county was named for Colonel John Allen, a Kentucky lawyer and Indian fighter who aided in the liberation of Fort Wayne in 1812 when Tecumseh, the Shawnee Chief, laid siege to the fort. This was the last serious threat from the Indians. The county comprises a good deal of northeastern Indiana.

Fort Wayne was platted and designated the county seat in 1824 and named for General Anthony Wayne, who built the first American fort after defeating Little Turtle in 1794 on the site of the important portage of the Maumee and St. Mary’s rivers. Other variant names for Fort Wayne have been Kekionga (blackberry patch), Fort Miami, French Town, Kisakon, Miami Town, Omee Town, Post Miami, and Twightwee Village. In the nineteenth century the town attracted industrialists, bankers and civic leaders who made the city a model of progressive thought and action. Its 1902 beaux arts courthouse is considered to be one of the finest examples of that style of architecture in the world and has recently been restored.

Fort Wayne is the hometown of actresses Carole Lombard and Shelley Long. Other famous individuals who have lived there are Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas, designer Bill Blass, and television inventor Philo T. Farnsworth. Today it is the second largest city in the state, a center of industry and commerce, and Allen County is home of national corporate headquarters and automobile-related attractions.

The Mason Long House

It was 1965 when Laura and Ralph McCaffrey moved into their new home at 922 Columbia Avenue. The neighbors welcomed them, not with apple pies, but with whispered warnings! “The house is haunted.”

They smiled indulgently. Ghosts? During nearly forty years of living in the Long house, the McCaffreys have changed their minds. They’re convinced that they’ve been sharing their house with the Mason Long family, including the “dust kitten,” the name they’ve gave to the spirit of the family cat.

The McCaffreys really don’t mind sharing space with their friendly ghosts and “ . . . would never want to get rid of them,” Laura McCaffrey said in a recent interview, “They are the ambience of the house.”

In 1892 Mason Long could well afford to lavish money on building his Columbia Avenue home. He hadn’t been born into wealth or a respected station in life, but had worked hard to achieve success.

Long came to Fort Wayne in 1865, but his pre-Summit City life had been harsh and painful. An only child, he was born September 10, 1842 in a small town in Licking County, Ohio. Just before young Mason’s seventh birthday, his father died. Later in his life Long looked back on those times with his mother as being a rare interlude filled with love and happiness.

Four years after the loss of his father, his beloved mother died and he moved in with the only remaining relative who could care and provide for an orphan.

When the relative passed on, Mason became a ward of the county. A German farmer agreed to take him as an indentured servant—a farmhand. The sad and lonely boy worked hard for his board and food. Often, evidently, it wasn’t hard enough and he would be whipped, making him rebellious and causing even more severe punishment.

As the Civil War came, the young man ran away to join the Union army. In camp he learned many things which would get him through life, including card playing. Once the war was over he used this talent to become a very successful professional gambler.

Back in Fort Wayne he opened the Long Hotel—a lodging house, tavern and gambling casino where he was one of his own best customers at both the games table and the bar. Then, with the deal of a card he lost everything—or at least he thought he had.

With no money and nowhere to go, he became a Christian and shortly thereafter he wrote his biography The Life of Mason Long, the Converted Gambler. Traveling on the preaching circuit, he condemned the evils of gambling and drinking, becoming a popular and much-sought-after speaker.

Now on the “straight and narrow,” Long flourished as a businessman. George Pixley, a clothier and banker who came to Fort Wayne from Utica, New York in 1876, entered into a partnership with Long in a brokerage firm. The partners purchased a lot at East Berry and Court Streets and in 1889 constructed a five-story office and commercial building, the Pixley-Long Building.

In his later years, Long enjoyed a family, a lucrative business and respect. With pride he watched the workmen constructing a grand two-story home with fourteen rooms. The house embodied everything he’d always dreamed of.

Never able to lose the hard-work habits of his youth, this reformed gambler and drinker continued to work harder than he should have, and in 1903 Mason Long was stricken with “apoplexy”—a stroke. With his wife and children at his bedside he died.

Though Long and his family are all long since deceased, they haven’t left their Columbia Avenue home, according to Laura and Ralph McCaffrey, who now own the mansion. The house becomes “noisy” with activity or celebration during the Christmas holidays and in August and October.

At least that’s how Mrs. McCaffrey explains the alterations that take place in the house. The shades of the lights change. Whether it’s the sunlight filtering through the windows or a lamp lit in the evening, the rooms suddenly take on a mellow, muted glow. And at those times the hallway seems to be filled with foggy shapes.

Whatever shares the living space with the McCaffreys affects even their dog. He’ll run to the door standing there with his tail wagging as if to greet a visitor—but nobody’s there. And then there’s the “dust kitten,” which moves about like a ball of dust when a light breeze disturbs it.

Every now and then, McCaffrey says she catches a whiff of an old-fashioned floral fragrance she believes might have been worn by Mrs. Long.

The acceleration of “activity” during the month of August is a mystery. But it can be certain it held—and still does—some significance to the Long family. Perhaps they still celebrate the change in their father’s life which took him from dissipation to respectability.

No matter how much “noise” or activity the Long family ghosts create they and the McCaffreys are happy together.

When the McCaffreys moved into the Mason Long house, 922 Columbia Ave., they were warned, “The house is haunted.”

Photo by Bob Schmidt

The Pfeiffer House

There is nothing unusual about the Charles Pfeiffer house that would draw attention to it. This warm and inviting, red brick three-story structure—now a restaurant at 434 W. Wayne Street owned by Clark Valentine—is solid, sturdy and comfortable, much like the family who’d lived there in the mid-1800s. The Pfeiffers: Charles, Henrietta and their two children, Fred and Marguerite, were contented inhabitants. After he grew up and entered the family business and his parents were gone, bachelor Fred Pfeiffer maintained the house outside and inside, much as it had been during his childhood. Fred Pfeiffer died in 1995, after having lived in the same house just shy of one hundred years.

Fred had been the heir to business interests in Fort Wayne ranging from meatpacking to the Lincoln National Bank, of which his father was one of the co-founders. Through years of single-minded dedication, he had increased the fortune, and at his death his estate was valued at ten million dollars, 80 percent of which was left to various charities. His niece and nephew shared equally in the remaining estate.

Now Fred seems to appear for Clark Valentine, the present owner. Is he unwilling to leave the home he occupied for so long? Clark and his chef, Cindy Lauer, report hearing the doorbell ring; however, upon checking, finding nobody there.

Clark had been introduced to both Fred and the house in 1989, when he began handling the aging man’s financial affairs as a surety officer for the Lincoln National Bank. Valentine knew the old gentleman as an intelligent, shrewd businessman owning large tracts of real estate, stocks and bonds. Though there were several years difference in their ages, the two became good friends. Clark was well aware of Fred’s total commitment and love for his home. “Fred wanted to keep everything the same,” he had told a reporter during an interview. “It was very important to him.”

That’s why, when Fred died, Clark decided to purchase the house he had come to admire. His new residence was as it had been when Fred lived there, complete with two fireplaces and beautiful hand-hewn woodwork. The family piano and Louis XVI style furniture still stand in the exact same position where they had stood for one hundred years. He decided to make only necessary repairs and clean the home. He and his daughter, Sara, entered into a partnership and opened the house as a restaurant named, aptly, the Pfeiffer House.

The attic room, where Fred and sister Marguerite used to play and ride their bicycles, is now a comedy improv theater with an odd ambience pervading its gabled corners. Realizing the interest—or curiosity—the community has in the house and the family, Clark will agree to conduct infrequent tours.

He remembers giving a group of women a tour of the house. They were on the second floor and were about to go to the attic area, when one of the women refused to go any farther, nervously retreating to the first floor. She later confided that she’d felt a presence and became frightened.

The chef, Cindy Lauer, agrees that a presence has often been felt in the old home. She has been in the habit of arriving early­—before the boss, his daughter or the servers—to get things “cooking.” It’s in these lonely, early morning hours when the house is still and the doors locked that the chef can feel a presence. Steps will echo on the stairs. If she moves to the hallway and looks up the stairs she sees no one, and yet will sense that someone is looking down at her.

She also reports odd happenings in the kitchen—pots sliding off counters and other disturbances.

A server has reported setting up the tables for the lunch crowd and hearing doors opening and closing upstairs, as if someone was going from room to room. The chef was the only other person in the house and she was in the kitchen.

Doors slam. Salt and pepper shakers suddenly fall from the tables. Lights go on and off by themselves.

Clark Valentine likes to think that Fred Pfeiffer has returned to the home he was so fond of and was so reluctant to leave, even in death.

Those who knew him believe that Fred Pfeiffer still walks through the home he loved and lived in for nearly one hundred years.

Photo by Bob Schmidt

The Phantom of the Embassy

The excitement could be felt like the electrical charged air just before a lightning-filled thunderstorm. A thunderous sound—and then—rising from the darkness below, the magnificent Page pipe organ would come into view, accompanied by the eighteen-piece orchestra. Music filled the theater and the show began. For a few cents a theatergoer could escape reality and revel in the luxury of theatrical performances for a couple of hours.

It was the 1920s when the theater first opened, the era of extravagant opulent movie and vaudevillian palaces. The 3,000-seat theater at 125 W. Jefferson Street first billed itself as the Emboyd, a name given it by W. C. Quimby, the manager, to honor his mother Emily Boyd. French marble trim covered the walls, an Italian vaulted ceiling soared above them, and mirrors on the landing reflected patrons as they ascended the grand staircase beneath five-foot sconces glittering with crystal spangles. Moorish styled pillars led to the vestibule of the gentlemen’s lounge, which included a fireplace decorated with an intricate, ornate plaster sculpture.

Bud Berger believed himself lucky when he was hired as the Emboyd’s first stage manager. He took his responsibilities seriously, making certain he was at the theater and ready to assist the director during rehearsals and performances long before anyone else arrived. He’d stay long after everyone else had gone home, reviewing every detail, checking every prop. One job that he paid particular attention to was managing the lights around the stage, and especially the ghost light, the subdued spotlight above the stage that allowed the vaudeville performers to find their places without tripping. Bud was fascinated by it all and it became his life. He had fallen in love with the Emboyd.

His days—and nights—were spent almost entirely at the theater. It occurred to him that he could be more readily available by fixing a place to sleep under the stage. He’d be there whenever he was needed, and he could guard his beloved theater at all times. His employers gave him permission.

Bud was friendly and well liked by the many entertainers who trod the boards of the Emboyd’s stage, such as Bob Hope, Donald O’Connor and Fort Wayne’s own Marilyn Maxwell. The walls of the dressing-room area were decorated with his growing collection of autographed photos.

The Alliance Amusement Company bought the theater in 1952, changing the name to the Embassy Theater. It continued to operate primarily as a movie theater. And, even then, Bud slept there and tended the building.

Thirteen years later Bud left the theater at last—he died in 1965.

Without the love Bud had lavished on it, and in a downtown where times and theater-going habits were changing, the theater declined. The owners announced in 1972 that it would be more profitable to demolish the building and create a parking lot.

Bud’s spirit of love for the Emboyd may have reached out from beyond the grave to touch the hearts of the community and raise the funds to save the old landmark. Steve Toor, Embassy management, feels strongly that Bud Berger rescued the theater. “He’s a guardian-angel ghost,” Toor believes. He is positive it was Bud who helped save the Embassy. “It was going to be torn down in sixty days. It was real close.”

The Embassy Theater Foundation was created, and through its efforts the theater has been restored to its original beauty and is considered to be Indiana’s largest and most opulent historic theater. Ballets, operas, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra, concerts, Broadway Musical Series and theater organ popular music programs appear on its stage.

More than thirty years after his death Bud still seems to reside in the theater he loved more than any woman. Many have felt his presence. Toor and several employees believe he’s responsible for doors suddenly closing and theater seats folding and unfolding.

This ghostly presence even likes to play a prank from time to time on the current stage manager. During a final stage check for a holiday presentation, the stage manager realized the Christmas tree was missing from the set. No one admitted to removing it. In a panic all stagehands searched frantically. Just before the curtain went up it was found in a place no one would have expected. Was Bud playing a prank?

Many who work in the theater say some of the incidents attributed to Bud can be easily explained; other occurrences are more mysterious.

There is one telling sign that he is around and about: Sometimes, late at night, the pipe organ will start playing. Whether one note or a melody—it’s definitely Bud.

Bud Berger, stage manager for the elegant Embassy Theater, spent his days and nights in the theater. Even after death he seems to look after the theater and play the pipe organ.

Photo by Bob Schmidt