Staff Editor
Shaker’s Cigar Bar inhabits a beautiful, historic building built in 1894 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Walker’s Point. The building was originally a cooperage for Schlitz Brewing, as you can imagine brewing is kind of a big deal in Milwaukee. Well… at least until prohibition that is. Then history tells us the former Schlitz cooperage transformed into a speakeasy and brothel owned by two brothers, who just happened to be Al, Frank, and Ralph…Capone. It only follows logically that the building started stacking bodies like barrels of brew. As a result, Shaker’s Cigar Bar’s staff are not the only inhabitants.Yup, it’s haunted.
“That is when the Capone brothers, Al, Frank, and Ralph Capone, took ownership of this building,” said Marley Decker, a tour guide for Shaker’s. “That’s when it operated as a speakeasy, and then the brothel on the top two floors.”
Ghost stories, great drinks, fine cigars, and beautiful women have been a part of this building’s history for a long time and Shaker’s seems to embrace that.
Today Shaker’s Cigar Bar has embraced the sordid history of their building and it is bedecked with purple lights with ghosts prominently displayed in the windows and on all of their merchandise.
According to PostXNews,
“The basement is objectively creepy. It’s dark, obviously old, and has cobwebs everywhere. It was a secret hideout and meeting room for the Capones”
“There’s a cistern that Decker said has brought out bad spirits every time they try to cover it up.”
“The well goes down so far to the point that you can’t see the bottom,” she said. “So you can imagine that when the Capones owned this building, this was probably a really perfect place for them to throw things that they never wanted to be found again.”
Haunted Cigar Bar Has No Skeletons In The Closet But In The Floor and Walls..
PostXNews took the tour, we have to settle for Shaker’s YouTube Channel, but if Milwaukee is in your future check this out:
“At one point, the owner had someone come in with ground penetrating radar. They could see discrepancies under the concrete, but most of it was far too deep to tell what it was.
However, there were two things closer to the surface.
“He came across two full sets of human remains sort of huddled up next to each other,” Decker said. “They reported this to MPD, who said because they were so old, and they didn’t match with any open cases, they didn’t have to dig them up unless Bob really wanted them to. So they decided to let them be, and those remains are still under the concrete in that corner to this day.”
Today, there are two plastic skeletons laying on top of the spot where the bodies are down below, marking the spot.”
And that isn’t all, even more, surprising than the Milwaukee PD’s blasé take on a 70+-year-old cold-case was that Shaker’s owner Bob Weiss would need to employ the help of penetrating Radar again to do the roof!
“Inside this wall, they came across a mass of charred bones,” Decker said. “The medical examiner was able to confirm this was a female in her late teens early 20s, and the remains were about 70 years old.”
“Staff believe it to be Molly, who was the top girl working at the brothel. She was just 18 when she was murdered, dismembered, and her body burned in the fireplace of her room, to avoid detection by the mobsters downstairs.”
You’re going to have to see this to believe it, but Shakers in addition to the paranormal ghost stories has a wonderful selection of fine cigars, a great environment and a bevy of fine cocktails that reflect their speakeasy roots. It definitely seems worth spending an extra day in the America’s Dairyland to see.
