Allison Jornlin's Bloody-Third Walking Tour
Milwaukee, WI
Age
All Ages with adult accompaniment
Cost
$$
Approximately $30 per person; tickets available at americanghostwalks.com.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved sidewalks through the Historic Third Ward arts district
Equipment
Photos OK
Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward sits on a triangle of land between the Milwaukee River, the lakefront, and downtown. From the 1840s through the 1890s, the neighborhood was the city's primary Irish immigrant district, packed with tenements, saloons, and small workshops. The 1846 nickname 'The Bloody Third' came from the volume of street fighting and gang activity associated with the Third Ward Cowboys, the Irish-American group that controlled large stretches of the neighborhood.
A devastating fire in 1892 destroyed much of the original Third Ward and prompted Italian immigrants to take over the neighborhood as the Irish dispersed elsewhere in the city. The early-20th-century rebuild gave the district its current architectural character — Cream City brick warehouses and commercial buildings — most of which survive today.
During Prohibition, the Third Ward functioned as a center of Milwaukee's Italian-American mafia operations, and the neighborhood retained its rough reputation through midcentury. The 1990s and 2000s saw the district reinvented as a shopping, dining, and arts area, with the Italian Community Center, the Skylight Music Theatre, and the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) all anchored in the same Cream City brick stock.
The Milwaukee Ghost Walk is operated by American Ghost Walks and was developed by lifelong Milwaukeean Allison Jornlin, who was named the Milwaukee Paranormal Conference's 2016 Researcher of the Year. The walking tour runs Fridays and Saturdays, May through October.
Sources
The Skylight Music Theatre, housed in the historic Broadway Theatre Center, is one of the route's most-cited stops. Theater staff and patrons have reported the figure of a man in early-20th-century dress in the upper-level seating areas, along with phantom footsteps in empty corridors after performances.
The Italian Community Center, built on land long associated with the Italian-American mafia operations of the Third Ward, carries witness reports of disembodied voices speaking in Italian and the sound of period-era music in the building's older sections. The Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) building, originally a 19th-century warehouse, has produced student-staff reports of objects moving in art studios and lights flickering on and off.
The tour route extends to ghost stories with Third Ward connections, including witness accounts at the Pfister Hotel — Milwaukee's most-reported haunted hotel — and the Hilton Garden Inn, where staff reports surfaced after the 21st-century redevelopment of nearby blocks.
Guide Allison Jornlin grounds each stop in research from her decades-long study of Milwaukee paranormal accounts and presents witness reports without overinterpretation. The 1.5-2 hour duration accommodates extended discussion when group questions warrant it.
A guided 1.5-2 hour walking tour through Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward, developed by paranormal researcher Allison Jornlin. Covers the neighborhood's gangster-era history, the Italian Community Center, the Skylight Music Theatre, and witness accounts from the Pfister Hotel.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Madison, WI
American Ghost Walks is a multi-city tour operator founded around 2010, running guided storytelling walks across more than two dozen U.S. cities and territories, including five Wisconsin markets — Madison, Milwaukee, Waukesha, Lake Geneva, and Bayfield — plus stops in Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Louisiana, Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico.
Chicago, IL
Chicago Hauntings Ghost Tours, now operated under the American Ghost Walks brand, runs evening walking and bus tours through Chicago's Loop, Lincoln Park, and southwest suburbs. The company's flagship Original Chicago Hauntings Tour departs Saturday evenings from the Congress Plaza Hotel.
Chicago, IL
Ghost City Tours is a national ghost-walk operator with year-round programming in Chicago and several other historic U.S. cities. The Chicago tours cover documented haunted sites across the downtown core in three distinct format variants: family-friendly, adults-only, and pub-crawl.