Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainDowntown Wausau sporting goods store with a ghost named Eddie and Prohibition-era presences
324 Scott St, Wausau, WI 54403
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to visit during store hours; ghost tour tickets purchased separately through WPRS
Access
Wheelchair OK
Ground-floor retail space; basement accessible by stairs only
Equipment
Photos OK
Prohibition-Era Commercial Block · Postwar Downtown Retail History · Wausau Ghost Tour Circuit
Shepherd & Schaller Sporting Goods opened at 324 Scott St in Wausau in 1949 and has operated continuously in the same downtown location for more than seven decades. The building itself is older than the sporting goods store; the structure previously served as a J.C. Penney location, and the Shepherd family operation took over the space during the postwar expansion of the downtown commercial district.
The store is owned and operated by the Shepherd family, and owner Robb Shepherd has been the primary source on the building's reported unusual activity. His accounts describe unexplained sounds in the basement storage areas, spontaneously triggered door alarms on the building's ground floor, and boxes that appear to have been moved between his arrival and his previous departure.
The building occupies a section of downtown Wausau that dates to the Prohibition era, and the store sits within walking distance of several other buildings flagged by the Wausau Paranormal Research Society as having documented activity. It has been a named stop on the WPRS annual October ghost tours for multiple years, which brings attention from regional paranormal researchers as well as visitors drawn by the tour itself.
Sources
The haunting at Shepherd & Schaller has an unusual degree of specificity for a retail venue. Owner Robb Shepherd has identified two categories of reported activity operating on different historical layers.
The more named presence is called Eddie, a figure believed by Shepherd to have been an employee or regular during the building's time as a J.C. Penney store. The activity attributed to Eddie is physical and consistent: door alarms on the ground floor trip without any visible cause, cardboard boxes in the basement are found displaced from where Shepherd left them, and footsteps are audible in the basement when Shepherd is the only person in the building.
The second category of reported presence is described more broadly as Prohibition-era spirits. Wausau's downtown district had documented illegal alcohol activity during Prohibition, and the WPRS has included the building on its tour circuit citing this historical layer as significant to the pattern of reports. The two layers — J.C. Penney-era and Prohibition-era — have not been merged in the reporting; Shepherd and the WPRS treat them as distinct.
The WJFW local news segment from the store documented Shepherd's accounts directly; the reporter spent time in the basement and confirmed the physical layout Shepherd described as the focal point of the activity.
Notable Entities
Shepherd & Schaller has operated at 324 Scott St since 1949. Visit the store during regular business hours. The reported activity centers in the basement storage area, where owner Robb Shepherd has heard unexplained footsteps; the J.C. Penney-era portion of the building is where the ghost named Eddie is said to concentrate.
Shepherd & Schaller is a named stop on the annual WPRS October ghost tours departing from the Wausau Elks Lodge. Tour guides present the building's reported activity alongside live character reenactors. Tour tickets sold through the Wausau Paranormal Research Society.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Tucson, AZ
The Catholic presence in Tucson traces to a presidio chapel established in the 1770s. The current cathedral building dates to an 1897 brick construction on the site of the 1858 parish church. The distinctive Mexican baroque stone facade was added in 1928 and rededicated in 2011 following a major renovation.
Biloxi, MS
The Biloxi Lighthouse was constructed in 1848 by the U.S. government as a cast iron structure on the Gulf Coast. Keeper Perry Younghans died in 1867 within his first year of service; his wife Maria assumed the post and tended the light for more than 50 years, making it the only lighthouse in the United States kept by female keepers longer than by male keepers. The lighthouse survived multiple hurricanes, including Katrina in 2005.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPHot Springs, AR
On December 2, 1922, Violet Alma Boles — 20 years old, born November 16, 1902 — was shot and killed at the Japanese Tea Room at 366 Central Avenue in Hot Springs by Elmer Jones, a school acquaintance who had developed an obsessive fixation on her. Cemetery records from Greenwood Cemetery in Garland County confirm her dates exactly.