Hotel Retlaw
1 N Main St, Fond du Lac, WI 54935 (map)
The Hotel Retlaw is one of the most haunted places in Fond du Lac, where the ghost of a guest who never checked out screams from behind the closed door of room 717, and a redheaded woman in a bathrobe vanishes into the walls.
Hotel Retlaw History
The Hotel Retlaw was built in 1923 by wealthy Milwaukee hotel magnate Walter Schroeder. Secret tunnels connect the hotel to nearby J.D. Finnegans (now Third and One) and Dillinger’s, where John Dillinger himself is said to have run an illegal gaming room and speakeasy for the storage and sale of booze during the Prohibition era.
Schroeder died in 1967, but the Hotel Retlaw (Walter spelled backwards) remains one of his favorite haunts as some believe he still roams its halls.
Other paranormal occurrences around the hotel are attributed to a man who is said to have hung himself on the second floor, and a ballerina who reputedly jumped to her death from the window of her seventh floor room.
The hotel is said to have spent some time being used as a psychiatric hospital, as well as a nursing home at some point in its nearly 100-year history.
Reported Hauntings
- Ghost of a woman in a bathrobe
- Screams from room 717
- Banging on the walls
- Doors moving
- Lights and faucets turning on and off by themselves
- Footsteps
- Male voices
Have you heard about or had a personal experience at the Hotel Retlaw?
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