The Ghosts of Lincoln's Past

The human fascination with haunting goes back millennia -- and Lincoln hasn't dodged any ghostly bullets, with at least three supposedly haunted buildings in the area.The best known of the three is the deserted Beermann's Restaurant building. Walking down Fifth Street, Lincolnites occasionally peer through the windows. The furniture sits empty, the chairs where people used to carouse and enjoy pints at the bar now gather dust, awaiting the next tenant.But perhaps there's already one in place.Gerry Logan, Lincoln's archivist, came across several references to the possibility that Beermann's is haunted. The former co-owner, Karen Fox, reportedly swore the second floor of the building housed a supernatural presence. Some of her employees allegedly agreed. The building was built in 1863, so it's had plenty of time to generate a ghost story.Some accounts point to the presence of an aura on the second floor -- and Logan said Fox blamed a hole in a vase on the ghost. It even had a name, though no one seems to remember it now."It's kind of freaky. It's a big building, and at night it's creepy," said Chris Sullivan, the general manager of Dillian's Bar. Sullivan used to work as a bartender at Beermann's."Honestly, from what I've seen or done, there wasn't anything, and I'm not against thinking it could be haunted," Sullivan said. "We had cooks who thought they saw something, and we had palm readings and psychics come in."One of the cooks at Dillian's used to work at Beermann's, but when asked if it was haunted, he merely shook his head and waved the suggestion away.Not far away, on the corner of McBean Park Drive and D Street sits the Lincoln Learning Center. Children play in the front yard, which has been converted to a playground, but the black cat that patrols the premises adds fuel to the fires of suspicion that allege the building is haunted.Like Beermann's, the multi-story brick building is an old one, having been constructed in 1888. Logan said it is supposed to be haunted, but Adrienne Holscher and her daughter, Athena Holt, who run the center, both laughed at the rumor."There's supposedly a little girl from the 1930s who haunts the house," Holt said."We've never seen her," Holscher said. "You just hear the sounds of an old building settling, nothing supernatural."The third building in which Logan found a reference to a haunting is just outside town at the intersection of Dowd and Wise, along Coon Creek. Originally built during the Gold Rush days in 1850, it was called the Kentucky House and served as a hotel. It later became the Coon Creek Post Office.As time passed, the building was abandoned and rumors that it was haunted sprang up. At one point, some local kids decided to spend the night in the building. All had drifted off to sleep and woke to see a white apparition coming toward them, Logan said. Their terror subsided, he said, when the ghostly apparition revealed itself to be an errant sheep.Today, driving by the intersection, a cluster of old buildings stands derelict. None really looks old enough to be the allegedly haunted building, but looks can be deceiving.