Minneapolis is home to countless reports of ghosts, ghouls, spirits, specters, phantoms and paranormal activity.

From the scornful spirits skulking around a historic skyscraper to the clueless ghost of a clumsy barmaid, a plethora of supposed spirits have been reported in the community. Skeptics and believers alike have come up with inconclusive evidence of these hauntings, leaving the truth behind these ghastly stories a mystery.

One of the most famous haunted places in the mill city is Foshay Tower, said to be haunted by Ponzi scheme pioneer Wilbur Foshay. Legend has it that Foshay jumped off of his namesake tower. In reality, Foshay died of a stroke in a nearby nursing home in 1957.

“Dangerous” Linda Lee, local ghost tour guide and regional vice president of American Ghost Walks, said she believes she knows whose spirit is actually haunting the historic building downtown. Lee said the Foshay Tower is haunted by the ghosts of Mrs. Genevieve Clark and her family. 

The sole woman juror on Foshay’s fraud trial, Clark was also the sole holdout on the jury, ultimately leading to a mistrial. It was later discovered that Clark and her husband had financial dealings with Foshay, and she was charged with contempt of court for not disclosing her relationship with him during the trial.

Clark, her husband and two sons died of carbon monoxide poisoning in an apparent suicide in 1933. Lee said she believes Clark may be haunting the Foshay Tower because of the unresolved emotional conflict between her and the utility magnate. 

Lee said she has been preparing and guiding ghost tours in Minnesota for almost ten years, occasionally assisted by a spirit named Alice. 

“It’s storytelling, it’s history, it’s spirituality,” Lee said. “This was made for me.”

A few blocks away from the downtown stops of Lee’s ghost tour is the historic Black Forest Inn in Uptown, where many claim to have seen or felt the presence of strange supernatural spirits.

Gina Christ, co-owner of the family-owned haunt, said she began to believe the ghost stories because so many of the restaurant’s employees reported paranormal activity in the building, especially in the basement. 

“I think it’s haunted because of the consensus,” she said. “There is a level of universality that I find really compelling.”

Reports of hauntings eventually led Christ to invite the Twin Cities Paranormal Society to investigate the Inn’s supposed haunting. The Twin Cities Paranormal Society claimed to have recorded a disembodied voice saying “Help me” during an overnight investigation of the restaurant, according to member Thomas Troupe. 

Troupe said investigators contacted the spirit of a former maintenance worker named Dale at a workbench in the basement of the restaurant. Using an array of recording devices and an electromagnetic frequency measuring device, he said investigators were able to ask the spirit questions about their life and afterlife.

“The conversation was pretty one-sided,” Troupe said. 

In 2013, the Twin Cities Paranormal Society investigated another of Minneapolis’ haunted landmarks, the nearby Turnblad Mansion, home to the American Swedish Institute. Reports of hauntings at the mansion date all the way back to 1921, said Andrea Justus, volunteer and interpretive services coordinator of the Institute. 

Justus leads flashlight tours of the mansion in the days before Halloween, giving guests a history lesson about both the mansion and the reported hauntings. However, Justus said she is still unsure whether she believes in ghosts.

“I leave it up to people to come to their own conclusions,” she said. “There’s no super conclusive evidence.”

Despite his belief in the existence of ghosts, Troupe said he understands doubts about the validity of evidence produced in paranormal investigations. 

Lee said she also understands the skepticism because most people who have not experienced anything paranormal have difficulty understanding the supernatural.

“Do we have definitive, absolute proof? No,” Troupe said. “But we have weird things we can’t explain.”

Peter Harle, a University of Minnesota professor and folklore enthusiast, said believing in ghosts can be both comforting and exciting. Ghost stories are a way for people to understand something operating differently from reality, he said.

Harle said ghost stories take us out of our own existence. Investigating suspected supernatural synchronicities is a way for people to put themselves in the story, he added.

“We relate to our ghosts in curious ways,” Harle said.