Geneva's spirited ghost tours

GENEVA – Ghosts abound in downtown Geneva so much that the Geneva History Museum's annual ghost tours fill up so fast the organization can hardly keep up.

Four tours that have been offered the past eight years are walking tours, limited to 30 participants for each one, and they start at the museum rain or shine, museum executive director Terry Emma said.

The tours are offered at 2, 4, 6 and 8 p.m., she said. Though they are likely to be sold out, if there are vacancies, tickets can be purchased online at www.genevahistorymuseum.org.

“It’s very popular,” Emma said. “We give out glow necklaces for the late ones.”

The walking tours are presented by Donna Latham, author of "Ghosts of the Fox River Valley," a book the museum offers for sale in its gift shop.

Among the stops on the ghost tours will be the Cory House, located at 216 James St., Geneva. Formerly the Kris Kringle Haus facing Third Street, it was turned to face James Street when it became the Designers Desk Needlepoint Shop.

The building also is listed in Latham’s book as the music of Miss Vere Cory, a piano teacher, can still be heard playing despite there being no piano in the house.

“These ladies who owned the needlepoint shop loved having the ghost,” Latham said. “They would pop out and join in and tell stories on the ghost walk. They said when they installed a new security system that shows each room of the structure on a big screen, every time it showed the basement there would be a zigzag of light.”

Chianti's Restaurant, located at 201 S. Third St., Geneva, also is part of the tours, Latham said.

“Chianti’s is unbelievably haunted,” Latham said. “It’s crawling with ghosts. There are bizarre manifestations. Employees there have reported unseen hands touching them on the shoulders and on the back of the neck. There are electrical disruptions where lights flicker on and off. Some former employees have reported all the light bulbs unscrewed themselves.”

Apart from those manifestations, apparitions seen there include a woman in a long white prairie-style dress and a gentleman in a pinstriped suit.

“A little girl in a red dress haunts the kitchen,” Latham said. “She bangs on the countertops and upsets pots and pans. What is interesting to me is that these ghosts seem to be from different periods.”

Another stop on the tours is the Charles B. Wells House, located at 220 S. Third St., Geneva. It was originally built as a house, but then it became Geneva's first hospital. Later it was a bookstore and currently houses Jane Pabon Boutique, the James Skaar law office and Robins Nest Unique Home Decor.

“The C.B. Wells building is haunted by a former medical staff or cook because people smell food cooking in there – bread baking and chicken soup,” Latham said.

Latham, a Batavia resident, is a playwright in addition to being a ghost enthusiast.

She does not give ghost tours anywhere else.

“I just do Geneva because it’s unusually haunted – it really is,” Latham said. “What could it be? It has a rich history in the area of Native Americans, early Swedish settlers, of being a stomping ground for gangster Al Capone on the Fox River. Geneva is such a dang good place to live, nobody wants to leave.”