Tours bring life to ghostly tales of old St. Charles
By Valerie Schremp Hahn
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
ST. CHARLES

If there's anybody who looks like he can introduce you to a ghost, it's
Michael
Henry.
He wears a black button-down shirt, black pants and a silver,
skull-shaped ring
on his finger. He trims his gray beard to a devilish point, and his
bushy
eyebrows swoop up and out and give him that "you are getting very
sleepy" look.
If Henry can't introduce you to a ghost, he can at least tell you about
them.

Since spring, Henry has offered "ghost tours" on Historic Main Street in
St.
Charles.
"What are ghosts? I don't know," he tells a group of people at the
beginning of
a recent nighttime tour. "I believe they are a manifestation of
something we
don't understand yet."

By day, Henry, 53, teaches computer science at Lindenwood University,
and he
also travels the world as a performing magician. He has dabbled in magic
and
the mysterious for 30 years and has spent three years researching the
ghosts of
Main Street. He lives in Florissant in a home decorated in "early Addams
family," as he describes it. Before that, he lived in St. Charles for
several
years and is looking to move back.

The group of 13 people this particular night keeps him on his toes.
Several of
them live on Main Street or own businesses there and say they have met
some of
the ghosts. Some of Henry's stories are new to them, and some of theirs
are new
to him.

He knew about the ghost of the little girl who haunted 525 South Main
when the
Patches, etc. button shop was situated there. But he didn't know that
the ghost
went away when owner Ann Hazelwood sold the toy sewing machine the girl
liked
to play with.
"When the machine went, she went," Hazelwood told the group.

At Lewis and Clark's Restaurant at 217 South Main, several employees
told Henry
about a man and woman in Victorian dress who also seem to appear at
other Main
Street restaurants. On a crowded Halloween night about two years ago,
Henry
said, a worker was trying to seat people when she said she saw a man and
woman
in Victorian dress on the first landing to the upstairs dining room. She
couldn't figure out how the couple got by her, and she went up to them
and
said, "I'll seat you in a minute." When she turned around, the couple
had
disappeared. They couldn't have gone upstairs because the landing was
full of
people, she told Henry.

Henry says he has had ghostly experiences at the Little Hills Restaurant
at 501
South Main. About five years ago, after his wife died, he held a party
in her
memory at the restaurant. His party had 24 people, but he and the
staff kept counting 26 people. In July, on a day tour, the group paused
at the
restaurant, and a teenage girl in the group counted 14 shadows on the
street.

There were 12 people in the group.
Henry led the group behind The Homestead, a gift shop at 401 South Main,
where
a log replica of the original St. Charles Borromeo church is being
built. The
area around the church was once a cemetery, and the bodies had been
moved
twice, first in 1831 and again in 1854 to the present Borromeo cemetery
at West
Randolph Street. But construction workers have found human bones there
in
recent years.

Henry showed the group how his magnetic compass doesn't work properly
here.
He's not sure why. He set the compass on a wooden beam on the ground,
and the
group peered at the needle as it spun around. "It won't work," Henry
said,
squinting at the compass. "It will settle down and all of a sudden go
crazy.
It's way off north right now."

Henry has fun with other gadgets on the tour. He supplied the group with
two
palm-size electromagnetic force detectors, which react to humans and
objects
such as electrical boxes. But sometimes the detector will go off for no
apparent reason, sensing a force that has no apparent source, Henry
explained.
The bench in front of John Dengler Tobacconist, at 700 South Main, seems
to set
the detector off, said Henry. He held the box above the bench, and it
emitted a
high-pitched buzz. He asked a few volunteers to sit on the bench, and
the box
went silent. It buzzed again when he moved the box to either side of the
bench.
"It's almost as if they got up for you," he said.
Inside the shop, people have experienced the sound of mysterious
footsteps, a
voice speaking French and a package of cigarettes floating in midair,
Henry
said.

Donna Hafer, who owns the Mother-in-Law House restaurant at 500 South
Main,
also happened to be on the ghost tour this night. As the group paused
before
the restaurant, she told the story of the mother-in-law ghost, said to
be
responsible for things like utensils disappearing and glasses spilling.
A
psychic visited and said the ghost apparently was unhappy in the
afterlife and
told Hafer to make sure to tell the ghost every night before leaving
that she
loves her.
"Now you know what you're supposed to do - you tell mother-in-law you
love her
and I need more business," Hafer told the group, laughing.

The tour includes several more stories: The little girl who died in a
kitchen
fire in 1945 and hugs the legs of customers in the outdoor courtyard at
the
Canoe restaurant, 515 South Main; the cranky riverboat captain who sits
in his
squeaky rocking chair at 523 South Main; the phantom dog with no legs
that
crosses the street near Plank Road Pottery at 906 South Main.

Henry would like to hear more stories, which is why he invited several
of his
guests this night back for an informal tour: he'll bring the wine, he
promised,
if they bring him more stories about the buildings and the spirits who
may
haunt them.
"There's something there," Henry said. "I'd really like to believe it's
ghosts."

To learn more about the tours, visit www.stcharlesghosts.com or call
Henry
at 314-374-6102. Tours are $20 for adults and $16 for older adults.
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