$585 of Brick: Indianapolis’s Haunted Hannah House

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 26, 2026 · How we verify

On the south side of Indianapolis, set back from Madison Avenue on what was once a 240 acre farm, stands the brick Italianate pile that Indiana ghost hunters know simply as the haunted Hannah House. Its formal name on the National Register is the Hannah-Oehler-Elder House, and that triple-barrelled name tells you more about the place than any ghost story does: three families, one building, and a reputation that only arrived in the second half of the twentieth century.

The basics, before the legends. The house was built in 1859. It is two and a half storeys, five bays wide, Italianate brick with Greek Revival detailing and a low-pitched hipped roof under bracketed eaves. A lower two-storey kitchen wing with a gallery was added in 1872. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Today it is best known as a haunted house, and it is still in the hands of descendants of the family who bought it in 1899.

Alexander Hannah and $585 Worth of Brick

Alexander M. Hannah came home to Indiana from California with money in his pocket, having done well out of the gold rush. In November 1858 he bought the materials for a house, including $585 worth of brick, and put it up the following year on 240 acres of farmland purchased from his father, Samuel Hannah. Local accounts also credit him with public roles in the county, including sheriff and postmaster, and Hannah is described by historians as a Quaker and an abolitionist.

He married Elizabeth Jackson in 1872 and expanded the property to suit a married household: a smokehouse, a milk cooling room, staff quarters, a wash house. Then the line stopped. The couple’s only child was stillborn on March 16, 1875, leaving no one to inherit the house. That single fact is the seed of the mansion’s most persistent ghost story, and unlike most of what follows, it is a matter of record. Some retellings add a small unmarked headstone between the Hannahs’ graves; treat that as local lore rather than documentation.

The Jeweller Who Bought It Next: Roman Oehler

The house went on the market and in 1899 was bought, along with 21 acres of surrounding ground, by Roman Oehler, a jeweller and Civil War veteran. Oehler had emigrated from Württemberg, Germany in 1859, the same year the house was built, and began by selling pins door to door until he had enough capital to open his first jewellery shop on Virginia Avenue. He added the front porch that visitors walk under today, and replaced Hannah’s three barns with one.

Oehler died on March 28, 1920, and left the house to his daughter Romena. She lived there with her husband, Marion Elder, and their four children until 1962. The Elder surname was the last to attach itself to the property, and Oehler descendants own it still.

The Antique Store Years, When the Stories Started

This is the part of the timeline worth holding onto. Through the 1960s and 70s the house was rented by John and Gladys O’Brien, who ran an antique store inside it. It was during that period, roughly a century after the Hannahs moved in, that the first reports of paranormal activity surfaced. Whatever else is true, the haunting is not a nineteenth century tradition handed down through the families. It is a twentieth century one, and it grew up in a building full of other people’s old furniture.

The Cellar Fire Legend, and What a Historian Says About It

The story that made the Hannah House famous goes like this. A group of fugitive slaves travelling the Underground Railroad were sheltering in the cellar. An oil lamp was knocked over, the resulting fire killed them, and Alexander Hannah buried the bodies in the cellar rather than face prosecution for harbouring escapees, trapping their souls in the basement.

There is no evidence for any of it, starting with the premise. The house’s status as an Underground Railroad stop is disputed. Indianapolis historian Jessica Fischer has put it bluntly: “There is no evidence to say that his house was a part of the Underground Railroad. All we know is he is a Quaker and an abolitionist who would be sympathetic to those enslaved. His property was located away from prying eyes in the city.” Sympathy and a secluded farm are the whole of the case. The fire, the deaths and the concealed burials belong to legend, and repeating them as fact does a disservice to real people who were never named because they may never have existed.

What Visitors and the Elder Family Report

David M. Elder, an Oehler descendant, once called the property “supposedly the only true haunted house in town,” and the phenomena he described set the pattern for what visitors still report:

• The sound of breaking glass coming from an empty basement
• Chandeliers swaying with no draught to move them
• Pictures flying off the walls
• Assorted unexplained noises and chilling sensations
• The smell of rotting flesh in certain rooms, reported by more than one account
• Sightings of an infant’s spirit, which visitors connect to the Hannahs’ stillborn child

All of these are reported experiences. None has been verified, and the smell in particular has an obvious mundane candidate in an old brick house with a damp cellar and a history of plumbing.

Visiting the Hannah House

The house earns its keep. The Elder family puts revenue from events back into restoration and the property tax bill, and the calendar reflects that: haunted house tours, overnight paranormal investigations, murder mystery dinners, party and wedding rentals. October is the busy season, when the place leans hardest into its Halloween identity.

Go for the architecture as well as the atmosphere. A well preserved 1859 Italianate farmhouse with an 1872 kitchen wing and a turn of the century porch is not a common thing to find intact inside a modern city, and the story of a gold rush returnee, a German pin pedlar turned jeweller, and four generations of one family holding on to a house is a better story than the cellar fire ever was.

See Hannah House for Yourself

Sources

• Indiana State Historic Architectural and Archaeological Research Database (SHAARD) (In (official))
• Pictorial and biographical memoirs of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, together with biographies of many prominent men of other portions of the state, both living and dead
• Hannah House
• Hannah House Has Held Several Families In Style
• Funeral Tomorrow for Roman Oehler (In (official))
• Wikipedia: Hannah–Oehler–Elder House

Address: 3801 Madison Avenue

Ghost Tours Nearby

Wicked Wraiths of White River: Indianapolis Ghost Tour★ 4.1 (111)from $26The Ghosts of Indianapolis Tour Family Friendly Haunted Historyfrom $30Indianapolis Adults Only Ghost and True Crime Tourfrom $35

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