Haunted Birchbark Books: Louise Erdrich’s Minneapolis Store

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated September 4, 2026 · How we verify

Most claims of a haunted bookstore come from customers, staff or a tour guide. At the haunted Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the claim comes from the owner. Louise Erdrich, who founded the shop in the Kenwood neighborhood, has said the place is haunted. That single line is the whole of the paranormal record here, and it is worth being straight about that: there is no catalog of sightings, no signature figure on the stairs, no dated incident. What there is instead is a specific, unusual building full of Native art, a well documented twenty year history, and an owner who has said out loud that something else is in it.

Birchbark Books, or by its full name Birchbark Books & Native Arts, is an independent bookstore on the Kenwood side of Minneapolis. The storefront sells books and works of art. The separate online storefront, Birchbark Native Arts, sells only Native products. The business is part of the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association.

What Louise Erdrich Opened in Kenwood in 2001

Erdrich founded the store in 2001. She has described it as a tiny general interest shop with a concentration in Native American or Indigenous writing: fiction, poetry, history, politics, food, memoir, and material that supports Indigenous language revitalization, particularly the Ojibwe and Dakota languages. Erdrich, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, is a novelist first, and the shelving reflects a reader’s taste rather than a distributor’s list.

The store carries Native authored work across fiction, history, spirituality, education and language, and deliberately stocks little known and up and coming Native authors. There is a substantial Dakota and Ojibwe language section holding children’s picture books, language learning materials and adult literature. Staff choose the stock themselves, and handwritten signs on the shelves pass along recommendations. Alongside the books are pieces handcrafted by Indigenous artists: baskets, beadwork, jewelry.

The Canoe, the Tree House Loft, and an Altar of Erdrich’s Sins

The interior is the reason the ghost claim lands the way it does. The space was designed by Native artists and is decorated with Native art throughout. The building itself is made from cedar wood and birch logs. A large canoe hangs from the ceiling. The children’s area has a loft styled like a tree house with a Hobbit hole underneath. There is an altar installation, which the store describes as decorated with Erdrich’s sins.

None of that is evidence of anything supernatural. It does explain why a visitor primed by the owner’s remark walks in already looking for a presence. A low timber room hung with a boat is not a neutral place to stand still in.

Erdrich’s Haunting Claim, and How Little Backs It

The documented statement is simply that the owner has said Birchbark is haunted. No published account attached to the store names a spirit, describes an apparition, or fixes a date to an incident. Readers who arrive expecting the usual inventory of cold spots and footsteps will find that nobody has produced one, at least not in the public record.

That absence is itself informative. Erdrich is a writer whose work sits close to Ojibwe story and belief, and a remark about a haunting from her can be read in more than one register. Treat it as what it is: a reported statement by the owner, not a verified event, and not a promise of anything a visitor will experience.

The Year the Kenwood Cafe Closed Next Door

The real crisis in the store’s history was economic, not spectral. In 2011 the bookstore’s neighbor, the Kenwood Café, closed down, and Birchbark Books saw sales plummet. Erdrich publicly questioned whether she could keep the shop going. A community effort by customers and neighbors raised enough money to sustain the store temporarily, and business in the neighborhood eventually resumed as normal.

The second disruption came with the COVID-19 pandemic, when the storefront closed and the shop fulfilled online orders instead. Southwest Voices reported that sales skyrocketed after 2020. To handle fulfillment, Birchbark took a space near Loring Corners, a building close to Loring Park and the Walker Art Center.

Birchbark Bizhew at Loring Corners

That temporary fulfillment space became permanent. In April 2023 the business opened an event space and warehouse at Loring Corners called Birchbark Bizhew, also written Birchbark Bizhiw, and known in English as Birchbark Lynx. It is dedicated to events for Indigenous authors and artists, and it sells products from Indigenous companies including Native Wisdom Skincare, Makwa Studio, Romona Farms and Seka Hills, along with work by local artists.

Authors and artists featured there include Monique Gray Smith, Carole Lindstrom and Sky Hopinka. The PEN Award winning author Mona Susan Power held the release party for her National Book Award longlisted novel A Council of Dolls at Birchbark Bizhew. The Kenwood store has its own long list of visiting writers, among them Angela Davis, Tommy Orange, Gerald Vizenor, Marcie Rendon, Teresa Peterson and Diane Wilson, and it has collaborated with galleries and churches to show Indigenous art.

Visiting Birchbark Books in Minneapolis

This is a working retail bookstore in a residential Minneapolis neighborhood, not a paranormal attraction, and there is no ghost tour on offer. Anyone can walk in during business hours, browse the Ojibwe and Dakota language shelves, look up at the canoe and make their own judgment about the atmosphere. Check current hours before traveling, and check the Loring Corners schedule separately if the draw is an author event at Birchbark Bizhew rather than the Kenwood shop itself. Buy a book while you are there. The store’s survival has twice depended on people doing exactly that.

Address: Kenwood neighborhood, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Sources

• Birchbark Books opens second store for expanding business
• The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich (Harper)
• Birchbark Books opens event space in Loring Corners to showcase Native authors
• After 17 years Birchbark Books continues to center Native stories, space amid society of erasure
• The ghosts, past and present, that haunt renowned Minnesota novelist Louise Erdrich
• Wikipedia: Birchbark Books

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