Bones in the Walls: Shaker’s Cigar Bar in Milwaukee

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated October 18, 2026 · How we verify

Walker’s Point is the kind of Milwaukee neighborhood where the brick outlasts the business that built it, and Shaker’s Cigar Bar is a working example. The building at 422 South 2nd Street went up in 1894 as a cooperage making barrels for the Schlitz Brewing Company, spent Prohibition as a speakeasy with a brothel over the top of it, and now operates as a restaurant and lounge in Wisconsin that calls itself “America’s Most Haunted Bar.” That slogan is marketing. The barrel works, the bootleg liquor and the bones found in the building are the parts of the story worth untangling first.

The Barrel Works at 422 South 2nd Street

Before any of the ghost stories, the place was industrial. Built in 1894, the structure first operated as a cooperage for Schlitz, which meant it existed to supply a brewery with barrels in a city that ran on beer. That origin matters to the later history, because when national prohibition arrived, a building purpose-built for the liquor trade did not simply go quiet.

During Prohibition the building became a speakeasy. Illegal liquor moved through the basement while the upper floors, by the account the bar and its tour guides give, were run as a brothel. The property is said to have been controlled by members of the Capone crime family, a claim repeated often enough locally that it now travels as fact. Treat it as the tradition it is: a mob attribution attached to a Midwestern speakeasy, widely told and not something a visitor can verify from the barstool.

The darker reputation did not end with repeal. Stories circulate that the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer occasionally visited in the early 1990s. That too is anecdote rather than record, and it is worth saying plainly before it gets folded into the building’s ghost lore as evidence of anything.

In 1986, the entrepreneur Bob Weiss bought the property and converted it into the bar that stands today: part restaurant, part cigar lounge, and, by its own enthusiastic choice, a haunted destination.

What Came Out of the Floor and the Walls

Two discoveries anchor everything else people say about this building.

The first came during roof work in the 2000s, when charred bones belonging to a young woman were found hidden in the walls. Forensic testing suggested they had been concealed there for decades. No explanation has been offered that ties them to a named person or a documented crime, which is precisely why the find has become such fertile ground for storytelling.

The second belongs to the basement. Paranormal tours at Shaker’s point to two sets of human remains located under the floor using ground-penetrating radar. Radar returns are not bodies until something is excavated, and that distinction is worth keeping in mind as the tour narrative builds around it. The same goes for the building’s old cistern, which is rumored to have been used to dispose of bodies during the mob years. Rumored is the operative word.

What is not in dispute is that a commercial building with a cooperage basement, a Prohibition liquor operation and upstairs rooms used as a brothel accumulated a reputation long before anyone sold a ghost tour ticket in it.

Elizabeth, the Restroom Faucets, and the Rooms Upstairs

The best known presence here is said to be a girl of about eight named Elizabeth, associated with the restroom. Visitors describe faucets turning themselves on, stall doors slamming with nobody behind them, and giggling in an empty room. None of this is documented in any official record; it is what guests say happens, repeated over enough years to become the house story.

The former brothel rooms upstairs draw reports of shadow figures and footsteps with no walker attached. The explanation usually attached to them is that the women who lived and worked on those floors suffered violence at the hands of the men who ran the place. That is an interpretation laid over the phenomena, not a finding.

In the basement, where the liquor and the alleged mob business operated, guests report strange noises, cold spots and the sensation of being watched. Elsewhere in the building the reports are milder and more common: cold drafts, flickering lights, whispers with no source. Most visitors who report anything at all report something at that level rather than a full apparition.

Taking the Ghost Tour at Shaker’s

Shaker’s runs multiple ghost tours rather than one standard walkthrough. The routes typically cover the basement, the vaults and the cistern, the parts of the building tied to the Prohibition trade, and then move upstairs into the former brothel rooms that guides treat as the most active part of the property. Seasonal programming includes Halloween ghost hunts, seances and after-hours tours.

The bar leans hard into all of it, which is not a reason to dismiss the building but is a reason to listen carefully to how claims are phrased on a tour. A radar anomaly, a rumor about a cistern and a forensic finding about bones in a wall are three very different grades of evidence, and they tend to get delivered in the same breath.

Dropping In Without a Tour Ticket

Shaker’s is open to the public as a cigar bar and restaurant, so the lowest-effort way to see the building is to walk in, order a drink and look at the room. Plenty of visitors do exactly that and combine it with cocktails, food and cigars rather than booking an investigation. The guided tours are the only way to reach the basement, the vaults and the upstairs rooms, which are not public floors during normal service.

Standard field manners apply. This is a working business with staff and paying customers, so stay in the areas you are invited into, and do not go looking for the cistern on your own.

Ghost Tours Nearby

Jeffrey Dahmer American Cannibal Walking Tour★ 4.4 (93)from $67Shakers Original Historical Ghost Tour★ 4.7 (53)from $36Milwaukee Downtown Ghost Tour – The Shadow of City Hall★ 4.4 (8)from $32

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