Hangman Tours

09/02/2026

Moth Lore and the Paranormal...
often identified as a sign of impending death, or of a Fatal Attraction.

For those of you who have followed along with me on the journey of Shakers and piercing the Paranormal veil....I have commented several times on the presence of a Moth on our CCTV cameras.

More often than one it is a brilliant White Moth which is seen either on the main Cellar Camera, or filmed bu the locked door behind the Unopened Safe...or lingering on the double doors for the Speakeasy.

Great passages of time tick past between sightings, here at Milwaukee's Haunted Bar.

Last night while sitting w Engineer Jo, smoking Ci**rs and discussing the 40th Anniversary Party...
a burgundy red Moth circled around me for almost an hour while we sat on the front Verandah.

The Moth wanted nothing to do with Jo, but certainly couldn't get enough of me...I'd prefer to think that the pheromones I was giving off were the cause of the Moth's visit and not the calamity of grave misfortune and finality.

In either regard, I welcome these encounters with nature and as we are quickly approaching Halloween, I expect to bear witness to many other "natural Phenomena" at Shakers.

Live your own Ghost Tales and enjoy teh Vibe at Shakers this season. Cheers.

Explore haunted tours in Milwaukee by Hangman Tours through eerie landmarks and real stories. Book now.

09/01/2026

09/01/2026

He asked to join the fanciest club in New Orleans. They told him no. So he bought their racetrack and filled it with dead people. ⚜️

Charles Turner Howard was born in Philadelphia in 1832, came to New Orleans as a young man, and changed his last name in 1854. In 1869 he organized the Louisiana State Lottery Company and made himself one of the richest men in the state running it. At its height the company was dividing roughly two million dollars a year among its stockholders, and it kept the legislature agreeable the old fashioned way.

In 1871 he applied for membership in the Metairie Jockey Club. He was blackballed. Nobody wrote down why. He was not Creole, he was new money, and he was a Republican in a city that had opinions about all three.

The Metairie Race Course had been running since 1838 and was the grandest track in the South. By 1872 it had drifted into the hands of people with little real interest in racing, and on May 25 of that year dissident board members sold out to Howard and his lottery partner John A. Morris. The reported price was a hundred and twenty eight thousand dollars. Within the year the hundred and fifty acre track was chartered as Metairie Cemetery.

Here is the detail that makes it something better than spite. Howard hired the engineer Benjamin Morgan Harrod, a man better known for building the city's water and sewer systems, and Harrod did not erase the racecourse. He laid the cemetery out along it. The main drive, Central Avenue, is the old oval. Every time you drive through Metairie Cemetery you are driving the track.

Howard's own tomb sits on that oval. On top of it stands a statue of an old man with his fingers pressed to his lips. It is called Silence.

His obituary in 1885 reported the whole grudge as plain fact. He swore he would buy their course and turn it into a graveyard, and then he simply waited until he could.

He got the last word by never saying one. ⚜️

08/31/2026

Hello, Milwaukee....
Forty some members of the current and former Shakers Cigar Bar/ Hangman Tours staff shall be on a Boat Cruise of the inner harbor, assorted tributaries and Lake Michigan Monday, August 31, to celebrate this sensational team and Four decades of unique business in Milwaukee. They say that this is a 3 Hour Tour....we shall see. Shakers shall NOT be open later in the evening. Cheers.