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Mathias Ham House
Dubuque, Iowa
The Mathias Ham House is a 19th century house in Dubuque that was designed in the Italian Villa style and looks out into the Mississippi River. In 1833, Mathias Ham moved into this house as it was an excellent way to keep an eye on his fleet of steam boats. Mathias Ham was a prosperous shipper and miner. He married Zerelda Marklin and together they had six children. Due to the large size of his family Mathias began to expand the house. This expansion included a large observation tower on the third floor used to watch his boats. The tower also allowed Mathias to aide in the capture of a large band of pirates who swore revenge on him and his family. When his wife died in 1856 he remarried to a woman named Maraget Mclean and with her had two more children. In 1874 Mathias’ second wife died and then he died in 1889. After his death, two of his daughters, Sarah and May, took up residence in the house. After May’s death in the 1890s, Sarah began hearing voices and footsteps throughout the house. Sarah believed that it was the pirates that swore revenge on her family. She reported what was happening to the neighbours and came up with the idea of a signal. She would place a lamp in the window if it happened again. The next night while Sarah was in bed she heard the footsteps again. They stopped right outside her bedroom door. Sarah put her lamp in the window, grabbed her gun and fired two shots at the door. The neighbors rushed over and found a trail of blood on the stairs leading outside and down toward the river. Upon inspection the body of the pirate was found at the edge of the river with two bullet holes in him. The Mathias Ham house has been operated as a museum since 1964 by the Dubuque County Historical Society. Employees in the building report strange happenings daily. The most common is the cold winds that blow through the building even when the doors and windows are shut. There are numerous cold spots in the house, the coldest being in the tower where Mathias would sit and watch his fleet. There have been many reports of items mysteriously disappearing and then reappearing somewhere else in the house. Windows in the house seem to open on their own, even if they were locked. Lights flicker and sometimes refuse to turn off or on. There have also been reports of female voices, phantom footsteps and strange lights moving throughout the house.
Pottawattamie County Squirrel Cage Jail
Council Bluffs, Iowa
The unique Victorian Gothic styled Squirrel Cage jail in Council Bluffs served as the Pottawattamie County Jail from 1885 until 1969. It was America’s largest rotary jail, an idea first patented in 1881 by William Brown and Benjamin Haugh. The purpose of the new jail was to produce a jail in which prisoners can be controlled without the necessity of personal contact between them and the jailer. The cylinder is 28 feet high, 24 feet in diameter and is suspended from an iron beam on the fourth floor. The cylinder has three floors with ten pie shaped cells on each floor designed to hold two prisoners per cell. Since there was only one entrance or exit on each floor the cylinder had to be turned with a hand crank until the cell was lined up with the opening in the cage. Two of the most bloodthirsty criminals housed in the prison were Charles Brown and Charles Kelley, "The Mad Dog Killers" who went on a three state mass murder spree in 1961. That February, Brown and Kelley killed a man while robbing an Omaha liquor store. The next day, the pair found themselves in Council Bluffs where they shot Alvin Koerhsen five times for his truck. The truck wouldn't start so Brown and Kelley found Kenneth Vencel and his Ford pickup in the parking lot of a grocery store. Vencel was forced to drive them at gunpoint to a parking lot where Kelley and Brown ordered him out of his truck and then shot him repeatedly. Brown and Kelley went north to Missouri Valley. The pair bought bus tickets to Kansas City and were captured shortly thereafter at a roadblock on the north edge of Council Bluffs. Brown was executed by hanging on July 24, 1962 at the penitentiary in Fort Madison, Iowa. Kelley was hanged in September of the same year, making him the last man executed by the state of Iowa. Although the jail housed some violent people it is believed the paranormal activity is caused by a former jailer. There have been reports of voices and noises emanating from the fourth floor apartment where he stayed. People have described the feeling of great sadness in some of the cells that housed the prisoners. There are cold spots in the building and it has been reported that a person felt as though their clothes were being pulled on.
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