bedside he died.
Though Long and his family are all long since deceased, they haven’t left their Columbia Avenue home, according to Laura and Ralph McCaffrey, who now own the mansion. The house becomes “noisy” with activity or celebration during the Christmas holidays and in August and October.
At least that’s how Mrs. McCaffrey explains the alterations that take place in the house. The shades of the lights change. Whether it’s the sunlight filtering through the windows or a lamp lit in the evening, the rooms suddenly take on a mellow, muted glow. And at those times the hallway seems to be filled with foggy shapes.
Whatever shares the living space with the McCaffreys affects even their dog. He’ll run to the door standing there with his tail wagging as if to greet a visitor—but nobody’s there. And then there’s the “dust kitten,” which moves about like a ball of dust when a light breeze disturbs it.
Every now and then, McCaffrey says she catches a whiff of an old-fashioned floral fragrance she believes might have been worn by Mrs. Long.
The acceleration of “activity” during the month of August is a mystery. But it can be certain it held—and still does—some significance to the Long family. Perhaps they still celebrate the change in their father’s life which took him from dissipation to respectability.
No matter how much “noise” or activity the Long family ghosts create they and the McCaffreys are happy together.
When the McCaffreys moved into the Mason Long house, 922 Columbia Ave., they were warned, “The house is haunted.”
Photo by Bob Schmidt
There is nothing unusual about the Charles Pfeiffer house that would draw attention to it. This warm and inviting, red brick three-story structure—now a restaurant at 434 W. Wayne Street owned by Clark Valentine—is solid, sturdy and comfortable, much like the family who’d lived there in the mid-1800s. The Pfeiffers: Charles, Henrietta and their two children, Fred and Marguerite, were contented inhabitants. After he grew up and entered the family business and his parents were gone, bachelor Fred Pfeiffer maintained the house outside and inside, much as it had been during his childhood. Fred Pfeiffer died in 1995, after having lived in the same house just shy of one hundred years.
Fred had been the heir to business interests in Fort Wayne ranging from meatpacking to the Lincoln National Bank, of which his father was one of the co-founders. Through years of single-minded dedication, he had increased the fortune, and at his death his estate was valued at ten million dollars, 80 percent of which was left to various charities. His niece and nephew shared equally in the remaining estate.
Now Fred seems to appear for Clark Valentine, the present owner. Is he unwilling to leave the home he occupied for so long? Clark and his chef, Cindy Lauer, report hearing the doorbell ring; however, upon checking, finding nobody there.
Clark had been introduced to both Fred and the house in 1989, when he began handling the aging man’s financial affairs as a surety officer for the Lincoln National Bank. Valentine knew the old gentleman as an intelligent, shrewd businessman owning large tracts of real estate, stocks and bonds. Though there were several years difference in their ages, the two became good friends. Clark was well aware of Fred’s total commitment and love for his home. “Fred wanted to keep everything the same,” he had told a reporter during an interview. “It was very important to him.”
That’s why, when Fred died, Clark decided to purchase the house he had come to admire. His new residence was as it had been when Fred lived there, complete with two fireplaces and beautiful hand-hewn woodwork. The family piano and Louis XVI style furniture still stand in the exact same position where they had stood for one hundred years. He decided to make only necessary repairs and clean the home. He and his daughter, Sara, entered into a partnership and opened the house as a restaurant named, aptly, the Pfeiffer House.
The attic room, where Fred and sister Marguerite used to play and ride their bicycles, is now a comedy improv theater with an odd ambience pervading its gabled corners. Realizing the interest—or curiosity—the community has in the house and the family, Clark will agree to conduct infrequent tours.
He remembers giving a group of women a tour of the house. They were on the second floor and were about to go to the attic area, when one of the women refused to go any farther, nervously retreating to the first floor. She later confided that she’d felt a presence and became frightened.
The chef, Cindy Lauer, agrees that a presence has often been felt in the old home. She has been in the habit of arriving early—before the boss, his daughter or the servers—to get things “cooking.” It’s in these lonely, early morning hours when the house is still and the doors locked that the chef can feel a presence. Steps will echo on the stairs. If she moves to the hallway and looks up the stairs she sees no one, and yet will sense that someone is looking down at her.
She also reports odd happenings in the kitchen—pots sliding off counters and other disturbances.
A server has reported setting up the tables for the lunch crowd and hearing doors opening and closing upstairs, as if someone was going from room to room. The chef was the only other person in the house and she was in the kitchen.
Doors slam. Salt and pepper shakers suddenly fall from the tables. Lights go on and off by themselves.
Clark Valentine likes to think that Fred Pfeiffer has returned to the home he was so fond of and was so reluctant to leave, even in death.
Those who knew him believe that Fred Pfeiffer still walks through the home he loved and lived in for nearly one hundred years.
Photo by Bob Schmidt
The excitement could be felt like the electrical charged air just before a lightning-filled thunderstorm. A thunderous sound—and then—rising from the darkness below, the magnificent Page pipe organ would come into view, accompanied by the eighteen-piece orchestra. Music filled the theater and the show began. For a few cents a theatergoer could escape reality and revel in the luxury of theatrical performances for a couple of hours.
It was the 1920s when the theater first opened, the era of extravagant opulent movie and vaudevillian palaces. The 3,000-seat theater at 125 W. Jefferson Street first billed itself as the Emboyd, a name given it by W. C. Quimby, the manager, to honor his mother Emily Boyd. French marble trim covered the walls, an Italian vaulted ceiling soared above them, and mirrors on the landing reflected patrons as they ascended the grand staircase beneath five-foot sconces glittering with crystal spangles. Moorish styled pillars led to the vestibule of the gentlemen’s lounge, which included a fireplace decorated with an intricate, ornate plaster sculpture.
Bud
