Maybe it’s the location on the shores of the fabled Mississippi or our long winter nights by a flickering fire. Perhaps it is the history of native tribes whose Spirit Island once rose from the river and has now disappeared forever. Or the legacy of fortune seekers who flocked to the area in the 1800s, some of whom found the wealth they sought and many of whom died trying.

For over three centuries, men, women, and children with hopes, fears, and dreams have lived and died here. But their stories—and perhaps their spirits—remain. Nowhere is their existence more felt than in the oldest parts of the city, along the river where Spirit Island once stood. This is the site of the original St. Anthony Falls, which drew engineers and entrepreneurs, loggers and lumber pirates, saloonkeepers, floozies, and scoundrels of every stripe. Today, it is still the site of some of the city’s most historic buildings and, allegedly, its best-known ghosts.

High-tech ghost hunters and spiritualists alike attest to their continued presence—the weeping Ojibway woman, the lost children, the Wolfman of Nicollet Island, the