If the McPike Mansion has a personality, the cellar is where it shows off.
Sharyn Luedke describes one of the house’s spirits as a trickster — a young girl who doesn’t do anything bad, but likes to have fun: a poke in the back, a pull of your hair. And Sharyn’s own co-hosts can testify that the cellar crew doesn’t limit itself to the guests. Tyler told this one on himself Sunday night: on a McPike tour, he went down into the cellar carrying a pack of cigarettes — the only pack he had, one he’d been nursing for weeks. The lights went out, something messed with his hoodie, and when the tour came back up and he reached for a smoke, the pack was gone. Staff went back down and searched the cellar. Nothing. Now here’s the detail that turns a lost pack into a story: the Luedkes later learned that Paul, one of the mansion’s resident spirits, was a cigarette smoker who likely died of a smoking-related illness. Cherry pipe tobacco has been smelled in that cellar too — Henry’s habit. Tyler’s review of the theft, years later: he hopes Paul enjoyed them. The man had waited long enough.
Other people bring most of the photographic evidence — mist showing up in cellar photos taken on guests’ cameras — but Sharyn doesn’t need pictures to be convinced. “I’ve had enough experiences myself,” she said, “that I do believe it’s definitely haunted. And only a couple scary things over the years.”
Her favorite kind of evidence walks out the front door. Over the years, several skeptics have come through the mansion, and Sharyn remembers one man in particular who arrived a definite skeptic and left a definite believer — she believes he was touched down in that cellar. Something down there has a way of making the argument in person.
Does anything ever follow people home? Sharyn thinks one of the child spirits visited her own house once — she kept finding little barrettes in weird places. Her policy since then is firm but polite: she asks them not to come to her house. And she believes they respect that, because in her telling, these are good spirits. They like it when people come. She thinks they look forward to the tours — and that Halloween season, with the crowds and the energy up, lights the place up a little more.
Practical note for investigators: McPike’s overnight investigations don’t actually run all night anymore — they go from 6 PM to 12:30 AM. Sharyn’s reasoning is the most honest sentence in paranormal investigating: she’s too old to do all that overnight stuff now.
The 2026 tour season is over, but Poe night is Thursday (October 29, 7 PM), and the 2027 schedule lands at McPikeMansion.com around February. If you go down in that cellar, hold onto your cigarettes.
You’ve been warned by a professional. Ours got taken too.