Hotel Retlaw
Hotel Retlaw is a hotel in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Hotel associated with documented cultural history. It sits in the archive under haunting reports. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 legend — all telling, no verified spine yet, and the file says so plainly. Access details are unverified — research before visiting. The dossier keeps the place and the story in the same record — which is what the archive is for.
· in your passport — stamped · open it
Is Hotel Retlaw haunted?
The record holds 1 claim, 1 legend — filed as reported, not verified. The heaviest filing is classed local folklore. The archive documents the claim; it takes no position on the ghost.
The record — long form
Milwaukee hotelier Walter Schroeder named his Fond du Lac flagship by spelling his first name backwards. The Hotel Retlaw opened in 1923 as an eight-story neoclassical tower in red brick, designed by Herbert W. Tullgren & Son — the same Milwaukee firm behind Schroeder's hotels in Milwaukee, Madison, and Green Bay. It was the tallest and finest lodging in the city, part of a chain that briefly made Schroeder Wisconsin's dominant hotel man. The exterior is essentially unchanged since construction, and the building sits on the National Register of Historic Places.
The hotel closed unexpectedly and went up for sale in 2016. Buyers Dean Barker and Sarah Richardson financed a renovation of roughly $30 million, reopened the property in 2019, and marked its centennial in 2023. The Retlaw operates today as the city's landmark hotel.
Room 717 and the builder's ghost
Staff accounts filed in Wisconsin travel coverage put the building's alleged activity in two registers. The general mischief is credited to Walter Schroeder himself, who died in 1967: cups reportedly fly off service carts, ice jumps from the machines, lights and faucets operate unattended. The concentrated claim is Room 717, where staff say screams and a furiously shaking door lead them into an empty room, and where guests have reported hair-pulling and televisions changing channels on their own.
One former employee described an elevator that stopped uncommanded on the seventh floor, stranded the employee, and carried off an unattended bar cart alone. None of it is verified; the file reads like a classic house legend attached to a named benefactor.
The archive keeps the Retlaw as an instructive case: a restored hotel whose ghost story names its own builder — the sort of folklore a landmark earns simply by staying open a hundred years.
The record of claims
Staff accounts describe self-activating fixtures and an apparition. Hotel Retlaw, a hotel in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, has kept the story in circulation longer than most of its guest registers. It circulates as local folklore — the kind communities keep rather than verify. Whatever walks there, it walks often enough to keep the reports coming.
Staff accounts describe self-activating fixtures and an apparition. The hotel keeps the account on its own record — the sort of haunting a building earns one guest at a time. The claim is neighborhood knowledge — retold locally, verified nowhere. Legends accrue where records go silent; this one filled the gap and stayed.
Sources on file
- 01Haunted Wisconsin: Historic Hotels with Ghoulish GuestsWisconsin Department of Tourism · tourism · A3
Field notes & open questions
Discovery pass. Earliest attestation, primary history, precise location and current access require independent enrichment.