The Haunted McPike Mansion, Alton: History, Ghosts and Visiting

The McPike Mansion stands at 2018 Alby Street on Mount Lookout, the highest point in Alton, a Mississippi River town across the river from the St. Louis area. It is a three-story Italianate and Second Empire house of red brick with white trim, 16 rooms and a vaulted wine cellar. It has stood empty for some seventy years, lost its furnishings and fixtures to vandals and still shows the damage, which only adds to its reputation.

Owners Sharyn and George Luedke have spent three decades stabilizing it, paid for largely by tours and donations, and they say the house is haunted. It has been featured on Ghost Adventures, Scariest Places on Earth, Fact or Faked and Ghost Lab, and Alton’s ghost tours stop outside. This guide covers the house’s real history, the ghosts linked to it and how to visit.

History of the McPike Mansion

Henry Guest McPike (1825 to 1910) was an Alton businessman and a former mayor of the city. In 1869 he began building a grand house on his 15-acre estate, known as Mount Lookout, to designs by architect Lucas Pfeiffenberger. It was finished in 1871, with a commanding view and a large vaulted cellar for wine. Only about 4.4 acres of the old estate remain with the house today.

In the 20th century the mansion passed to Paul A. Laichinger, who bought it in 1925 or 1936 by different accounts and rented rooms in it to tenants. He lived there until his death, given as 1945 or 1951. After that the house was left empty. Over the following decades it was vandalized and stripped of its furniture, banisters and fittings, and a plan to knock it down for a shopping center fell through only because of zoning problems.

The mansion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. In 1994 Sharyn and George Luedke bought it at auction. They had hoped to turn it into an inn, but could not get restoration grants from any level of government, so they have repaired it piece by piece using money raised from tours, events and donations. In 2017 the Alton Historical Commission gave them a preservation award for restoring the front porch and conservatory. The house remains a work in progress.

The ghosts of the McPike Mansion

The man at the window

The owners say the house is haunted by a former owner and a former domestic servant. The former owner is usually named as Paul Laichinger, the man who rented out the rooms, and visitors and photographers describe a figure in an upstairs window. Others believe Henry and Eleanor McPike still roam the rooms they built.

Sarah, the servant

The servant is generally called Sarah, a maid said to be linked to the attic and to a sudden scent of lilies or flowers with no source. The Alton tourism bureau’s retelling also mentions a cook in the kitchen and a woman’s strange death in a bathtub. None of these names or deaths has been matched to a public record, so treat them as the house’s stories.

The cellar

The vaulted wine cellar is described as the center of the activity. Visitors talk of voices, mists and the feeling of being watched, and it is the part of the house most often investigated on television. The owners’ own site reports balls of light and human-shaped outlines, shadowy or glowing, in the windows of photos taken by professional photographers, which they say were not seen until the photos were developed.

Older layers

Some local storytellers go further back, saying Native American spirits walk the hill and that the house sheltered people on the Underground Railroad. These ideas appear in Alton’s tourism material but not in the house’s documented history, and the mansion was built after the Civil War, so treat them with caution.

On television

The McPike Mansion has become a fixture of paranormal television. It was the subject of a 2019 Ghost Adventures special, and it has appeared on Scariest Places on Earth, the first season of Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files and an episode of Ghost Lab. Alton’s tourism bureau says investigators have judged the haunting authentic.

For the owners, the attention has a practical side: the restoration is paid for largely by tours and donations, so every visitor helps keep the house standing.

Where to look

• The wine cellar: The vaulted cellar under the house, the only part visitors can enter and the focus of most reports.
• The upstairs windows: Where the figure many link to Paul Laichinger is said to appear, best seen from the lawn.
• The attic: Linked to Sarah the servant and the scent of flowers.
• The front porch and conservatory: The restored sections that won the owners a 2017 preservation award.
• The Mount Lookout grounds: About 4.4 acres of the original 15-acre estate survive around the house, on the highest ground in Alton.

Visiting the McPike Mansion

The McPike Mansion is privately owned and still being stabilized. Because of city rules, the condition of the building and safety concerns, visits inside are limited to the cellar, and you must register in advance with the owners through the mansion’s website. Tour dates are announced there, along with occasional fundraising events.

You can see the house from Alby Street at any time, and Alton’s evening ghost tours stop outside. Alton is easy to combine with a stay at a haunted hotel: the Ruebel Hotel in Grafton is a short drive up the Great River Road, and Haunted Rooms runs its own ghost hunts at the Cheney Mansion in nearby Jerseyville.

Alton has run ghost tours since 1992, when Alton Odyssey Tours started the area’s first haunted tour. Its trolley tours stop at the McPike Mansion, the Alton City Cemetery and the Jacoby Arts Center, while Troy Taylor’s Alton Hauntings tours, based on his book Haunted Alton, cover the old penitentiary, the First Unitarian Church and the Mineral Springs Hotel. Either is a good way to see the mansion’s exterior after dark with the story told on the spot.

• Visiting Privately owned and under repair; visits limited to the cellar by advance registration
• Ghost hunting Occasional events that raise money for the restoration

Tips for your visit

• Book a cellar tour well ahead: dates are limited.
• Photograph the windows from the lawn at dusk, then compare your pictures with the ones the owners have collected.
• Bring a donation: tours fund the work that keeps the house standing.
• Spend the evening on an Alton walking ghost tour, which takes in the First Unitarian Church and the old prison site.

More haunted places nearby

• Haunted places in Alton: The Mineral Springs Hotel, the First Unitarian Church and more
• Ruebel Hotel, Grafton: A haunted hotel up the river road
• Cheney Mansion ghost hunt: Our ghost hunts in Jerseyville
• Haunted hotels in Illinois: Where to stay with a ghost story
• Haunted places in Illinois
• Haunted places in Alton

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• Wikipedia: McPike Mansion
• McPike Mansion (official site)
• Wikipedia: Alton, Illinois
• Great Rivers and Routes: Why Alton is America's most haunted small town
• Great Rivers and Routes: Haunted things to do
• KSDK: St. Louis historically haunted places
• Riverfront Times: Haunted places in St. Louis