The Pfeiffer House

A historic farmhouse in southwest Fort Wayne, one of the oldest surviving structures in the area. The Pfeiffer family operated the surrounding farm for generations.

The Pfeiffer House at 434 West Wayne Street in Fort Wayne is a stately American four-square brick home built in 1905 by Charles and Henrietta Eckart Pfeiffer. Charles was a co-founder of the German American Bank, which later became Lincoln Bank, and Henrietta came from the family that established the Eckart Meat Packing Company, making the Pfeiffers one of Fort Wayne's most prominent families of the era. The home, which sits on the corner of West Wayne Street and Fairfield Avenue, is part of a downtown district listed on the National Register of Historic Places and retains much of its original character, including aged oak walls and woodwork and original murals.

The haunting is believed to center on Fred Pfeiffer, who inherited the house along with his sister Marguerite and lived there for most of his life. When Fred's health declined, he moved to an assisted living facility in 1989 and passed away in 1994. Clark Valentine purchased the home from the Pfeiffer heirs in 1996 and converted it into a coffee shop and restaurant, but it quickly became apparent that the house's longtime resident had never truly left.

Over the years, the Valentines and their employees documented a pattern of unexplained phenomena that seemed to follow Fred's personality. The most distinctive was the smell of cigar smoke drifting through the rooms with no identifiable source, a fitting calling card given that cigars were a well-known habit in the Pfeiffer household. Salt and pepper shakers would slide from the center of dining tables and fall to the floor with no one nearby. Doors slammed shut on their own. Unexplained footsteps echoed on the stairs when no one was on them. On one memorable occasion, the piano in the parlor played a single note completely by itself, with no person or draft anywhere near the keys.

When paranormal investigators were brought in to examine the house, they reported detecting the presence of at least one spirit, possibly several. The investigators claimed they received a direct response when they called out the name Fred, and their photographs captured five distinct orbs in various rooms, which they interpreted as evidence of five separate spirits residing in the home. The Valentines themselves documented some of the activity on video. Author Wanda Lou Willis featured the Pfeiffer House in her 2002 book Haunted Hoosier Trails after hearing Clark Valentine's firsthand accounts during a visit to Fort Wayne, helping to cement the home's reputation as one of the city's best-known haunted locations.

The Pfeiffer House later reopened as the Pfeiffer House and Wayne Street Soda Fountain, featuring a restored 1930s-era Chicago soda fountain amid the home's original period lighting fixtures and oak woodwork. The combination of authentic Victorian-era atmosphere and persistent paranormal reports has made the Pfeiffer House a regular stop on Fort Wayne ghost tours, where visitors can sit in the same rooms where salt shakers still occasionally take flight and the faint scent of cigar smoke sometimes lingers without explanation.