Ghosts at von Stiehl
We’re not making this stuff up. We could but if we did, it wouldn’t be these particular tales.
Let me introduce myself. This is Brad; co-owner and younger brother. The kid in the Planet of the Apes shirt not made famous by the May, 1981 newspaper photo found on our website home page and the display case of the winery lounge. I have about ten memories older than those which incorporated the winery. As kids, this old building was our day care and if we got out of line, our workplace. We had friends over… to the winery. We played; we painted; we mowed the lawn and such. Normal kid stuff in the 80s. I’m sharing this to establish that familiarity can make you more aware of your surroundings. The tales of ghosts haunting the winery started for our family very soon after the purchase from Doc Stiehl in the year referenced above.
Let’s start with a basic story. While stocking wine cases, I walked past a perfectly stacked block of Very Cherry (bottled juice product). At the moment that I walked past it, a case rolled off and broke on the floor. ‘Clean up in aisle one!” These cases weighed 34#, and I didn’t brush up against it. Our ghosts must have loved non-alcoholic wine. I’d argue it would be better off haunting a cherry factory and it might agree.
Now on to our creepiest story. In 2004, we got up the nerve to find out what was behind the wall of our blocked off cellar tunnel. An employee of ours had worked for Doc Stiehl, and explained how he personally built the wall in the 1970s. He described how it was built, with two walls of stone sandwiched by a middle layer of sand, brick, and loose stones. We asked him to chisel a hole in the center, which he did. At the end of the first day, the hole was made and we found the wall built just as he described it. We left it that night with a pile of tools and dirt everywhere on the floor. The next day, the surrounding floor was completely clean (I mean you could eat off of it), the tools were all standing on end, and a cross of stones was laid in the wall. It was made to be seven stones high and seven stones wide. Around the same time my aunt, a former winery employee, had a dream of a ghost at the winery and remembered from the dream that there were seven stones. Side note: the cross of stones is still in the wall. Really, who wants to move that? We covered it up with plywood and went back to the business of wine.
How about some juicy stories of shootings, shipwrecks, and the woman who fell to her death from the top floor when she was pushed by her lover? That would certainly make for better content, but it isn’t the way of our ghosts. Think of our ghosts as just doing their thing and being as perturbed by our presence as much as we are by theirs. Can’t say that we’re trying to be best buds or even have night time chats, but we’re polite. We say ‘good morning’ and ‘good night’. For the most part, they keep to their world and we keep to ours.
Now that you have a taste for it, we’ll send you to YouTube. Uncork a bottle of von Stiehl, and sit back to hear some of our more interesting stories about our ghosts.
Schmiling Family Tragic Nearby Deaths
Another account of ghosts was printed by the Kewaunee Star News in November, 2012.
von Stiehl Ghost story KCSN 110312
