- It was Kimberly and Joseph Arrigoni's special day, and
there the wedding party was, assembled on the grand staircase of Landmark
Center for the official bridal photo.
There were the bride and groom on the stairway, and assembled around the
second-floor balcony, looking on and smiling, were the maid of honor, an
usher, the young ring bearer, the best woman and some fellow no one knew.
In June, when the bride and groom got the photos from their March 30 wedding,
there was the looming presence of that guy no one knew, the rather fuzzy,
gray image of a man looking over the shoulder of the 5-year-old ring bearer,
Austin Letourneau.
"We didn't even notice him when we first got the pictures back,''
says Kimberly. "My niece, Jamie Ness, who is only 11, was the first
to look really closely. "Who's that?' she asked. Nobody knew the man.''
The man, the Arrigonis have since decided, is the alleged Ghost of Landmark
Center.
Other public and famous buildings in St. Paul are said to be haunted. There
is supposed to be a ghost at City Hall, and Forepaugh's elegant restaurant
in Irvine Park is legendarily haunted. The West Side caves reportedly are
haunted, and a mansion on Summit Avenue that used to be an art school has
a resident ghost.
So why not Landmark Center, which will be 100 years old next year?
It turns out that the Arrigonis may have the first photographic evidence
of the specter that some Landmark aficionados say is the ghost of the legendary
Prohibition-era gangster Jack Peifer.
Pam Sicard, events coordinator for Minnesota Landmarks, the company that
runs the center, is a firm believer that the building is haunted by old
Jack. She says she has felt his presence, especially on elevators and on
the third floor, where Jack Peifer was tried and convicted in 1936 for
his participation in an infamous 1933 kidnapping.
- John "Jack'' Peifer was an important fixture of
Prohibition-era St. Paul, the genial host of the palatial Hollyhocks speakeasy
on Mississippi River Boulevard, and the fingerman who chose brewery heir
William Hamm to be snatched off the street by the notorious Barker-Karpis
gang.
- The FBI ran the kidnappers to the ground, however, and
many of the gangster trials of the 1930s were held in the third-floor courtroom
of Landmark, which was then the Federal Courthouse.
- Jack did not die in that courthouse, but was found guilty
there and was so aghast as the severity of his sentence -- 30 years in
Leavenworth Prison -- that when he was returned to his cell at the Ramsey
County jail, he committed suicide by ingesting what was thought to have
been potassium cyanide.
- Pam has worked the party side of the Landmark operation
for many years, overseeing the beverage service at weddings, dances and
corporate parties. She says the "spirit'' is especially agitated around
the bars, where glasses mysteriously break and liquor is spilled. This
spirit especially likes being around "girls, gin, parties and the
third floor,'' says Pam.
- "We have even had women guests here go into the
second-floor bathroom and come out quivering, saying that they saw a man
in there, a man that disappears. He's a little bit menacing, and I've actually
felt him touch me. I think he threw himself on my desk one day.''
- Pam named this spirit Jack Peifer one day after she ran
across some gangster-era literature describing him as a one-time carnival
worker and hotel bellhop who grew into an important banker and hospitality
merchant for mobsters when they got to St. Paul.
- The bellhop connection could be important because back
in 1985 or 1986, well-known St. Paul history buff and onetime Landmark
tour guide Woodrow Keljik wrote in a Landmark newsletter about two visitors
from out of town who saw what they described as a ghost in a glass-topped
elevator that stops below the first floor at sidewalk level and is used
by disabled passengers. The man they were looking down upon from above
the glass ceiling, Woodrow recalls writing, was wearing a bellhop's uniform.
- The men were standing on the third-floor landing, and
when the elevator reached their floor, it was empty. The bellhop was gone.
- "I don't remember the names of the men or where
they were from,'' Woodrow told me, "but they were serious and they
were courteous. They were not making anything up.''
- The official line from Landmark Center, however, is not
nearly so mysterious. David Lanegran, president of Minnesota Landmarks,
which runs the building, says flatly, "I don't believe in ghosts.
I don't know what's in the picture, but I do not believe it is a ghost.''
- Lanegran, who is also a professor of urban geography
at Macalester College, is peeved that someone in his shop keeps telling
ghost stories, and says the connection between the alleged spirit and the
long-gone Jack Peifer is clearly Pam Sicard's idea.
- "The employees like to tell stories to each other
to make their lives more interesting,'' Lanegran said. "That ghost
is Pam's invention as far as I can tell.''
- As for the photo itself, wedding photographer Steve Tompkins
of S Photography in Chaska, says an extra image on the film -- as would
be caused by a double-exposure -- "is not very likely,'' and that
he did not notice the image of "Jack'' until it was brought to his
attention by Kim and Joe Arrigoni. He also says it is not likely to be
a blur because no one in the wedding party was jumping around when the
photo was made.
- "I've been in the business since 1984,'' says Steve,
"and I've never seen anything like it. I think this is all very thrilling.''
- At first, the strange image on their wedding photos "gave
me the willies,'' says Kimberly Arrigoni. Joe has shown the photo to dozens
of people, and when he explains the possibilities, "They get goosebumps.''
- For Pam Sicard, it is vindication of something she's
known for a long time -- that old Jack Piefer is still around the building,
opening elevator doors even when an elevator is not called for.
- "I did get mad at him one day, recently, though,''
says Pam. "I told him he doesn't have to open doors for me anymore,
and that he doesn't even belong here anymore.
- ""I'm alive! You're dead, dammit! Go!'
- "I haven't heard from him since."
© 2001 PioneerPlanet St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press TwinCities.com
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