The McCaffreys really don’t mind sharing space with their friendly ghosts and “ . . . would never want to get rid of them,” Laura McCaffrey said in a recent interview, “They are the ambience of the house.”
In 1892 Mason Long could well afford to lavish money on building his Columbia Avenue home. He hadn’t been born into wealth or a respected station in life, but had worked hard to achieve success.
Long came to Fort Wayne in 1865, but his pre-Summit City life had been harsh and painful. An only child, he was born September 10, 1842 in a small town in Licking County, Ohio. Just before young Mason’s seventh birthday, his father died. Later in his life Long looked back on those times with his mother as being a rare interlude filled with love and happiness.
Four years after the loss of his father, his beloved mother died and he moved in with the only remaining relative who could care and provide for an orphan.
When the relative passed on, Mason became a ward of the county. A German farmer agreed to take him as an indentured servant—a farmhand. The sad and lonely boy worked hard for his board and food. Often, evidently, it wasn’t hard enough and he would be whipped, making him rebellious and causing even more severe punishment.
As the Civil War came, the young man ran away to join the Union army. In camp he learned many things which would get him through life, including card playing. Once the war was over he used this talent to become a very successful professional gambler.
Back in Fort Wayne he opened the Long Hotel—a lodging house, tavern and gambling casino where he was one of his own best customers at both the games table and the bar. Then, with the deal of a card he lost everything—or at least he thought he had.
With no money and nowhere to go, he became a Christian and shortly thereafter he wrote his biography The Life of Mason Long, the Converted Gambler. Traveling on the preaching circuit, he condemned the evils of gambling and drinking, becoming a popular and much-sought-after speaker.
Now on the “straight and narrow,” Long flourished as a businessman. George Pixley, a clothier and banker who came to Fort Wayne from Utica, New York in 1876, entered into a partnership with Long in a brokerage firm. The partners purchased a lot at East Berry and Court Streets and in 1889 constructed a five-story office and commercial building, the Pixley-Long Building.
In his later years, Long enjoyed a family, a lucrative business and respect. With pride he watched the workmen constructing a grand two-story home with fourteen rooms. The house embodied everything he’d always dreamed of.
Never able to lose the hard-work habits of his youth, this reformed gambler and drinker continued to work harder than he should have, and in 1903 Mason Long was stricken with “apoplexy”—a stroke. With his wife and children at his bedside he died.
Though Long and his family are all long since deceased, they haven’t left their Columbia Avenue home, according to Laura and Ralph McCaffrey, who now own the mansion. The house becomes “noisy” with activity or celebration during the Christmas holidays and in August and October.
At least that’s how Mrs. McCaffrey explains the alterations that take place in the house. The shades of the lights change. Whether it’s the sunlight filtering through the windows or a lamp lit in the evening, the rooms suddenly take on a mellow, muted glow. And at those times the hallway seems to be filled with foggy shapes.
Whatever shares the living space with the McCaffreys affects even their dog. He’ll run to the door standing there with his tail wagging as if to greet a visitor—but nobody’s there. And then there’s the “dust kitten,” which moves about like a ball of dust when a light breeze disturbs it.
Every now and then, McCaffrey says she catches a whiff of an old-fashioned floral fragrance she believes might have been worn by Mrs. Long.
The acceleration of “activity” during the month of August is a mystery. But it can be certain it held—and still does—some significance to the Long family. Perhaps they still celebrate the change in their father’s life which took him from dissipation to respectability.
No matter how much “noise” or activity the Long family ghosts create they and the McCaffreys are happy together.
When the McCaffreys moved into the Mason Long house, 922 Columbia Ave., they were warned, “The house is haunted.”
Photo by Bob Schmidt
There is nothing unusual about the Charles Pfeiffer house that would draw attention to it. This warm and inviting, red brick three-story structure—now a restaurant at 434 W. Wayne Street owned by Clark Valentine—is solid, sturdy and comfortable, much like the family who’d lived there in the mid-1800s. The Pfeiffers: Charles, Henrietta and their two children, Fred and Marguerite, were contented inhabitants. After he grew up and entered the family business and his parents were gone, bachelor Fred Pfeiffer maintained the house outside and inside, much as it had been during his childhood. Fred Pfeiffer died in 1995, after having lived in the same house just shy of one hundred years.
Fred had been the heir to business interests in Fort Wayne ranging from meatpacking to the Lincoln National Bank, of which his father was one of the co-founders. Through years of single-minded dedication, he had increased the fortune, and at his death his estate was valued at ten million dollars, 80 percent of which was left to various charities. His niece and nephew shared equally in the remaining estate.
Now Fred seems to appear for Clark Valentine, the present owner. Is he unwilling to leave the home he occupied for so long? Clark and his chef, Cindy Lauer, report hearing the doorbell ring; however, upon checking, finding nobody there.
Clark had been introduced to both Fred and the house in 1989, when he began handling the aging man’s financial affairs as a surety officer for the Lincoln National Bank. Valentine knew the old gentleman as an intelligent, shrewd businessman owning large tracts of real estate, stocks and bonds. Though there were several years difference in their ages, the two became good friends. Clark was well aware of Fred’s total commitment and love for his home. “Fred wanted to keep everything the same,” he had told a reporter during an interview. “It was very important to him.”
That’s why, when Fred died, Clark decided to purchase the house he had come to admire. His new residence was as it had been when Fred lived there, complete with two fireplaces and beautiful hand-hewn woodwork. The family piano and Louis XVI style furniture still stand in the exact same position where they had stood for one hundred years. He decided to make only necessary repairs and clean the home. He and his daughter, Sara, entered into a partnership and opened the house as a restaurant named, aptly, the Pfeiffer House.
The attic room, where Fred and sister Marguerite used to play and ride their bicycles, is now a comedy improv theater with an odd ambience pervading its gabled corners. Realizing the interest—or curiosity—the community has in the house and the family, Clark will agree to conduct infrequent tours.
He remembers giving a group of women a tour of the house. They were on the second floor and were about to go to the attic area, when one of the women refused to go any farther, nervously retreating to the first floor. She later confided that she’d felt a presence and became frightened.
The chef, Cindy Lauer, agrees that a presence has often been felt in the old home. She has been in the habit of arriving early—before the boss, his daughter or the servers—to get things “cooking.” It’s in these lonely, early morning hours when the house is still and the doors locked that the chef can feel a presence. Steps will echo on the stairs. If she moves to the hallway and looks up the stairs she sees no one, and yet will