With Taylor’s economic star shining so brightly, Mayor Brandt Rydell’s hands are pretty full these days, so he’s taking a popular ghost-tour that he has led for years off his plate.
Rydell, who is also the vice president of the Taylor Conservation and Heritage Society, and who has spearheaded the Haunted Taylor: History, Mystery, and Murder Tour since 2016, will be handing off the responsibility to other society members for this year’s fundraiser. “Brandt has done all the research, he wrote the scripts, and until this year, he has been the lead tour guide, but he really needs to step down,” said Frances Sorrow, president of the Taylor Conservation and Heritage Society, with a laugh during a planning meeting Aug. 31 for the tour. “Or he is going to collapse in exhaustion.”
Each year, the society leads an hour-anda- half long walking tour of the sights of gruesome murders, creepy ghost sightings, wild-west-style shootouts, suicides and more in the area in and around Heritage Square Park in the city’s downtown.
Rydell said he got most of the fodder for the tour from digitized versions of old newspapers.
“When Taylor was founded in 1876, very quickly it became a town of some importance, and it warranted news coverage, so there were stories about Taylor almost from day one,” Rydell said at the meeting. “It was It was kind of a wild and reckless railroad town. On Frances’s shirt, there is a quote on the back from a stationmaster who was here between 1870 and 1880 that said that Taylor was an ‘El Dorado of toughs and a hell hole of saloons and gambling houses.’” Rydell said when he first started researching, he unearthed countless tales of maimings and notorious murders and other bizarre happenings, including seances and meetings of mediums, and more.
“We could probably do an hour and a half in Heritage Square and never leave,” Rydell said with a laugh.
Tours begin at the pavilion at Heritage Square Park. Highlights of the tour will also include hauntings at Monarcas Mexican Restaurant, 121 E. Third St., and at the Howard Theatre, at 308 N. Main St.
Some of the new guides who will be leading this year’s tour will include Maureen Gray, who teaches history at Taylor High School, as well as Peter L’Heureux, and Mike Kaspar, the owners of the short-term rental property the Kaspar-Leshikar House at 219 E. Eighth St.
Tickets for Haunted Taylor will be $20 a person, and will go on sale in September and sell out quickly. For more information, call 512-365-3363.
