Capone's Bar Next Door, Madison

Last weekend, after attending a great wedding and reception I went out with friends to this place where in a paranormal experience, ghosts helped me break up with my boyfriend. Here are the details of that story, enjoy it however you like, as entertainment or as something more mysterious and meaningful -- either way it was truly strange.

First, a little background about the location. The year was 1929, Prohibition was strong but those who controlled the booze were stronger. Speakeasies, safehouses, and underground taverns were popping up allover the country. Even right here in Madison at Capone's Bar Next Door. The front was known as "The Wonder Bar". But what happened behind the scenes was a different story.

The Wonder Bar was built by a gang from Chicago's northwest side. They controlled all of the unions, and had a lucrative booze distribution business. They transported their beer from place to place undercover in large oil tanker trucks, even supplying Al Capone with the much-needed beer he couldn't find elsewhere. When the building was constructed it was built bullet proof, bomb proof, and even had a tunnel that led to a nearby lake for a quick getaway. Time stands still here at Capone's Bar Next Door, with the original back bar, fireplace, and the entrance to the old tunnel still intact.
 
Now on to my personal experience there, the unusual occurrences of May 3-4, 2008.  Well, first of all, "he who is not to be named" showed up late and quickly got very drunk at the wedding reception. He became verbally abusive to me and others, and I had told him before one more time he acts like that and he's got to move out.  He said he wanted to go home with me and "fool around", but as we all know, drunken sex sucks, and I didn't really want to be alone with him. So we ended up going with some friends to this club called Capone's Bar Next Door, which was a place where the gangsters came up from Chicago with booze and guns during Prohibition and so on...it's got all sorts of secret doors and stairways, booze stashes and hidden gun turrets in the windows, etc.  The music playing downstairs was really bad/mainstream and annoying the hell out of me, and I proposed that we go upstairs but the rest of the gang was too scattered to motivate right away. I checked out the jukebox and found some Who and Motown stuff I'd like to play. However, no matter which one of our party tried to put money in the jukebox it wouldn't take it, even when we switched bills with the bartender. I said again that we should just go upstairs, and when we couldn't change the music we finally did.  There was nobody else up there and the bartender [downstairs] kept telling us stories about how it was haunted by the gangsters and their victims, there were paranormal experiments conducted regularly, etc. He even pulled out a file for us that they keep behind the bar where they have photos with "ectoplasm" [looked possibly authentic] and notes from psychics and investigators. While we were up there, 'He' kept on being verbally abusive, repeating insults over and over, and I got so mad, suddenly I just punched him, not once but twice! [not in the face though.]  He was naturally hurt, said I had bruised his arm and then he left, but we stayed there and kept talking for the next half hour. I was really upset because that's not like me at all, I despise violence and I felt like I just don't know what came over me. Then all of a sudden he was back upstairs, smiling and saying "There you are, why did you guys sneak up here without me?" We all looked at each other and then at him and said "But you were just here with us" and he stated emphatically "No way, I've never been up here in my life."  I asked him if he remembered what just took place and he said 'what are you talking about?'   So he totally forgot about it and acted like nothing ever happened.  [He says he does remember some of it now though, I'm not sure if that's true but that night he actually had no idea.] When we went downstairs to leave the bartender asked if anything unusual had happened while we were up there, and we said no, not really, then one guy said "Oh yeah, somebody got punched." And the bartender just nodded and said, "Sure, that kind of thing is what I mean and it happens a lot."  It's not really that far-fetched to think there's a lingering influence when you consider the nature of a bunch of gangsters gambling and drinking and getting involved in shootouts and the like. It did seem to me like something just took over and made me super-violent for a second, and I had been getting unusual vibes from the place on a psychic level. Anyway, when we talked about it later I told him "absolutely can't put up with that, you gotta go" and he agreed to move out by next month.
One more thing--a couple of months back both our cell phones [which are identical] went through some episode where I had to fiddle around with the battery, and after that they acted weird and showed a different date rather than the current date and time. I wrote the dates down that showed on both of ours for some reason, thinking perhaps they might be significant for the future [can you tell the paranormal interests me?]  I came across that note the other day, and strangely enough, the date his phone had read was .....May 4, 2008 [it was last Saturday after midnight that this all happened.]  At least it didn't turn out to be the day one of us died or anything! 
This may all seem not a big deal taken piece by piece but when you look at the whole story, ya gotta wonder.....I do, anyway.
So, that's the story.   P.S.  Why would I put this on my public blog, even without naming names?  Because he's never even bothered to look at this myspace page, he's just tooo busy...and that's partly why this relationship is over.