HOUSTON, October 25, 2013 – Is the Saint Arnold brewery haunted? According to local legend, in 1912 the entire neighborhood surrounding the area now occupied by the historic brick building that houses the brewery was burned to the ground in a fire started by vagrants trying to keep warm behind a tavern. Paranormal experts have been investigating whether more than just flavorful beer is lurking inside the oldest craft brewery in Texas.
39 Ghost Hunters, the Emmy Award Winning television program dedicated to collecting evidence of the supernatural, investigated reports of potential paranormal activity at the Saint Arnold brewery. Saint Arnold Brewing Company is the oldest craft brewery in Texas. In 2009, Saint Arnold moved into a building on the northern edge of downtown Houston built in 1914 that had previously housed the Houston Independent School District’s frozen food operations.
“This building was really creepy when we bought it,” said Saint Arnold Founder/Brewer Brock Wagner.
According to a separate report by CultureMap Houston, it was Saint Arnold Founder/Brewer Brock Wagner who first mentioned the ghosts that supposedly haunt the brewery. The first unexplained sightings were from one employee’s young daughter, who on two different occasions claimed to see “kids” running around the brewery when there weren’t any others there. As described by Brewer Dennis Rhee:
Philip Dagger, our packaging manager, and his 2- or 3-year-old daughter Sydney were in the brewery’s beer hall one night. Dagger was sitting at one of the tables while Sydney was playing near one of the corners of the hall. All of a sudden she points to an area near the windows that separates the beer hall from the brewhouse and shouts, “Hey Daddy! Kids!” Dagger looks over to where she is pointing but sees no one. Still, Sydney is insistent that there are children in that corner and continues to say, “Kids!”
In the CultureMap report, Rhee also recounted another strange experience when he was alone in the brewery one night:
I was cleaning out the lauter tun (one of the brewing vessels) late one night (probably around 2 or 3 a.m.) towards the end of a 12-plus hour shift. While squeegeeing and hosing out the spent grain, I started hearing some noises that sounded a lot like children’s laughter. I paused for a moment, thinking that the noises might have been caused by the echoing of my movement in the lauter tun. The laughter was still there. Since I was the only person in the brewery at the time, I poked my head out of the manway to see who was out there. No one. I was a little spooked, so I quickly finished my tasks, locked up, and got the hell out of the brewery.
There have been other reports of singing and mysterious shadows appearing at night.
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About Saint Arnold Brewing Company
Saint Arnold Brewing’s 16 brews are made and sold by the company’s staff of 53 dedicated employees. Ranked 45th on the Brewers Association list of top craft breweries, Saint Arnold was listed by USA Today as one of the “10 great places to see what’s brewing in beer,” and Smart Meetings magazine named it among the “Top 5 breweries to host an event.” Saint Arnold is located at 2000 Lyons Avenue and its brewery tour and tasting is offered every weekday at 3:00 P.M. and Saturdays starting at 11 A.M. For more information on Saint Arnold’s seven year-round and five seasonal beers as well as root beer, log on to www.saintarnold.com.
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