Cold Case Files: Echoes of a ghost legend from Fort Smith's south side linger in old newspaper archives

In the waning days of December 1903, residents of a modest African American neighborhood along Wheeler Avenue in Fort Smith, Arkansas, shared uneasy Christmas stories.

A colony of families living near an old brick building, then used by local merchant L.M. Alford as a storeroom, reported a familiar, unwelcome visitor.

The spirit appeared each Christmas night, whispering its name in a voice audible blocks away: "I am Marquardt. I am Marquardt."

It was deformed and short-statured, walking on wooden pegs that clacked loudly on floors, carrying a stick, and never approaching anyone directly.

Yet it rattled windows, overturned furniture, fanned dying fires into flame, and entered doors on sudden gusts of wind. Some pulled covers over their heads in terror; others, grown hardened over time, were beginning to dismiss the annual visitation.

This was no vague folklore. The Fort Smith News Record of December 27, 1903, published the account, drawing directly from local testimony. The ghost belonged to Richard Marquardt, a German immigrant and once-prosperous grocer whose suicide thirteen years earlier, on December 31, 1890, had left an indelible mark on the city and, apparently, on the Wheeler Avenue neighborhood he had tried, and failed, to develop.

Little is known of Marquardt's early life before he reached Arkansas. He arrived in the United States as a young man and quickly demonstrated the entrepreneurial drive common among German immigrants of the era. Soon after settling, he partnered with a man named Zellar to open a grocery store in Paris, Arkansas.

The venture thrived. By the early 1880s the partners expanded, opening a second store in the growing river town of Fort Smith. They split their time, six months at each location, building a solid reputation. Marquardt was remembered as sunny, popular with young and old alike, and generous: never failing to be the first in making a contribution for charity.

In 1888 the firm dissolved amicably. Zellar kept the Paris property; Marquardt took the Fort Smith investments. He relocated his main store twice, first from the site later occupied by the Wells Fargo Express Company, then to a building where a secondhand dealer named Hambric later operated.

Business continued to prosper. But ambition, or perhaps overconfidence, led to the decision that would haunt him.

A man named Miller persuaded Marquardt to erect a new brick store on Wheeler Avenue, promising to rent it once completed. Miller never followed through. Undeterred, Marquardt turned the building into a branch grocery and operated it himself. It proved a losing venture, the very losing venture the ghost story later cited as the reason the spirit returned to the site.

On the morning of December 31, 1890, something shattered inside Richard Marquardt. In his main store he was calmly discussing daily orders with employees Ben Meister and I.J. Rains, standing near the desk, and clerk Paul Lorwein, behind the counter. Without warning, he became violently insane, seized a long cheese knife, and attacked.

Meister and Rains escaped through a side door. Lorwein, unaware of the initial assault, was taken by surprise; the blade gashed his wrist deeply as he raised his arm to defend himself. Seeing the blood, Marquardt did not press the attack on Lorwein but bolted from the store, knife in hand, chasing anyone in sight.

He pursued passerby Charlie Sengel into a nearby saloon, later the site of the Munder saloon. There he slashed Sengel's hat brim and scratched his face before being overpowered and hauled to the city jail.

A few hours later, in his cell, Marquardt tore a blanket into strips, fashioned a noose, tied one end to a top bunk, climbed up, and rolled off. He died by strangulation. Friends who knew him well offered a poignant theory: in a brief moment of regained sanity, Marquardt saw the blood on himself, dimly recalled the violence, and, believing he had killed someone, chose suicide rather than face the shame among the community that had admired him.

He is buried in Oak Cemetery, Block 15, Lot 5.

The Wheeler Avenue neighborhood, home to many African American families, began reporting disturbances almost immediately after the suicide. The ghost made nightly visits in the early months of 1891, terrifying residents with its peg-legged clacking, whispered self-identification, and poltergeist-like antics. Over time the appearances became less frequent, occurring at intervals of several months.

By the time the News Record published its story in late 1903, the visits had settled into a predictable annual rhythm, Christmas night only. Some residents were already growing less superstitious and no longer reacted with the same dread.

The haunted building was the old brick store on Wheeler Avenue that Marquardt had constructed as his ill-fated branch grocery. In 1903 it served as a storeroom for L.M. Alford.

Wheeler Avenue itself ran through the southern section of Fort Smith, near land once part of the old military reservation. Belle Point School stood at the corner of South 9th Street and Wheeler Avenue or immediately adjacent. The colony of families lived in the immediate vicinity of the store, placing the site in the historically African American neighborhood that developed along Wheeler in the late 19th century. E

xact street numbers or modern landmarks are not recorded in surviving sources; the building was already described as old in 1903 and has long since disappeared.

Richard Marquardt's ghost tale is classic turn-of-the-century American folklore, rooted in a documented tragedy, amplified by local superstition, and tied to a place of personal failure. A hardworking immigrant who built a successful life through groceries and charity met a sudden, violent end amid business reverses and apparent mental collapse.

The African American community near his failed Wheeler Avenue venture became the keepers of the story, their Christmas-night sightings weaving his memory into the fabric of Fort Smith's oral history.

More than a century later, the legend survives not because of ongoing hauntings but because the Fort Smith History website preserved the 1903 newspaper account. It stands as a rare, detailed snapshot of how one man's suicide and one neighborhood's fears created a ghost that still whispers its name across the years: "I am Marquardt."