Glen Carbon's History Museum Now Closes on Saturdays. Its Busiest Season Happens After Dark

"After reviewing visitor attendance, we found that Saturdays had the lowest average visitation outside of scheduled events." That line from the Glen Carbon Heritage Museum's fall update explains a quiet change on School Street. Starting this fall, the museum is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and closed on weekends.

That same paragraph adds a qualifier: "outside of scheduled events." The weekend events are staying. In October they mostly take place outdoors, in the evening, on the streets around the museum. The museum's own Saturday door now opens at 7 p.m., for a ghost tour.

The Saturday door opens at 7 p.m.

The Ghosts of Glen: Haunted History Walking Tour runs on four nights this month: Friday, October 9; Saturday, October 10; Friday, October 23; and Saturday, October 24. The Village's event listing puts the start at the Glen Carbon Heritage Museum, 124 School Street, with a 7 to 10 p.m. event window and a cost of $25 per person. Tickets are sold through Eventbrite. That three-hour window is when the event runs. The listing doesn't say how long the walk itself takes.

The Village describes the tour as a stroll through Old Town covering "chilling tales, local legends, and ghostly mysteries." Along the way, guests can try real paranormal investigation equipment.

What makes it worth repeating is that the route changes. Museum Manager Samantha Doolin wrote in the fall Communicator that "each year we update the route with new locations and stories, making every tour a unique experience." The museum is also asking for material. If you've had a paranormal encounter or know a local ghost story, the museum says it would like to hear it. If you walked last year's tour, this year's will take you somewhere else. If you've heard a story on your own block, it could end up on next year's route.

Old Town is the exhibit

A walking tour fits Glen Carbon because the village itself is the artifact. According to the town history kept by the Madison County IL GenWeb project, Glen Carbon grew out of several earlier settlements: Peters Station, Mont Station, and the original Goshen Settlement. Coal mining became a major local industry after the Civil War.

The Madison Coal Corporation was founded in 1891 and ran four area mines, three in Glen Carbon and one in Edwardsville. The company owned and platted much of the future village and built houses for its miners. The same history describes many Old Town homes as company-built. Glen Carbon was incorporated on June 6, 1892, and that history explains the name as meaning "valley of coal."

The mines didn't all last. The GenWeb history names Mine No. 2 as the largest and most productive of the four. SIUE's Madison Historical archive records that the Madison Coal Corporation No. 4 Mine was sunk around 1892 and abandoned just after the turn of the century because of water seepage.

So the streets the ghost tour walks were laid out by a coal company in the 1890s, lined with houses that company built, a few blocks from mine sites. A tour that changes its route every year has plenty of ground to draw from.

The cabin that was hidden inside a house

The second stop on the fall history calendar is older than the village. The Yanda Log Cabin is believed to have been built in 1853 by William Yanda, a blacksmith. William and his wife, Anna Zeola Yanda, were immigrants from Bohemia, Austria, and they raised ten children there.

For years the cabin was hidden. A house had been built around it. The village bought the lot, uncovered the original log structure, and renovated it from 1989 through 1992. Today the cabin serves as an addition to the museum. The Yanda Garden beside it shows the everyday plants an 1850s pioneer household relied on and what each was used for. G.L.E.N. Committee volunteers maintain it.

The cabin's big day this fall was Cabin Day, scheduled for Saturday, October 3, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. It was billed as a free living-history event with woodworking, spinning, open-fire cooking, blacksmithing, live music, and butter churning. The cabin's next public event this month is set after dark. The Glen Carbon Library and the museum are hosting a Special Spooky Pajama Storytime there on Wednesday, October 21, at 6:30 p.m. The stories are read indoors, and s'mores follow if the weather allows.

October's history and Halloween calendar, in one place

Spread across the Village's fall Communicator and the library calendar, the rest of the month looks like this:

Saturday, October 10, is the fullest day. Chalk This Way returns to Schon Park for its second year, run with District 7 Schools. The day includes sidewalk art from artists of all ages, music, food, free caricatures and face painting, and awards in several categories. The chalk walk ends at 2 p.m. The ghost tour's window opens at 7 p.m. at the museum.

The season's paranormal programming started earlier. The library held a Teen Ghost Hunt inside the Heritage Museum on September 19, an after-hours event for grades 6 through 12. For a building that no longer opens on weekend afternoons, it has a busy calendar after hours.

Getting to School Street this month

The ghost tour starts at the edge of active construction. The Village's Main Street storm sewer project is replacing a deteriorating clay storm sewer, about 75 years old, with new concrete pipes and inlets. Phase 3, the final phase, was announced to start October 5. That moves the road closure to the stretch of Main Street between Rosin Street and School Street.

The contractor is using a detour similar to the one set up during Homecoming. The Village says it adds about one minute of drive time. It also warns of possible short-term closures with flaggers while work from the earlier phase wraps up. The Village posts a detour map and approximate timeline on its project page. On tour nights, plan to come in on the detour.

If your October routine includes the park trails, the Village scheduled crack sealing and sealcoating for the trails in Schon Park and Greenspace East. Work was set to start August 24 and continue into October. Trails close during active sealcoating and for 24 hours afterward. On October 10, Schon Park is also the chalk walk site, so check the Village's alerts page before you go.

That Homecoming detour is a reminder of how much happened in Old Town this year. The June 19–20 Glentennial marked the 100th anniversary of Glen Carbon's Homecoming, not the village's founding. Attendees parked at Village Hall and took a free shuttle to the entrance at The Wooden Nickel, and Saturday brought a parade at 5 p.m. and fireworks at 9:30 p.m., according to EdGlenToday's preview.

Look it up before you walk it

The weekday-only hours make it harder to browse the museum in person, but the museum has put much of its collection online. This summer it launched a redesigned page on the Village website. It includes the Glen Carbon Mapping Project, which shows how the village changed over time, along with parts of the archival collections and a growing searchable catalog of artifacts and photographs. You could trace how your part of Old Town changed over time before or after the tour.

If you'd like to see the exhibits on a weekend, private Saturday tours are still available by appointment. Call the museum at (618) 288-7271 or email Museum Manager Samantha Doolin at [email protected].

The next big museum event is also in the evening. The Heritage Winter Market is set for Saturday, November 28, from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Heritage Museum. The plans include vendors, food and drinks, a community tree lighting led by Mayor Bob Marcus, and photos with live reindeer in Santa's sleigh. Last year's market was canceled because of snow.

Many of the houses on the Ghosts of Glen route have history built in, from coal-company construction to a cabin found inside a house. If you own one of those Old Town homes and ever want to talk about what its history means for its value, or you're just curious what your street looked like in 1892, I'm happy to dig in with you. Kristen Weld works with homeowners on both sides of the river, and Old Town Glen Carbon is one of my favorite places to talk about. Let's Connect.