Emily Ruetz, a manager at Jed’s restaurant, holds a flashlight in her hand as she leads the way down the steep, crumbling stone steps into the basement of the old Millikin Hotel.

“It’s like Freddy Krueger down here,” she says, shining her light on an old coal burning furnace.

There’s not much left down there, but it was originally going to be a gentleman’s bar.

W.H. Millikin, the founder of the hotel, had marble imported from Italy to construct the bar. But his wife, Alice Millikin, was an abolitionist and wouldn’t let her husband complete the project, so the marble stayed there until a few years ago.

This is particularly creepy in the musty basement because her staff frequently insists the restaurant and the rest of the Millikin hotel is haunted, Ruetz said.

“Wine and martini glasses fall off the shelf and break for no reason and sometimes the closing managers complain about hearing footsteps when no one is here,” she said.

J.R. Hernandez, who’s been a cook at Cohen and Cooke restaurant which is located in the hotel lobby’s original location, watches Ruetz going into the basement and sympathizes with her fright.

“It’s kind of like Blair Witch down there,” Hernandez says.

And he finds his place of employment scary as well.

One night Hernandez recalls making a final check to make sure all the chairs were pushed in and the lights were turned off at the back of the room when he got a scare.

“I heard a chair pull out. I flipped back around and there was a chair out from the corner table that I had just walked by, like someone had just gotten up,” he said.

But the Millikin hasn’t always inspired fear. It used to be the most prestigious hotel in Wood County.

On the morning of Jan. 4, 1897, the Millikin Hotel opened on the corner of Wooster and Main streets as a gesture of appreciation to the public by W.H. Millikin for his good fortune in the oil business.

The Millikin building is an impressive three-story structure and was the first building in Wood County to have electricity by producing its own. It features elaborate woodwork, a ballroom with a stained glass concave ceiling piece and the first elevator in the area.

While open, the hotel rented rooms to the likes of Clark Gable, Ernest Hemingway and Mr. H.J. Heinz. It also rented to more infamous people like Pretty Boy Floyd and Billy the Killer, who engaged in a gunfight with the Bowling Green police in front of the hotel, resulting in the death of Billy the Killer and a police officer.

In spite of its grandeur, the hotel closed in 1953 and has only been occupied by stores on the first floor. Larry Nader, great-grandson of W.H. Millikin, remembers the hotel as a derelict building aside from the first floor. His mother gave the hotel to BGSU in 1993, hoping they would use it for classrooms.

In just under five years, the University realized they couldn’t maintain the building or afford to restore it, so they put it up for sale.

Local developer and owner of Greenbriar, Inc., Robert Maurer, bought the building.

“When we bought it, four or five windows had been blown out, the roof was leaking and there was a hollow cavity in the basement under Wooster Street,” Maurer said.

According to Maurer, the cavity was there to hold coal that was dropped in from a hole on Wooster street and used in the furnace that is still in the basement. The cavity was forgotten about and there were only four or five inches of concrete holding the street up. If a fully loaded semi-truck had stopped on the part of the street that is now used for parking, it could have gone through.

“It took a lot of time initially to decide if we wanted to do a historical preservation,” Maurer said.

But he soon found the building was twice as expensive to preserve.

Federal tax requirements for historic preservation forced them to replace the windows, use original wood frames and single pane windows.

Maurer decided to use modern air conditioning and heating to keep tenants happy.

Nader said he approves of Maurer’s decisions about the building thus far.

“I think he did a good job of maintaining the look and integrity of the place,” Nader said. “He left the stairways and hallways and didn’t put a false front on the building, didn’t modernize it.”

“What we did was basically join rooms. We did a lot of knocking out walls and putting up new ones because we needed to add bathrooms and closets,” Maurer said.

The Millikin couldn’t remain as a hotel. Maurer cited lack of parking and demand as the main reasons. So now the Millikin is an apartment building for graduate students and young professionals.

“The graduate students and young professionals are more serious individuals,” said Maurer’s son, Ken, who used to do most of the showings of the place for potential renters.

According to Ken, the downtown location results in loud music and parties but the character of the Millikin is unique enough to draw renters.

Bob says most potential tenants like the location, the overall ambiance and that the apartments are relatively new and well kept.

Still, keeping them up is no easy task.

“It’s much easier to build new, it’s like falling off a log compared to revamping the old,” Bob said.

Chris Anderson, who lived in the Millikin in 2003, said he didn’t choose to live there because of its history.

But he enjoyed the unique environment of the complex.

“I rode an elevator to my apartment everyday, that was pretty sweet,” Anderson said.