Edward Stahl, City Hall

Providence's City Hall was designed by Samuel Thayer (the "Thayer Street" Thayer - plenty more stories through that particular worm hole). He laid the cornerstone in 1875; before the first office was inhabited, 12 men would have lost their lives to its construction. Two of the bodies were never found, assumed to have found their final rest somewhere within the walls or foundations of the building itself.

The ghost tours will tell you about the ghost of Mayor Thomas Doyle, under whose reign the building was constructed. Cigarette smoke, footsteps, whispers, that sort of thing. Maybe true; who cares.

There's also the little rash of three female high school work-study interns who committed suicide (one jumping from the roof, two by hanging) over the course of 8 months back in 1977, but they don't seem to have stuck around and we've all agreed not to dwell on it. 

More interesting is the ghost of Edward Stahl, hired as a janitor in 1881 (three years after it opened for government business) and working his way up to head caretaker of the building, a position he held until his retirement in 1919. 

In his time, the lights were gas and the elevators were powered by steam. Caretakers lived in the building year-round (on the fifth floor, near the modern-day archive room), so they could be available at all hours to knock back the boilers and sweep up any emergency cigar ashes. Stahl was a reliable, trustworthy young man when he was hired, and it very quickly became his job to wind the central clock mechanism. All clocks in the building were connected and run through a single device which needed to be wound once per day at dawn. (The device can be seen on permanent display in the aforementioned archive room.) 

Stahl lived in the City Hall. And by all accounts, he loved it there. It was his home, and it was the home of his wife and two daughters. And the feeling was mutual: He was respected by the elected officials he worked with, looked up to by other staff members. Mayor Joseph Henry Gainor cut the cake at his retirement party. Gainor took the fifth piece (after Stahl's wife, then two daughters, then Stahl himself), and then handed the serving knife to a slightly startled lady reporter for the Providence Journal who happened to be standing nearby. Her own fault for looking like a woman. 

Stahl retired at the tail end of the influenza pandemic. He and his family had been untouched by that tragedy for two long years. He was one of the dwindling number to contract it near the end of 1919, though, and he died not six months after he left City Hall. 

Written reports of his return don't appear until 1922, but there's no reason to think he didn't come back much earlier than that. It seems like he would have. Pocket and wrist watches began to run too fast or too slow. Watch crystals would suddenly develop cracks, even though you were sure you hadn't bumped it. Flip clocks (still relatively novel tech in the 1920s) would drop their plastic tags like leaves into the bottom of the clock body. As the years passed and technology marched on, it didn't seem to help the situation. Digital clocks flashed 88:88 as soon as they were plugged in. Cell phones display times that are inconsistent and unreliable, and that's when the battery doesn't just up and quietly die while it's in your pocket. Twice, now, an Apple Watch has burst into flame and caused enough bodily harm that 4-foot-tall standing signs have been installed by the doors, expressly forbidding them. 

It isn't every clock, every time. Just often enough to remember him. There's not much harm to it (aside from the Apple Watches; I've seen the scars). I think it's mostly a joke. I'm waiting to hear from the work-study students.