Employees of the restaurant believe that they may have a ghost. Their typical otherworldly encounters fall include; Disembodied voices are often heard in the rear dining room and in the restrooms, kitchen items seeming turn on by themselves and are often found in places where they were not left, there are often sudden, strong changes in temperature in the dining areas and the
unexplainable noises coming from the trap door in the main dining room.
I noticed that the ventilation ducts could easily transmit noise from one location of the building to another. The duct work, which is quite visible, extends out of the kitchen and follows the hall back towards the bathrooms, ending in the women’s restroom. Branch lines of the duct lead off to the rear dining room and the men’s restroom. The hypothesis was tested with Bob making noises in the kitchen. The noises could be easily heard in the bathrooms and the rear dining room, although the sounds were slightly different in each location due to the transmission through the duct work.
From here we moved into the main dining room. I inquired if the trap door had ever been opened and examined to see if a cause of the odd noises was ever investigated. I was told “no”. The trap door had been waxed over several times and it appeared to be stuck. So after acquiring a pry bar and allot of effort, we were finally able to open the trap door. The area below was a large crawlspace, about three feet in width and four feet high, and could probably be more accurately described as a tunnel. After several minutes of looking into the space with flashlights, I entered the tunnel to investigate.
The tunnel itself had several inches of lime on the floor and extended northward towards the front of the building for approximately 15 feet. At this point it turned and headed east. As I traveled down the east section, the floor began to rise until the crawlspace was impassable. It was in this location that I found huge deposits of bones covering the floor, at least a foot in depth. As I backed out of the tunnel, I noticed several water pipes secured to the floor above with banding material that was extremely loose. Several times on the way out, I accidentally bumped into one of the pipes, causing it to bang on the floor above.
Upon exiting the tunnel, I was informed that the group above had heard the noises that the customers and staff experienced. I told them about the loose pipes and the bones. After several minutes, I reentered the tunnel with a zip lock baggie and a screwdriver. The loose screws were tightened and samples of the bones were taken for a professional analysis. The bones were determined to be goat bones, approximately 200 years old. That could confirm the fact that the location was once a butcher shop but we have no clue why they would have thrown the bones into the crawlspace.
The “whispering noises” were determined to be caused by the ventilation ducting. Someone in the bathroom, talking in a normal tone, can easily be heard in parts of the kitchen. It is more obvious when the restaurant is closed and equipment is shut off. The sounds are always there but they are just more obscured when everything is on in the kitchen and the staff is busy. The noises coming from under the trap door were discovered to be loose pipes. I was able to replicate all of the reported activity at this location. There is no evidence to suggest that this location is haunted.
