On working in a haunted restaurant

When I was young, I worked in a restaurant that was haunted. The very first night that I worked there, we were just getting things organized to open the next day. The cook, who had worked for the previous owner, and I were putting items away in the kitchen. We put some big glass jars of mayonaise up on a shelf and put huge plastic jugs of crisco oil in front of it. The owner called us out to a booth for a short meeting on our gameplan for the following day. A few minutes into the meeting - SMASH!!!! - coming from the kitchen. The cook looked at me and said dryly, "That would be the mayonaise." We all got up to go look. All the jugs of crisco were lined up on the shelf in a row, just as we had placed them. But there on the floor was one of the jars of mayonaise that had somehow JUMPED out from behind the plastic jugs. I was Dumbfounded. Perplexed. Confused. Confounded. Mystified. on HOW that could POSSIBLY have happened???

I just couldn't understand it. It was improbable, no, impossible, for the crisco to have slid to the side to let the mayo slide by and then move back into position. No ONE else was around. There was no back door.

The cook and I stayed in the kitchen to clean it up. He then told told me that "all sorts of strange things happen around here." He wouldn't come right out and say the place was haunted. I guess he wanted us to figure it out for ourselves.

All sorts of strange things DID happen around there. I would be working alone in the kitchen, chopping lettuce for instance. I would lay my knife down, take two steps to grab a collander and return to find my knife GONE, no where to be found. I'd look all over, only to find it either right where I left it, or someplace I had not been near. It wasn't just knives, it was any object. It didn't happen every night. Sometimes it would happen once or twice a night, or numerous times. There wasn't any pattern that I was aware of.

Waitresses quit on a regular basis. Some claim to have been pinched by something unseen. One quit because she was hanging up a broom and something whispered loudly in her ear. Another quit because of a whistle in her ear and a pinch in the bottom on the same night.

The basement was really creepy. It was a very old building. It was dark with boarded up doorways and all sorts of lathe with wide gaps and cold drafts. There was a paneled office and a white, bright flourescent lighted "paper room" where we kept styrofoam and paper products. The office did not bother me that I remember. But I HATED that paper room with a FEAR so deep that I DREADED having to go there. I felt completely threatened every time I had to go there. The other girls either hated the basement altogether, or the dark scary places. But I hated that paper room. I'd reach in with great trepedation and flick on the light, step back and look to see where in there I had to go, then I would run and get the item, flicking the light off on the way by. If I missed the light switch, I'd have to gather my courage to reach back in there and flick it off. I was not intimidated by the dark creepy spots but there was something scary as hell in that brightly well-lit room that terrified me. No one else seemed to have any problem at all with that room. They were creeped out by the older parts of the basement.

Whenever we were putting stuff away in storage or down in the office talking to the manager, we'd hear the main door open and heavy boot thumps or high heels walk in the front door. We'd hurry upstairs to find no one there. It happened time and time and time again. It finally occured to us that where we were hearing it was impossible, because there were booths there and because the floor was carpeted. No one could have walked across the floor like we thought we'd heard. We surmised there must be a hallway upstairs in the apartments that we were hearing, until someone pointed out that they each had their own entrance. No hallway up there.

The cook and the manager got really mad at everyone talking about ghosts. The cook quit saying he wasn't working with a bunch of superstious women. I became the cook then. The manager told everyone not to talk about the experiences to me because I had to close every night. I'd known about it since that very first night! And every one of the waitresses that quit came and said goodbye to me and told me WHY they were quitting! We had a great boss, she was a really sweet lady, but they just couldn't handle the weird stuff that happened.

I kept thinking there MUST be some explanation. I did believe in ghostly stuff, but I thought all the pinching, whispering and whistling the waitresses were experiencing could have been fear making their minds run wild. I'd seen the mayonaise jar shattered on the floor. I'd reached up and touched the shelf to see if it had been wet. I'd had knives and spatulas and all sorts of utensils moved on me when I was alone, I heard the boot sometimes, high heels sometimes on the floor, but nothing ever whistled, whispered at or pinched ME, so I wasn't that scared, EXCEPT for the paper room, which I COULDN'T explain and no one else was concerned about.

After the cook quit, I wondered if something had happened to HIM that scared him. He was WELL aware of the activities BEFORE we were. And when he was calling us superstitious, he was angry (scared?) and didn't even finish his shift, and no one had said anything TO him that night he quit.

Then we had a hellacious summer storm. Tornadoes in the area. The power in the whole town went out. We were closing up and cleaning up by lantern light. I let all the waitresses go home. It was just me finishing up. My manager called and told me there was a tornado between me and my home and I should just stay THERE and sleep on the cot in the office. That would be the cot in the office DIRECTLY across the basement from the paper room!

I told her, NO, I'll go home. She tried to tallk me into staying there. NO WAY!! was I staying THERE. So I went out to my car. Trees down everywhere. Power lines and mattresses in the streets. It NEVER occured to me to go back inside. Nope! I drove home in high winds and on FUMES because I was going to put gas in after work, but with no power, no gas. I got within a few miles of home and had to turn around and go 10 more miles out of my way because the trees in the road were too big to drive over. But I made it okay.

Now, many things happened at that restaurant. Many waitresses came and went. It's been over 20 years and I've forgotten details and stories by now. But this I haven't forgotten because I can relive it at will.

I was helping the waitresses clean up one night. I grabbed a big plastic tub and started to clear out the salads from the salad bar. We were closed, but there were a few customers finishing up. I had my tub full, grabbed it with both hands and backed up -- into a huge solid SOMETHING -- that felt like a big man. It wasn't like a post, it had give to it, just like I'd backed up into a big lumberjack or something. I stepped forward and turned to apologize to NO ONE and NOTHING, because only NO ONE and NOTHING was there! No person, no post, nothing! It really rattled me. I was completely startled.

I had two skittish anyway waitresses working with me. So I didn't tell them. But with the adrenaline rush I had -- I power-cleaned full throttle and we got outta there FAST.
That event changed the way I viewed the place. I realized that all those waitresses that quit -- had REASON to!

The managers husband started having health problems and we didn't work there much longer after that since she had to sell the place. I wasn't unhappy about having to find another job. It became a food co op after that. I always wondered about the place. But I've never gone back there to ask!