I've been wanting to submit this story since I first came to this site. This happened when I was a teenager working for my mom back in 1971. My home town is Big Bear Lake, California. It's an old mining town in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern Calif. And when I grew up there we had no stop lights and up until 1970 no major fast food joints. We were a tourist town all year round. We had our ghost stories too. The one I'm sharing is about a ghost named George who resides at "the Captains Anchorage" restaurant and bar. Now at the time this happened, 1971, it was called "Stein and Sirloin" and my mother was the manager. I'll have to write another story sometime about my mom, let's just say for now that my mother never let spirits/ghosts bother her. It seemed like nothing could ever 'surprize' her when it came to the paranormal, she treated them just like she treated the living. If you got in her way, watch out!
Anyway, my little sister Sheila and I worked bussing tables, washing dishes, cleaning up at night or whatever else was needed. The whole time working there we'd known "things" happened; quite often we'd been there to experience them. There was a Harpsichord in the upstairs dining room that would play on its own, a dumbwaiter that would run during electrical 'blackouts', chairs would be re-arranged when you had your back turned and that is what my story is about.
Sheila and I were cleaning the downstairs dining room and bar after closing one night while my mom was upstairs doing the books in her office. We had refilled the salt and pepper shakers, removed the candles and placed them on the bar, wiped down the bar and all the tables. Last thing you always did was put the barstools up on the bar and chairs up on the tables so the cleaning crew that comes in the morning could do the floors.
As soon as we got the last chair up and put our rags in the laundry bin we headed upstairs to let mom know we were ready to go home. Now, at the bottom of the stairs is the bar, and from the bottom steps you can see directly into the downstairs dining room. As we ascended the stairs we were over halfway to the top when we saw mom coming down so we turned back around and headed back down too. As we hit the lower landing and turned left to face the bar and restaurant we both froze in our tracks, mouths agape and not breathing for just a few seconds as we looked out on the scene.
In the time it had taken us to climb maybe 14 or 15 steps and turn around to come back down those same steps, and mind you, we were the only people in the building at this time, we were now staring at, what we thought had to be impossible. Every chair and barstool was set back on the floor and the candles were back on the tables. Sheila and I at the same time just stared and said "Mom what's going on? Well, my mom got that, roll your eyes, tired of putting up with this crap, look on her face and started scolding "George" as if he were standing right there in front of us! "I can't put up with your nonsense tonight George! You need to choose your battles better Mister!" And so we start putting the candles back and replacing all the chairs and stools. "George I've already talked to you about this, and if you want to continue hanging around you need to learn not to pull this on a night when we're this tired!" then "Don't push me George, I'm serious!" After we were done we locked up and went home.
On the way out my mom stopped by the dishwashers place to let him know what happened and if there was a mess in the morning to give her a call and she would make sure this nonsense was stopped for good. Well, there was no mess in the morning because apparently 'George' knew mom was serious. To this day I could swear that 'George' had a crush on my mom, I don't know why I know that, I just do.
I wanted to get this out on the story boards before any of the story about "George" shows up on TV. My best friend works at the "Captains Anchorage" for about 4 years now and just told me that A&E had been there filming and done some show there so I figured I better beat them to the punch on this one. Hope you liked it. I've got more.
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