Is Barney’s Beanery haunted?

Barney’s Beanery, a fixture on Route 66  in West Hollywood, Calif., since 1927, is known for many things. Home to the Second-Best Chili in Los Angeles. Hangout to Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and scads of other music and movie stars. A focal point in the fledgling gay-rights movement during the 1970s and ’80s.

But the old bar/restaurant may have some other notoriety as well. Several employees interviewed by the Los Angeles Times insist that Barney’s is haunted.

Restaurant manager Jonah Dumont says he’s often watched a strange figure walk past the rooftop office as he finishes the bookkeeping after Barney’s closes at 2 a.m. nightly.

“I’ve seen it 20-plus times. At first I assumed it was a busboy in a white shirt walking by,” said Dumont, who started working there a year ago.

Oddly, the figure walking past the office’s open doorway failed to trigger the rooftop’s motion sensor-controlled floodlights. […]

When Dumont mentioned his experience to others, he found out he was not the only one who had experienced strange things.

A bartender also saw the rooftop figure, and reported that the beer system mysteriously malfunctioned. Another bartender said that as she was checking beer kegs in a downstairs cooler, someone walked past, turned, and walked past again before vanishing. A waitress felt a presence behind her when fetching pickles from the cooler. A cook heard kegs being dragged across the floor.

Speculation abounds that it’s the wandering souls of Joplin and Morrison, who died during the early 1970s.

Or maybe someone was sampling too much of the product from the kegs. (Wink.)

(Hat tip to Kevin Hansel)

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