A closer look at Lincoln’s Ghost Bridge November 2, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Bridges, Ghosts and Mysteries, Preservation, Restaurants.add a comment
Alas, the Decatur (Ill.) Herald & Review didn’t post this until after the event. But this video shows the legendary Ghost Bridge of Route 66 in Lincoln, Ill., and the Ghost Bridge Walk that became a fundraiser for The Mill in Lincoln.
Is Barney’s Beanery haunted? October 30, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Ghosts and Mysteries, Restaurants.add a comment
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)
Is The Mill haunted? September 27, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Events, Ghosts and Mysteries, Preservation, Restaurants, Vehicles.add a comment
I doubt it. But a Spirit of Tours ghost-investigation event on Oct. 8 at the Route 66 landmark in Lincoln, Ill., is bound to be entertaining, reported the Lincoln Courier.
Spirit of Tours, based in nearby Bloomington, wants to check out The Mill, a 1929 restaurant that’s being renovated for future use as a tourism center.
Having such a great history, the building is sure to hold some “spooky” inhabitants, according to medium Deborah Carr Senger, who will lead the event.
Also, the group will host another event later that month:
Spirit of Tours will return to Lincoln on Oct. 22 to host the Ghost Bridge Ghost Walk. Partcipants will walk down an abandoned stretch of old Route 66 to the Ghost Bridge in Lincoln and visit the grave of Coonhound Johnny, who, legend has it, smuggled hooch up and down this storied highway.
Participants will hear infamous and rare stories of spirits and unexplained events up and down the Mother Road.
Reservations for both events can be obtained by going to the Spirit of Tours website.
Also, The Mill is hosting a car show from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. The $5 registration fees to the annual Cruise-In raises money for The Mill’s ongoing restoration efforts.
Visitors that day can also participate in tours of The Mill.
The Route 66 Heritage Foundation of Logan County is sponsoring the events.
Writer plans book about ghost stories on Route 66 July 25, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Books, Ghosts and Mysteries.2 comments
Richard Southall plans to write a book about ghosts and paranormal activity along Route 66, and is searching for additional such stories in Arizona, reported the Kingman Daily Miner.
Southall has written another book, “How to Be a Ghost Hunter,” with Llewellyn Publications. He wants his Route 66 ghost stories book in stores by 2013.
Southall wants to go beyond common urban legends and publish personal accounts from residents, business owners and tourists. In his early research, he collected several stories from Illinois, California, Kansas and Missouri, but he is still looking for more Arizona stories.
There are 401 miles of Route 66 in Arizona, he said, so there has to be some good stories out there. [...]
In addition to the stories, Southall wants to add a directory that lists paranormal groups on Route 66, so interested readers can learn more.
“It’s going to be a fairly large book,” Southall said.
Southalll asks that people with a story they would like to share or a paranormal group or tour they want included in the book to please email or write him as soon as possible. Email him at route66ghostbook@gmail.com or write to P.O. Box 8212, Nutter Fort, WV. If sending an email, put the state that the story originates from in the subject line.
One of the stories that undoubtedly will be included is the death site of Sam Kinison. The comedian and actor died in a car crash on old Route 66 near Needles, Calif., in 1992. According to Southall, locals say they sometimes glimpse Kinison’s white Trans Am on that stretch of road. Also, the sound of screeching brakes and crashing metal sometimes is heard there.
Another book, “Missouri’s Haunted Route 66,” was published a few years ago. And “Haunted Highway: The Spirits of Route 66″ remains in the marketplace. However, the latter volume was published in 1999 and hasn’t been updated, to my knowledge.
Documentary being filmed about haunted Route 66 sites February 7, 2011
Posted by Ron Warnick in Ghosts and Mysteries, Movies, Music.2 comments
A couple that proclaim themselves as experts about paranormal activity recently traveled Route 66 to film a documentary about haunted locations along or near the Mother Road.
Patrick Burns and fiancee Marley Gibson began in November their journey in a recreational vehicle for a film titled “Spirits of 66.” The couple maintains a website at Haunted Highways. Their Facebook account is here, and here’s their Twitter account.
“I plan to pitch the concept (of the film) to various networks, but if they don’t bite, it will be available streaming online and as a DVD release,” Burns said in an e-mail.
Burns said they didn’t strictly stay on the Route 66 corridor searching for haunted sites, but remained within the towns the Mother Road traverses. Here are a few of the spots they investigated:
- “We investigated the alley in Chicago were notorious gangster John Dillinger was gunned down by the FBI.”
- “Resurrection Cemetery in the Chicago Suburbs – home of Resurrection Mary - the famous hitchhiking ghost.”
- “Abraham Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Illinois.”
- “Lemp Mansion in St Louis.”
- “Joplin Spook light, near Joplin, Missouri.”
Burns even recorded his own version of Bobby Troup’s “Route 66″ for the film project. Appropriately, it sounds a bit spooky:
The ghost of the Painted Desert Inn October 27, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Ghosts and Mysteries, History, Motels, Restaurants.1 comment so far
I didn’t know this about the historic Painted Desert Inn, located in the Petrified Forest National Park. Apparently I have a new contender for the top ghost sites on Route 66 that I posted yesterday.
According to National Parks Traveler:
Almost 60 years ago, during the evening of April 9, 1953, the Painted Desert Inn caught fire. A park ranger broke down the locked door and crawled on his hands and knees into the smoke-filled building. He found Mrs. Marion Mace, the hotel manger, lying unconscious in her bedroom. The ranger carried the woman outside and laid her on the lawn. Then he returned to save the structure.
After putting out the flames with a fire extinguisher, the ranger returned to his damsel in distress only to learn that his heroic efforts had gone for naught. Mrs. Mace was dead from smoke inhalation.
No one knows for sure what caused the fire, but most people assumed the smoldering blaze had been ignited by a cigarette, for the flames had started in manager’s bedroom, and Mrs. Mace was rarely seen without a death stick between her fingers. [...]
The ranger was working on the main level one afternoon when she heard someone coming up the stairs from the tap room below. “It was footsteps on stone,” she says, “but when I looked up to wave at the person coming up the stairs, no one was there.”
Other employees report hearing whispered conversations coming from unoccupied rooms, and some have wondered if Mrs. Marion Mace is still lingering around after closing time.
After locking up one evening, one park ranger looked back through the windows and saw someone inside the museum walking from one room to another. Slightly irritated at the wayward tourist, the ranger unlocked the door and stepped inside. As soon as she entered the doorway, the ranger detected the unmistakable odor of cigarette smoke. Now the ranger was royally peeved. Not only was this tourist in a closed government building; the person had the gall to smoke in a museum! The ranger rushed from room to room in hot pursuit of her cigarette-smoking miscreant, until she realized there was no one in the building but her.
The story also tells about a spiral on a boulder at the Puerco Pueblo ruins, where a beam of sunlight hits the center of the spiral on the boulder at exactly 9 a.m. No one is sure what is the purpose of this apparent solar calender.
On 5 p.m. Friday, the park will offer “Ghosts of the Past,” a park ranger-led tour complete with ghost stories, starting at the Painted Desert Inn. Participants can watch the sunset and then explore the historic inn by lantern light.
Top ghost sites on Route 66 October 26, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Ghosts and Mysteries.4 comments
In the spirit of the Halloween holiday, I decided to list the most notorious spots on Route 66 where ghosts and other unexplained phenomena occur.
Literally dozens of locations along the Mother Road have seen such weirdness over the decades. I narrowed it down to the top five:
- Spook Light, near Quapaw, Okla.: Also known as the Hornet Spooklight in a rural area near the Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas border, it appears as a distant ball of light at dusk or night. It pops up regularly enough that Waylan’s Ku-Ku restaurant in Miami, Okla., provides maps so you can check it out for yourself. Some think it’s the ghost of a miner and his lantern; others think it’s the ghost of an Indian. “Roads to Quoz” author William Least Heat-Moon and others say the light is caused by headlights from old Route 66 to the west. However, the light has been documented even before the invention of cars.
- The Oatman Hotel, Oatman, Ariz.: The ghost that reputedly haunts this 1902 hotel is of miner William Ray Flour, who drank himself to death behind the hotel in 1930. The spirit of Oatie reputedly opens windows, plays bagpipes, and yanks off bed covers. The hotel also reportedly houses the ghost of a chambermaid in one of the rooms. And hotel staff have heard the long-dead Clark Gable and Carole Lombard whispering and laughing from their honeymoon suite.
- Hotel Monte Vista, Flagstaff, Ariz.: The hotel boasts so many ghost stories, it has devoted a section of its website to them. It includes apparitions of a bank robber, prostitutes, a bellboy, a baby, a dancing couple, and “The Meat Man.” The hotel says Room 305 is its “most active” in terms of paranormal activity, including a rocking chair that rocks by itself.
- Tri-County Truck Stop, Villa Ridge, Mo.: The now-closed restaurant has been investigated by Missouri Paranormal Research after reports of strange activity, and a story about that sparked more than 50 comments on Route 66 News — many with their own weird stories about the place. One of the ghosts is “George,” who reputedly has gotten fresh with the restaurant’s female help.
- KiMo Theatre, Albuquerque. The 1927 theater reportedly is haunted by a 6-year-old boy, Bobby, who was killed in a boiler explosion in 1951. Bobby supposedly behaves himself if treats are left on a water pipe for him in the back of the theater. But if the treats are removed, all sorts of technical problems occur during shows or movie screenings.
As I’ve said, this isn’t a comprehensive list of spooky places on Route 66 by a long shot. A few Route 66 travelers have reported spooky experiences of their own, as the comments in this post from 2005 show.