The Spirits Still Pour Here

                                                                                                                    t last call, as the final hours of the night dwindle, the lights dim,

 the laughter fades with the signing of checks, and the only sounds left are the clinking of glassware and the door pardoning each departing guest.

But in some establishments, that quiet doesn’t linger for long.

Chairs scrape without reason.

The faint smell of cigar smoke curls through rooms that haven’t allowed smoking in decades.

A shadow flickers in the corner where no one’s standing.

Across the country, bartenders, servers, and owners have spoken about their late-night visitors; the ones who never left.

Some blame old buildings and overactive imaginations.

Others swear they’ve seen the unexplainable.

After all, how can a wine bottle slide off a shelf when the doors are locked and the staff have gone home?

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, there’s an undeniable allure to a place with a story.

There’s something magnetic about a space that hums with the energy of everyone who’s ever passed through it.

Maybe that warmth, that lingering heartbeat of memory, is what keeps the spirits around.

As the season changes, blurring and thinning the line between folklore and the afterlife, we’ve chosen the path to uncover the spectral side of dining and drinking.

Suppose history fancies a bite to eat and a smooth drink to pair?

In Orange Beach, Alabama,

The Flying Harpoon 2 is notorious for a few patrons hanging around and a bit of late-night mischief.

Owned by her mother, Christina Kourt worked there for seven years, witnessing firsthand a cavalcade of unexplainable phenomena. 

The bar’s history is complex: a private residence from 1984, a dive bar with decades of revelry, and a location steeped in tragedy—fatal accidents on the five-lane highway out front, historic forts,

Indian burial mounds, and the churning spring-fed waters.

Kourt’s stories read like a paranormal Greatest Hits.

Objects flying, shadows stalking the kitchen, orbs triggering motion detectors near the pool table.

The other presences teeter on the line between playful and terrifying. 

Cletus, the seven-foot-tall “surfer dude ghost,” allegedly follows staff home.

A Civil War-era soldier haunts the office, and an employee once saw his gray trousers and dirty boots while shelving liquor.

Staff have been pinched, cursed at by a long-dead electronic parrot, and had metal rods inexplicably hurled across the kitchen.

Kourt speculates that the very geography of the building, sitting on sugar sand beaches, quartz crystal-laden soil, and spring-fed waters, creates a “generator for spiritual energy.” 

But even for those skeptical of paranormal forces, the effect is undeniable: employees report nights where “nothing jived,” dishes thrown, or tape jumping off shelves.

“There’s a blanket of confusion that hangs over the place,”

Kourt says.

“Everything went wrong at once, like some fog of negativity.” Despite the chaos, Kourt doesn’t want to exploit the ghosts.

She respects their presence, seeing them as permanent, although frightening, residents rather than a gimmick.

As the dive bar closes and passes to new owners, she pleads to the lucky buyers,  “Be prepared to share the space with our forever residents.”

Far from the Gulf Coast, the ghosts of Svilar’s in Wyoming are of a subtler, more familial variety.

Owned by the Svilar family since 1912, the bar and restaurant has hosted everyone from John F. Kennedy to Neil Armstrong.

Danny Svilar grew up here, and he and his cousin Kristi took it over together. For him, the ghosts aren’t just spooky. They’re a link to the past.

His favorite of the cast is Brains, a former bartender whose nickname came from his insistence that he knew everything.

Cabinets open by themselves.

Metal bowls crash to the floor.

And then there was that night while rolling silverware, alone, when faint voices drifted through the bar, “like that muted ‘wah-wah’ sound from the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon,” Svilar recalls, heart still racing decades later. 

Upstairs, Brains lingers; in the dining room, his grandparents keep watch.

Even skeptics among staff have reported chills, shadows, and furniture moving inexplicably.

Medium-led events, dubbed Dinner with the Spirits, paired cocktails with ghost stories, and guests left with goosebumps and grins.

Here, the paranormal is not frightening, but woven into the building’s legacy.

Out west, the Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee, Arizona, is a haunted stop on the town’s ghost tours. Nate Chapman says he heard about the hauntings his first day on the job—and soon experienced them firsthand.

“There’s a little boy named Billy who died here,”

Nate said.

“You can hear little kid foot steps down the hallway and the sound of a soccer ball being kicked.”

He would feel this drop of excitement wash over him, hearing the commotion. 

Billy isn’t the only spirit roaming the 1902 hotel.

Julia Lowell, a woman said to have worked there as a prostitute, is another familiar name.

Legend says she fell in love with a client who didn’t love her back, and later ended her own life in one of the rooms.

She has a thing for making her presence known by running bathwater and occasional mischief aimed at men’s feet. 

Three separate paranormal investigation teams, including Ghost Adventures, have confirmed the hotel’s eerie activity. Nate claims it’s part of the draw. People go there for the stories.

Some visitors have come for the haunted rooms and don’t last the night.

Ghost tours run through the town, bringing curious thrill-seekers to the same floors where Chapman and other staff have learned to expect, almost casually, that the past has a way of sticking around.

Ghosts are as unpredictable as they are magnetic.

They are mischievous.

They are familial.

They are narrative.

These hauntings are not just stories for idle curiosity; they shape how the living experience these spaces.

Patrons are drawn not simply for food or drink, but for the thrill of being joined by someone something that never truly left.

Objects move on their own, footsteps echo, whispers flutter through the rooms, and these places continue to remind us that history doesn’t fade quietly.

The spirits aren’t simply lingering.

They’re living, in a sense.

Ghost stories in restaurants and bars aren’t just about fear. They’re about memory.

They remind us that every building holds onto its history, whether it’s laughter echoing down an empty hallway or the faint rustle of a skirt behind the bar.

Last call may mark the end of the night, but for the ghosts of the Flying Harpoon 2, Svilar’s, the Copper Queen, and many other establishments around the world, it is only the beginning.

And maybe, just maybe, the spirits that linger aren’t waiting for peace at all.

They’re just here for another round.