Atlanta, Georgia’s Haunted Restaurant - The Ghost of Annie Barnett

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Atlanta, Georgia’s Haunted Restaurant - The Ghost of Annie Barnett
by Alan J. Levine
Alanjlevine.com

It was back in 1998, while working as editor at a now deceased
community rag in Vinings, Georgia, that I came up with the idea of
staying the night in a house which was supposedly haunted. Alone.
This was to be a stunt for our October edition. My search for such
a place led me to a popular Atlanta restaurant named Anthony's.
Construction on the building which is now Anthony's was started in
1767 by Wiley Woods Pope. The house first stood in Washington,
Georgia, 117 miles east of Atlanta. During the restoration and
move to Atlanta, original boards and pegs of lumber were used. So
presumably, the current house is substantially the same as the one
in which Pope and his family once lived. As luck would have it, the
manager of Anthony's had no problem with me spending the night
alone there.

“But you can’t leave until the morning crew comes because you’ll set off the security alarm,” she said.

“Have you ever seen a ghost in the house?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” she said. “But I don’t stay there by myself at night. We’ve had pastry chefs come in around the middle of the night and swear they hear chains rattling around. Most refuse to work here by themselves at night.”

I next spoke with Mrs. Sally Cwik who left Atlanta for NorthCarolina. She and her husband used to manage Anthony's.

“Yes, the house is haunted,” Sally said. “There’s a main staircase at the front of the building. Near there is an old photograph of Annie Barnett. She was married in the house in 1882 I think. Some people can sense her presence near the staircase. Some hear children singing there. Others have seen a cat at the top of the stairs.

“We’ve had people quit after being there late at night. Some of our
employees who worked late by themselves burned sage to keep away the spirits. A chef named Jesse came in early to prep and saw an arm come out of the wall that mirrored whatever his own arm did. He refused to work by himself after that.”

“Have you seen a ghost there?” I asked.

“No, but my husband and I had to close one night. After turning off
all the lights we were in the parking lot and noticed the lights on the
second floor were on again. There are no switches up there. You
have to unscrew the lights from out of the sconces to turn them off.
When we went back into the house the bulbs were screwed in tight.
We unscrewed them again. When we got back out to the parking lot
the lights were all back on.

“My son didn’t believe any of it. But one evening he was under a
big oak near the house where it is said there'd been a hanging. He
saw lights swirling in the tree branches. It gave him a good scare.

“Oh, and a woman named Margaret who helped open Anthony's
thirty years ago had a heart attack and died in the back of the house
on Valentines. We had 300 people there that night. She always said
she’d die at work at the most inconvenient time. Misty blotches
have shown up on photos over the spot where she passed away.”

“Has anyone stayed the entire night in the house by themselves?”

“No, not to my knowledge.”

I chose the night of September 22, the Autumnal Equinox, for my
visit. I had read to look for times of transition if you are after the
uncanny. Solstices, sunsets, new moons, midnight, cross-roads –
these are times and places where opposites meet. And ghosts may
be transitional entities, seemingly caught between this world and
the next.

The night before I was to go to Anthony's, I lay awake in bed and
thought about bringing company. Both my wife and brother offered
to go with me. When it comes to things that go bump in the night,
lighting a candle may help a bit to dissipate the bug-a-boos. But
another warm, living soul by my side would be like a million
candles shoring up my courage. Yet in the bright light of the next
day, my nerves returned along with a sense of adventure. I would
go on alone.

At twilight, driving home from work, I swerved to avoid driving
over a large, dead black cat in the middle of the road. Once home, I
tried to relax a bit with my wife before leaving for the night.
Tomorrow would be our second wedding anniversary. I joked that I
hoped to see her again - in this world. I gathered some essentials,
kissed my wife, and left.

Stopping to fill my car with gas, a carload of four teenagers pulled
up next to me. Three looked nondescript, but the driver was
shrouded in a black cape and hood with their face covered by a
death’s mask. I drove to the restaurant with the thought I was to be
a sacrifice. But to what?

As I walked alongside Anthony's, I took a good long look at the
black windows above me. I listened hard to the rumbling of the
ancient air conditioning unit near the back offices where Margaret
might now be waiting for our time alone together. I envisioned
plodding through a room, searching the dim corners for danger when
the lights would suddenly go out, and as I stand there frozen with
fear, an icy hand slowly slips into mine - and I slip into terror. The
End.

I rounded the corner of the house and ran into the valet as he left
for the night.

“Jeez! You scared the – out of me!” he exclaimed. He continued
running to his ride.

The night crew was finishing the dishes. I lay my sleeping bag on
the floor of the glassed-in front porch on the second floor. From
there I could see a few of the lights of Piedmont Road flickering
through the trees. Anthony's, though in the middle of the city, is set
back on deeply wooded property.

“Hey! You still here?” shouted the night manager.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“We’re leaving. You know you can’t leave until the morning crew
gets here?”

“Yeah.”

“Good luck.”

I watched two cars zoom down the driveway towards their homes. I
listened to little creaks as the house began to settle. I sat down. I
was quite jittery. Annie’s picture hung beneath me on the ground
floor. I could see the top of the stairs where some had seen a
spectral cat. Though I didn’t want to venture further into the house,
I thought I owed it to the story to actually walk the premises once. I
would look into each and every corner to see what there was to
see. My reward for such bravery would be to return to the porch
from where I could cower in sight of the few visible city lights, and
remain there for the rest of the night. I said a prayer and managed to
push myself out of the chair.

“Son of a – ”

My flashlight was in the car! There were some dim lights on in the
house, but mostly the house was enveloped in shadow or absolute
dark. I entered a room and groped for a light switch. Nothing. I
found a candle and lit it. Then another candle. And another. I lit
every candle I could find.

In one room I found a television. I switched it on and static blared
out like a buzz saw. I quickly turned it off and crawled back into
my skin. I found a three-pronged candelabrum and lit its candles. It
made a perfect prop for the B-horror movie in which I'd had cast

When I reached my sleeping blanket on the big glassed-in veranda,
I slowly, gingerly slipped in. I was physically tired, but my brain
was overheated and hyper alert. There were no more bangs and
bells. I could see some city lights. I lay there for what seemed like
hours. Finally, sleep began to come.

Step. Step. Step. Soft, distinct footfalls were coming up the steps.
Rustling. There was rustling too. I remained in my sleeping blanket,
just sticking my head out to watch the top of the stairs. There was
myself. Properly armed, I continued my walk deeper into the house. In
the wine cellar, there was a large stone head of Bacchus. He grinned
at me, looking a bit like Vincent Price.

Making my way towards the back office, somewhere in the vicinity of
Margaret’s last breath, I heard three raps on the ceiling above me. My
mind blanked. My heart thumped hard, trying to leap from my chest
and run away. My tongue was a lump of bone dry sponge. I believed
myself to be alone with something I did not understand. According to
stories, animals instinctively fear the undead. Now, I trembled like a dog, shorn of instinct, but not fear. There was another bang. And then there were bells.
bag, staring at a point where I thought my host stood. I watched and
waited for something else to happen. But nothing else did happen.
Slowly, the sense of presence faded. I never heard footsteps walk
away.

At some point, dreamless sleep came. Next, I heard the voices of
real humans as the light of morning shone in my eyes. I gathered my
stuff and left.

No one at the restaurant asked me how things went. I didn’t see or
talk to anyone from the morning crew. I arrived home and fell into
the arms of my wife.

“Happy anniversary baby,” she said. “How did things go?”

“Okay. I heard some things. Probably my imagination. Hope it was
all my imagination. How was your night?”

“Strange. I usually don't remember my dreams. But I had a vivid
one last night that I woke up remembering. You and I were together
at Anthony's. A woman came to me in the middle of the night. She
looked like she'd just walked off the set of Gone with the Wind.
She seemed happy. I remember her laughing. Maybe we talked. I'm
not sure. But she did bring me to Anthony's to be with you.”