Memories and Moments by GrannyJo

Copyright
October 2006

Little Italy was the last restaurant to reside in the forty year old building, which was weathered gray and stood 2 stories high--its upstairs windows peering eerily out at the huge parking lot, waiting each evening for the cars of hungry patrons to park and for the customers to disembark and be swallowed up by the voracious front doors below.

The cellar was a huge cement cavern, with nooks and crannies everywhere, old furniture storage, a huge walk-in refrigerator and a separate room (where we kept the CO2 tanks for the draft beer dispenser in the bar above it) that led into a cubby under the outside back steps. Nobody wanted to go down to that cellar alone for supplies, and I can't say I blamed them. So they always went by twos--and two always came back, luckily.

There had always been a story going around the town that one of the restaurant owners from years back had used the upstairs as a house of prostitution--complete with a red light set prominently in one of the upper front windows. Even worse, it was rumored that one of the ladies of the night was the proprietor's own daughter, and that she had mysteriously left town. Who knows what is true? It did, however, make a good story.

In those days of the late sixties, I fancied myself somewhat of a seer. I learned the art of reading 'espresso cups'. To prepare the cups, you boiled together espresso coffee, sugar and water for five minutes. You then poured half of an espresso cup with boiling coffee (grounds and all) for each person who wanted a reading. The person slowly drank the coffee, holding the cup in both hands, leaving behind the grounds until it was almost empty. Then they were instructed to swirl the grounds residual and turn the cup upside down on the saucer. The cup is then ready to be read.

I was quite good at it. Caught my uncle in a traffic violation while doing his reading one evening. He was stunned, because he had been stopped by the State Police just that day, before he'd come for dinner, and I "saw" the police hat in the cup.

Then came the day I read the cup for my cook. In it I saw a young woman, veiled, and crying her heart out. I predicted a death. Two days later, her son-in-law was killed in a motorcycle accident, leaving her daughter with two small children. I never read the cup again.

A few years later, I read about the "Wine Glass". It worked on the same principle as a Ouija board. All you needed was a stemmed wine glass, a round table and four or five brave souls to challenge the spirit world. After closing the restaurant, some of us would often stay behind, place one fingertip lightly on the rim of the glass and ask it yes or no questions--and also questions about those at the table. The glass would slide to the yes or no area, or to the person concerned. It was fun! Until.......

ANGELINA

It was getting on toward the fall of the year and it got dark much earlier than before. When we closed the lights of the restaurant and lit the candles to begin our 'seance', you could hear the old building creak in the fall wind. From the open door to the upstairs, a cold draft hustled down and around our seats at the table.

A restaurant in the dark of the night is much different from the bustle of the day. You can hear it breathe in the uptake of the air filters, and the heart beat from the compressors is a raging, disjointed rhythm, aching to be freed from its moorings. That night, Little Italy lived in the surreal world, far from the feeding of daytime's human appetites.

Everything started out as it had many times before. The glass slid easily, making little circles and taking short dashes to wherever the answer to a question hovered.

Then someone asked, "Are you a Spirit"?

The glass stopped dead center of the table and just quaked and shook. It grew hot to our fingertips, and then burst over to the YES! There it went round and round in an unending circle, until we took our fingers from the rim.

After a few moments, we tried again. "Are you unhappy?" was the next question. Again the dash to YES!

"Are you a woman?" YES!

"Can we help you?" NO! NO!

Then we began to try to find her name. We tried a variety of names and received a NO! for each one. Suddenly I felt a pain in my head and I burst out, "ANGELINA!"

YES! YES! YES! YES!

With every YES! the glass became more frenzied. It swerved and raced across and around the table while we all tried to keep our finger tips on it...to no avail. It lifted up from the table and flew three feet away to crash against the side of the bar.

No one said a word. We cleaned up the glass, set the chairs back in place and locked up for the night.

The restaurant belonged to ANGELINA.

From then on a series of weird events kept happening. Someone rented the apartment over the restaurant and only stayed a week. He kept hearing sighs during the night, and found his gas stove on without the pilot light lit...and just couldn't handle it anymore.

Another renter hung a cross over his bed, assured that it would stop the 'hauntings'. Every morning when he awoke, he'd find the cross hanging upside down. His dog would yip and whine most of the nights, and he, too, was soon gone.

One day my youngest son, Phil, was using the bathroom upstairs, when he heard a knocking and rattling at the door. He ran to confront his brother, who he thought was pulling a trick on him, and there was nobody there. Just (as he put it) a cold breeze. When he came back down he was white as a sheet---more so when he learned that Rick had never left the kitchen!

We learned to live with Angelina--or she with us. Soon it was the seventies and fall again. Into our lives came the experience of The Ghosts of Villa Chigi, which is chronicled below. We've always thought that Angelina might have had a hand in that, too.

Angelina was a part of our lives until 1982, when there was a fire which ruined the building beyond repair. We had the fire department use it for 'practice', and it burned down to the ground.

Maybe Angelina was finally free.