Hauntings at the Red Maple Inn

Yes, this is a total attempt to gain readership by capitalizing on this for the holiday season.  That being said, most of you long time readers know I don’t talk shit that I can’t back up. What I’m about to tell you might sound strange but I know what I experienced and just about everyone who ever worked at that place has some sort of weird story to tell about it. 

The last time I was their two years ago the house was overgrown with weeds and a far cry from its brief time as one of the best restaurants in the area in the mid 90’s. It was a house built in the late twenties, a two story structure with a full basement and attic. My mother, after having already opened and successfully operated both a strip club and a sports bar saw its potential and set about remodeling the place into a full service fine dine establishment, complete with outdoor gardens for weddings and events. 

That being said the place was also haunted as fuck. 

While I’ve always been open minded to things like this, even writing this weirds me out and I sure as hell wouldn’t go in the place alone. I’m not the dumbest person in the world and for the most part, take things like this with a grain of salt but I still haven’t been able to come up with an explanation that makes sense. 

The first incident I’ll tell you about, I wasn’t there for but my mom and four other women were. They were in the office on the second floor and talking about the weird shit going on at the place and everyone except for the Chef, a chick named Jen (I think) agreed. We had those small oil lamps on the tables, the kind that the flame is no more than an inch high, like long lasting tea candles. As soon as the Chef said something along the lines of “I don’t believe in any of that ghost bs.”, the flame on everyone of those lamps rose a foot and stayed like that for a few seconds which was just long enough to scare the the shit out of everyone. 

Let’s not forget the small events room upstairs. For one thing, it was dark red and had one large table in the center and looked like the type of place you would try to hold a seance. Not only was it creepy, but the door would often shut randomly for no reason and I would always prop something against it. I hated going in there alone during the day with other people upstairs, going in there alone at night didn’t happen. Of course later we found out that it had been the children’s room….

It’s funny how something as simple as a chair being moved a few inches can mess with your head 20 years later.

In 1998 I was working there and also living across the street. The way the alarm panel was set up is that it went off as soon as you opened the door. You had to walk ten feet across the dining room and into the Kitchen to enter the code but no matter what, the alarm went off loud as hell and this was often my wake up call. 

There were also plenty of times that I would often be the last person to leave, setting the code, and being the first person to come in the next day. The last thing I would do is spot check the dining room to make sure that everything was ready to open the next day. This means that the tables were set and everything was in order and ready to go for the next day.

The first time it happened I thought that I had been in a rush and I didn’t pay it much mind yet for some reason it stuck out. It was the second time about a week later that it really hit me. It was the same chair turned to face the fireplace as if someone/thing had been relaxing.  

I clearly remembered checking everything, including that table just a few hours prior and no one could have gotten in or out without me hearing the alarm.It took about two seconds to figure out that there was no way someone could be fucking with me since I had never mentioned it to anyone. Not only that but no one would have wasted their time to drive to the restaurant in the middle of the night to turn a chair a few inches to scare a 17 year old stoner. I walked outside and refused to go back in until the Chef got there. Of course he thought I was crazy but luckily my mom was the owner and she had already seen enough to know the place was haunted. 

It was a few weeks later after a huge catering that the Chef became a believer. We were tired and in a rush to leave and didn’t do a great job cleaning. It was the Chef, the Sous Chef and myself standing in the parking lot alone and all three of us saw something looking down on us from the second story. 

Flash forward a few years. My mother sold it to someone who sold to someone else and I ended as the Sous Chef. The owners don’t know me or who I am and neither does the staff. We’re hanging out on my second night shutting down and they start telling me about the weird shit they’ve witnessed. Of course, they mentioned the chair and I filled them in on the history of the place. Different owners, same ghosts.

Here’s where it getting really fucked. I’m working and this and I need a few photos so I text Brown Beard since he lives around the corner and I go do a search on google street view just for nostalgia 

I’m not going to tell you what I see since I don’t want to “bait” you or anything. Just take a look and hey, maybe it’s nothing, maybe it’s my mind playing tricks but if you see it to, comment and let me know. And for the record, the only alteration I did was crop my browser bar out of the screen shot. You can find the exact same image on Google maps on street view.