Hammerstone's
In Historic Soulard
Cory's stories
Mysterious tapping
In January 2000, I was sitting at a table with a group of my friends having some drinks. We were sitting at the second table from the band that was playing. At this point, my parents had only owned the bar for 3 years, and I only worked there occasionally as a server part time. I actually didn’t like the bar very much because it took all of my parents time and stressed them out tremendously.
I was sitting next to a server I had befriended named Andrea, who was off and enjoying some cocktails as well. She had this cowboy hat that she was holding and was twirling the string around. I felt this tap on the back of my head- but could see the strings in my peripheral vision, so I didn’t think that she was hitting me with the string- or if she was, it was not intentional. I turned around and looked at the band- because it also felt like it could have been a small gust of air.
I turned back to join the conversation that I had been distracted from and moments later, it happened again. I turned to look at Andrea, and the angle that she was sitting in relation to where I was sitting and decided that it would have been a lot more obvious if she had been hitting me with her hat string. I turned around and looked at the band again, and the speakers, and looked around for some kind of air vent.
I didn’t mention to anyone at that point what was happening to me, because I thought that it was static electricity, or air moving from the sound of the band- but it was happening in the same spot on the back of my head- and then it happened again. At this point, I decided to mention it to my friends what was happening, and they didn’t believe me.
The next day, I decided the event was worth mentioning to my mom. She responded with her own story- that she and my dad had been sitting at the first table, facing the band earlier in the evening. She felt a tap or a burst of air on the back of her head 3 times. She figured that she was just imagining the sensation.
Once I told her my story, she thought that it was worth mentioning to my dad. He responded with his own story. He was sitting next to my mom at the first table and felt 3 taps on the back of his head. My mom is somewhat of a joker, so he ruled it out and figured that she was just messing with him.
We were really excited to have experienced something that was possibly paranormal in nature, so we started telling people about it the next day. I still hadn’t ruled out the possibility that it was the sound from the band moving the air. At that time, we offered free meals to police officers in uniform. There was an officer who overheard our stories. He told us that he had been sitting at the table next to the stage for lunch earlier in the day, and felt a tapping or a burst of air on the back of his head 3 times- when there was no band playing.
I think that the thing that makes it so strange is that the sensation occurred 3 times with each of us, and I haven’t heard of it happening to anyone since then.
Self ringing bell
One night, I was training a server on the bar. We had been the only 2 employees there for hours. We had closed and had just turned the TVs off and were talking about the cartoons on Adult Swim and working on our check outs. We have this bell in the kitchen that the cooks will hit with their knives to make ring, because it is so built up with fryer grease that it has a hard time ringing. I was on the other side of the bar from Joe, and the bell in the kitchen rang- as clear as ever. We stopped what we were doing and looked at each other. Both of our eyes widened, and all of the hair stood up on the back of my neck and my arms, and I felt my eyes tear up as a warm sensation enveloped me.
“Did you hear that?” I said to Joe.
“Uh… yeah!” He responded with a sarcastic tone.
“That was the bell in the kitchen.” I said, somewhat shakily.
“I know.” He said.
Without much more conversation or hesitation, we both headed back to the kitchen to look for the bell. It was back there- and it was pressed down. I pulled the button up and pushed it down again, and it rang in the exact same tone that we just heard. All of the hair on the back of my neck stood up again and we both got really freaked out so we came back out into the dining room, shared some ghost stories while we finished up our work, and got the hell outta there.
In addition to these stories, there have been a couple times in the basement where I have seen a string hanging and swinging from a light fixture and as I went to grab it to turn the light off- there was no string. This same thing has happened to multiple people, including Karen- my best friend and a bartender at our bar.
I have seen bread come showering out of the bread bags from the shelf- but that could possibly be that the bread had been put away improperly- so who knows?