Ghosthunting Florida. Dave Lapham

      ADAM “PIERCE” BERG WAS WORKING LATE. He was the maintenance man, and there was always something that needed to be done that he couldn’t attend to while customers were there. Tonight he was changing light fixtures in the bar. It was 2:45 A.M., long after the staff had left and over an hour before the cleaning crew came in. He had heard the bizarre stories from bartender Niki Padron and others, so he was a little uncomfortable about being alone in this old house. But Pierce was more worried about all the revelers outside on the street. He didn’t want to be disturbed, so he locked himself in and activated the security system.

      He was screwing in a bracket when he heard a noise, or thought he did. He stopped and listened. Someone was whistling, and the whistler seemed to be in the bar on the far side of the room. Pierce’s spine began to tingle, and goose bumps formed on his arms. Frightened, he yelled out, “Knock that crap off!” The whistling stopped.

      Pierce went back to work, a little shaken, but moments later he heard footsteps on the front stairs just outside the bar. The whistling started again from the same area. Completely unnerved, Pierce grabbed his tools and raced out the front door without even turning off the security system. The alarm blasted the quiet of the early morning. A police patrol just happened to be passing down Duval Street and immediately flipped on its emergency lights. The officers nabbed a shaking Pierce before he even got to the street.

      Pierce still works at the Hard Rock Café. He’s a waiter now and doesn’t do maintenance anymore. He refuses to work after hours.

      When it comes to paranormal events, Key West’s Hard Rock Café is an active place. Mandy Dunn, the sales and marketing manager, was in the third floor office one evening about ten, working on reports. The bar and dining areas downstairs were still crowded with patrons. As she worked, someone began whistling a little tune over and over. The whistler was very close. She knew no one else was up there, but she called out, “Who’s there?” No one answered, but the whistling stopped. Curious, she checked the security cameras covering the third floor. She was the only one captured on film.

      Niki Padron often sees shadows moving around the bar area while she is cleaning up after closing time. Glasses move along the bar. Chairs and stools move by themselves with footsteps usually accompanying this activity.

      My wife, Sue, and I visited the Hard Rock midday when business was slow. Don Estep, the general manager, gave us a tour and told us a lot about the building. William Curry had come to Key West from the Bahamas in 1847 as a small boy. His family was penniless when they arrived in Key West, but William had become the island’s first millionaire, making his fortune salvaging shipwrecks in the pirate-infested waters around the Keys. He died in 1896, the richest man in Florida. He had married and had a family, and in 1888 built what was to eventually become the Hard Rock Café for his son, Robert, as a wedding gift. The original house had fifteen to eighteen rooms—no one is quite sure—and a basement, which was unusual for Florida, especially Key West. None of the staff likes to go into the basement, now used only for storage.

      Legend says that Robert fell on hard times through bad investments, gambling, and bad luck. After his wife and family left him, he hanged himself in what was the bathroom of the master suite on the second floor, part of which is now the ladies’ restroom. Women customers have reported stall and entry doors opening and closing, whistling, footsteps, and even taps on the shoulder as they walked down the hall.

      One manager kept seeing a man walking up the stairs and into the wall at the top landing. He saw items moving around the bar. He heard footsteps, whistling, and other strange noises. Unable to cope with all of these unearthly goings-on, he invited a priest in to bless the entire establishment, room by room, with holy water. It had no effect. The activity continued, and the manager left shortly thereafter.

      Many paranormal investigators have gone through the building, and it has appeared several times on television, including the Discovery Channel and the Travel Channel’s “America’s Most Haunted Restaurants.” A psychic who flew in for the Discovery Channel’s investigation came directly from the airport. She had never been to Key West before and knew nothing about the history of the Hard Rock Café. As she walked through, she did, indeed, discover the man upstairs. She felt that he was the one walking around the house, whistling, and tapping people on their shoulders. But she also found a little girl brushing her hair in the upstairs restroom and, just as puzzling, a woman and a small girl by the fireplace downstairs. She said that the reason there was so much activity after Hard Rock’s closing time was because the period between when the staff left and the cleaning crew came in was the only time the “family” could enjoy the house.

      Don Estep was surprised when he learned this; no one had ever reported the woman and the two girls. Who were they? Could they have been Robert Curry’s family? And if they were, what had happened to them? Could they have all died there? If they had, why was there no historical evidence of that?

      Sue and I paid a visit to Tom Hambright, the Marion County Library historian and a decades-long resident of Key West. He had some interesting things to tell us. The Key West Order of Elks purchased the Curry house in 1920, and it was the Elks Club until the mid-1960s. Then it was The Shell Man, a shop selling seashells, and Mario City, an Italian restaurant, among others. It also sat vacant from time to time.

      Mr. Hambright had dozens of stories to tell us about Key West, and the many tales about the Curry House only added to its mystery. He had evidence that Robert Curry actually died in a New York hospital. He also pointed out that, although the legends say that Curry hanged himself from rafters in the second floor bathroom, there probably were no open beams or exposed rafters there as this was an expensive Victorian mansion. So, even if Robert Curry did hang himself in the house, he probably didn’t do it on the second floor but in the attic above.

      He also told us about a visitor to the Elks’ Club who shot himself in the bathtub of the upstairs bathroom, ostensibly to contain the mess. Is the ghost of this stranger the whistler, the specter who walks through walls, the spirit who walks around and taps people on their shoulders?

      There was also the information concerning a young divorcee with a somewhat tarnished reputation. The Elks often held dances in a large banquet room in the rear of the building. On one particular evening, the young lady was there dancing and flirting with as many men as she could. One minute she was on the dance floor, the center of attention, and the next she had vanished. No one saw her leave, and no one saw with whom she left. Several years later, her bones were found and identified on Saddlebunch Key, a small island to the north. The case, presumably a murder, was never solved. Could this nameless woman be haunting the house, sitting in front of the fireplace?

      Mr. Hambright also knew people who had inexplicable experiences at the Elks Club. He had a friend in the early 1960s who tended bar there and often invited friends over in the late evening for a nightcap when the club was closing. He confessed that he was afraid to be in the place alone after hours because of all the strange noises he had heard.