Pizza with a side of ghosts? Inside some of Louisville's most haunted bars and restaurants

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Pizza Lupo will serve you a fully loaded salsiccia pizza and send a chill down your spine all at once. 

At 3rd Turn Brewing, you can experience a good Kentucky hug and also an unsettling cold spot in the corner near the men's restroom. 

At Louisville’s haunted restaurants and bars, the staff is surely happy to greet you — and a couple of spirits might, too.

There’s a fireman who hangs out in the Sweet Surrender Dessert Cafe building who likes to whistle.

And Hilltop Tavern has a ghost named Mary — and a cat that doesn’t exist. 

The historic hotels in downtown Louisville are often mentioned on “most haunted” lists, complete with full accounts of the spirits said to walk their halls. You may have heard the story of the "Lady in Blue" who died in an elevator shaft at the Seelbach Hotel, or the "Lady of the Stairs" who paces the church steps while crying at First Church of Christ Scientist. 

But you might not know about the old haunted well in the basement of Pizza Lupo and the toys the owners of Hilltop Tavern put up to appease the building's spirit, or key rings that constantly go missing inside the upscale speakeasy Meta.  

As it turns out, Louisville's restaurants and bars are just as old — and just as haunted — as those famous, historic downtown buildings. Restaurant and bar staff all over Louisville have seen strange things: pizza trays flying off shelves, glasses shattering out of nowhere, doors slamming and even apparitions, human form or not.

“I’ve got many stories and witnesses, and a ghost cat that multiple employees and guests have tried to pet,” said Hilltop Tavern co-owner Mike Skelton. "Someone drinking at the bar will flag me down and go, 'Hey man, you got a cat in here.'

"There is no cat."

'Call it an energy … but something's going on'

The building that now houses Hilltop Tavern at 1800 Frankfort Ave. was built in the late 1800s, and the historic white-walled and hardwood space became Hilltop Tavern in 2012.

Skelton said the building is full of spirits: a tall guy in a hat who pranks men in the bathroom, a woman named Millie who haunts the women's bathroom, shadow people on the sidewalk, the infamous ghost cat and a man with his face bashed in.

Skelton said a long time ago, the building was a bar called Millie's Place, and Millie was known to "give special dances if you gave her money for the jukebox." Over the years, he said, some women have gone into the restroom and "come out a completely different person."

"Quiet and shy at first, after a visit to the ladies' room they return with their hair down in a mess, loud and feeling frisky," Skelton said. "They usually forget to pay their tab. When they come back to retrieve their credit card the next day, they adamantly claim they aren't like that and something just came over them. We believe Millie is still recruiting and protecting her girls in the bathroom." 

Meta, a bar at 425 W. Chestnut St., is also said to be haunted by a spirit that protects women. Owner Jeremy Johnson said the building, built in the mid-1800s, used to be a strip club called the Show-n-Tell Lounge. When Johnson opened Meta in 2013, he found a painting of a nude woman left behind. 

It was through conversations with previous tenants that Johnson learned the story of Paula, a woman who reportedly used to work there and is said to have been killed during a shift.

When the Meta team moved into the building in 2013, she made herself known by moving things around or spooking men "she didn’t like the look of," Johnson said.

Things like screams in the mop closet are disturbing, but not unusual. While that might give some people a shiver, it isn't really a big deal, Johnson added. Sometimes, sets of keys will go missing and later be found in a different part of the building.

And Johnson said if you visit Meta and see a woman walking around in vintage 1960s clothes, well, that’s just Paula.

"I’m not a religious person, and I don’t know about an afterlife, but there’s no doubt in my mind” that ghosts exist, Johnson said. “I saw this stuff happen. Call it an energy or whatever you want to call it, but something’s going on.”

Paula's painting has been in storage for years — Johnson didn't want to chance tossing it and angering her. But now it's hung up behind red curtains in Meta’s newly opened liquor store in the back of the building, so if guests want to know about the building’s ghost, staff can introduce them to their resident spirit. 

“There’s just lots of weird little things,” Johnson said. “I think she’s used to us at this point because we really haven’t had stuff happen in a couple of years. But I bet if we moved out and someone else moved in, stuff would start happening again.” 

'Harder and harder to explain'

Jessica Haskell, who owns Sweet Surrender Dessert Cafe, said she wasn't surprised when she found out the building was haunted.

The now-cafe at 1804 Frankfort Ave. was built in 1894 by a surgeon who lived and practiced in the building.

But the building isn't haunted by the late surgeon. Haskell said her employees have seen two apparitions in the space: a woman in a white dress with blond, curly hair and a man in a full firefighter suit. 

The woman mainly shows up in mirrors or walks in and out of offices, she said. But the fireman seems to have a sense of humor — he likes to whistle and jangle keychains, and sometimes objects fall in the kitchen out of nowhere.

"The weirdest story was when we had a contractor working on the building who had to get into the crawlspace underneath to do electrical work," Haskell said. "He had just changed batteries on his flashlight, and it went out. And then the whole space lit up and stayed lit up until he did what he needed to do and got back out to see daylight." 

The occurrences have definitely made Haskell a believer in ghosts. There are just too many experiences she "could not figure out an explanation for," she said. 

At 3rd Turn Brewing, the owners knew something was up from the second they moved into the former church built in 1878 at 10408 Watterson Trail in Jeffersontown. After operating as a Moose Lodge for 60 years, the 3rd Turn team took over in 2015. 

When they got there, they found a note left on a table from the previous owners: "Hey, little girl, please be nice to the new owners." 

That note is now framed and hangs on the back wall of the brewery. 

3rd Turn Brewing co-owner Greg Hayden said weird things happen all the time. You'll hear your name called and walk up to find no one there. And there's a spot in the corner near the men's restroom that just seems odd.

Whenever it's cold out, the spot runs warm. Whenever it's warm outside, the corner runs cold. 

"One of the biggest things happened when we were actually packed, people sitting all around the bar," Hayden said. "A glass came out of nowhere and shattered right in the middle of the floor. And when we pieced the glass back together, it wasn't even a style that we have. It freaked everyone out for quite a while." 

As a chemistry major and scientist, Hayden said he's not really a believer in the supernatural, even with the weirdness at 3rd Turn. To him, it always seemed that ghosts were "just your brain trying to make sense of random things it sees, like how you see pictures in the clouds." 

"But, I will say, some of the stuff we've seen, it gets harder and harder to explain," he said. 

Hard to explain things are almost the norm at Headliners Music Hall at 1386 Lexington Road. Built in 1907, its current operators have been in charge for about 11 years.

During that time, there have been many tales of weird things, said operating partner Joe Argabrite. According to him, there's a number of very tough men and women who have been so spooked by weird moments they "will not, under any circumstances, be alone in that building for any period of time." 

The building has ties to the Prohibition era, and the most consistent haunting is the same apparition: a man dressed in a white shirt and top hat who just "shows up and scares the crap out of people."

This well-dressed ghost is mostly spotted in bathrooms and on the balcony. 

There's a lot of blank history when it comes to the Headliners building, Argabrite said, but the operators do know some things.

In the 1940s, for example, the hall was used as a cafeteria for the National Distillers Product Corp.'s bottling facility, back before the operation switched from glass bottles to cans.

It was about eight years ago, when the hall was mostly empty and no one was performing, that one of the creepiest things happened. 

"We saw a bottle fly across the room, 20 feet high, hit the wall and shatter, and all the pieces of glass stuck to the wall," Argabrite said. "It was a really freaky situation. No one else was in the room. You would have had to throw it from the balcony." 

'No telling what these walls have seen'

At Pizza Lupo, the spirits dwell not above in balconies but below in a basement so old, it features a well leading to the original Louisville cistern. If you look down the well, a good 50 feet or more, a child's doll sits at the bottom.

It's creepy, said owner Max Balliet, whose team moved into the 150-year-old building at 1540 Frankfort Ave. in 2017.

Balliet said unexplainable occurrences have happened so many times, he's lost count. Solid items fly off shelves all the time when no one's around, and something in the building mimics servers' voices, sneezes and hiccups.

Once, server Katie Day was violently shoved between the shoulder blades.

When she turned around, no one was there. 

Day said she's heard rumors that the Pizza Lupo building was once part of the Underground Railroad. The historic building is so close to the Ohio River, it could be true. That basement could have seen its share of anguish, with tunnels leading to the cisterns, caves and crannies underneath the River City. 

"I don't know why things happen to me a lot," Day said. "Maybe because I've been there the longest … right where the bar is, is where everything always happens. And where we stand to make drinks for guests is on top of a trapdoor." 

Day said the scariest thing happened one Saturday when a rumble as loud as an explosion shook the whole building. Dust and dirt from the brick of the old building fell all over the restaurant.

"I mean it sounded like a 300-pound something belly-flopped on the floor upstairs, and it was during service," Balliet said. "I went up there and opened the locked office, expecting to see an entire shelf fallen on the floor, and there was literally no sign of anything out of place. But something happened in that room to create such a violent bang it shook dust loose." 

Day said the spirit could be a playful thing, maybe a kid. Things just keep happening — and there's no explanation. 

"It's so very old, and there's no telling what these walls have seen," she said. "The energy is definitely there."

For Balliet, though, it's just one more thing to deal with when running a busy restaurant. 

"I’m too busy to be scared," he said. "Sometimes I feel a little scared, but if you’re gonna get me, just get me, 'cause I got dough to make." 

Dahlia Ghabour: 502-582-4497; dghabour@gannett.com; Twitter: @dghabour. 

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