Is there a ghostly woman haunting the stairway at the old Harper’s Tavern in Annville?
Or is there a man – a sailor, perhaps, with a mischievous sense of humor and a blatant disregard for current smoking laws – hanging around the bar?
Maybe. As Halloween approaches and the veil between worlds grows thin, it’s time to reconsider the possibility of ghosts. Lebanon County has a couple of good ghost stories, and the 200-year-old Harper’s Tavern, at 10486 Jonestown Road, Annville, might have a few stories to add.
Bar owner Joey Straw was eager to share details of the tavern’s possible hauntings, although she referred a reporter to Leah, a longtime bartender there, “because she has some good stories.”
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Leah was a bartender at Harper’s Tavern for 15 years, she says, and she still fills in when they need help.
Leah was only too happy to tell the tales.
An impish closet ghost
Harper’s Tavern was built in 1804, so it’s had ample time to store up a little psychic energy. And, while Leah says she’s never “felt creeped out” when she’s been there alone, she’s definitely had a few unusual experiences.
The first one was back around 2009 or ’10, she says. It was New Year’s, and the upstairs dining room — usually used only for private parties and overflow seating — was full.
“In this event room, there’s a closet in the back corner,” Leah explains. “It’s an old-style door. It would always have a draft coming out of it, although in a building like that, that’s not uncommon. But here’s where it gets interesting.”
Every table was occupied, she says, and at one table the diners were “talking about things that freaked them out. One woman said she was afraid of loud whistle noises, like trains or whatever.” Then Leah came back upstairs and, suddenly, “that door opened, and it was like a tugboat tooted its engine. TOOT TOOT. Everyone was surprised. Everyone it heard it.”
No one was close to the door at the time, she says, and that’s not a noise anyone had heard in the tavern before – or since.
“I ran over and pushed the door shut. Everyone was like, OK then,” Leah says. The woman who said she was afraid of loud noises “just turned pale white. I was like, they’re putting on a show for you. She took it pretty good.”
The smoking boatman
The next incident was about five years later. Leah says she was bartending during the day — “I think it was a Saturday afternoon” — and the bar was pretty empty. There were just two women, talking and hanging out while Leah prepared for the evening crowd.
“I was cleaning up, going back and forth to the kitchen,” she says. “I suddenly I smelled the overwhelming smell of cigarette smoke. I came out from the kitchen and I looked at the two women, I said, ‘Did you just smell cigarette smoke?’ The one woman looked at the other and kind of smiled.
“I said, ‘You guys weren’t smoking in here, were you?’ They said no. The one woman said, ‘We weren’t smoking, but that guy was.’ I said, ‘Did he just leave?’ And she said, ‘He’s been gone for a long time.'”
Leah pauses a moment.
“She said, ‘He’s been dead for a long time.'”
The customer described the man, saying he looked like he worked on a boat — perhaps on the Union Canal? — and had “great big muttonchops.” And he was smoking, despite the modern statutes banning such a thing in public eateries.
The other woman said she didn’t see anything, but noted that her friend “sees stuff like this all the time.”
“I definitely smelled cigarette smoke,” Leah recalls. “It was wild.”
Shadowy lady on the stairs
The only other thing Leah has experienced at Harper’s Tavern is in the front hall and staircase to the second floor.
“When I would close up at night, sometimes it would feel like I’d see people walking by,” she says. “But no one was there. Just a faint shadow, either going up the staircase or down the hallway.
“I don’t know how to describe it. It was like a hazy shadow of someone. It definitely happened more than once.”
Leah only saw shadows, but she wasn’t the only witness to the apparition.
“One of the other bartenders used to say she would see a lady on the staircase,” she says. “I never saw her, but she’d be like, ‘Hey, I saw the lady again.’ And I remember other people would sometimes report seeing a lady there. But I never did.”
Come to think of it, Leah says, there’s a painting of the tavern in the dining room that seems to show a ghostly figure of a woman in a second-floor window.
“I think other people have seen her there,” she says. “She might be the resident haunt.”
Even so, she hastens to add, “I never felt creeped out there. Ever. I always really liked it there.”
Is that you, Granddad?
Even Joey has had an encounter or two. The tavern owner said she has seen “someone standing out of the corner of my eye at the hostess station.”
“When I walked by I recognized the man and I thought, ‘What are you doing here?’ I truly believe it was my grandfather that passed away in 1977,” she says. “I never felt scared. I wasn’t shook. I was just very calm.”
The experience actually gave her a happy feeling, she says.
“He didn’t have a particular connection” to Harper’s Tavern, Joey says, “but he was there before I bought the place.
“That doesn’t matter,” she adds. “Spirits … follow you where you are.”
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