Dead Man Watching

Last weekend, Ghost Stories Ink had the chance to be on a paranormal panel at Crypticon, Minneapolis. Each of us were asked to tell a ghost story, and this is the story I shared:

Through college, I spent my summers waitressing. One summer, I worked at an old, supper-club-style restaurant named T. Wrights, they were especially known for their prime rib. (My personal favorite was the prime rib, grilled cheese sandwich.) But the restaurant has since been demolished and replaced by a health club. 

Because I was working every Friday and Saturday night (or, any nightshift I could find), my job doubled as my social life.  Nights, I worked in the "saloon" (yes, they really called it that) and days, I worked the lunch shift in the dining room. It was there that I learned how to quickly and efficiently, open a bottle of wine, a skill that has served me well. Only the most experienced waitresses were allowed in the dining room at night. Despite my wine-opening skills, that wasn't me. While the dining room might have been more lucrative, the bar shifts were much more fun.

The staff bonded, and like anywhere, had its own internal hierarchy. The bartenders and evening shift dining room waitresses were at the top. Lower on the list were the bar waitresses and cooks, with the bus boys and dishwashers bringing up the rear. However, no matter where we fell on that list, we worked hard and had fun. It was a huge kitchen, with lots of cooks. Most of them had a crazy sense of humor. It got hot, so they usually wore vintage polyester pants of some sort, it was the only fabric (at the time) that wicked away the sweat and was fire retardant. My friend Phil, wore these crazy black and white checkered pants, night after night. And when anyone teased him about them, it only made him want to wear them more.

One beautiful summer night, after close, we were sitting at the bar. Phil and one of the other cooks, decided they were going to continue their night on Lake Minnetonka in a canoe with a six-pack of beer. The rest of us opted to go home. 

The next morning, I was driving to work for my dayshift, and my route around the lake was detoured because of emergency vehicles. I later learned, they were dredging the lake. When I got to work, everyone was talking about how Phil stood up in the canoe and it tipped. His buddy made it back to shore, but Phil couldn't swim. It took them three days to find his body.

Restaurant life stopped and we all attended the funeral. A few days later, things were returning to normal. It was one of our busiest nights of the summer season. I was thinking about a million things I need for my tables, and I was really annoyed, because I had to stop and make an entire round of hot fudge sundaes for one of them. To add to the frustration, the ice cream was rock hard. Exasperated, I stopped and looked up. For some reason, I looked to the end of the kitchen, where the bar waitresses came and went from the saloon. And there, standing with his arms crossed and a big grin on his face, wearing his crazy black and white pants, was my friend Phil. 

I went back to digging out ice cream, wondering why Phil was standing on the waitress side, and not behind the grill. I froze when I remembered he was dead. I looked up again, but he was gone. If I had to guess, I think he was just stopping by to say goodbye.