Local restaurant known for housing apparitions, employees
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When Antoinette May walked into The Golden Oak recently looking for ghosts, she hit the jackpot. The place is full of them, she said.
May is the author of “Haunted Houses of California” and was in town exploring local “visitations” for a new edition of the book, due out in March 2006.
Many residents may be surprised to hear of the numerous reports of hauntings in Morgan Hill – one so real that the ghost was added to the disclosure form when the Keith family sold their early 20th century house across from Britton Middle School this year.
Even employees at The Morgan Hill Times have reported hearing ghosts on the second floor.
While arranging for May’s visit, Chamber of Commerce volunteer, Sherry Hemingway, asked everyone she knew about ghosts hovering over Morgan Hill. She was deluged with reports of spooky goings-on all over town.
But, by far, the Golden Oak Restaurant on Condit Road appears to be most hospitable to the spirit world. Manager Darlene Guevara and bartender Dave Mito, both longtime employees, have a raft of ghostly sightings to relate.
Though Guevara and Mito told May they are sensible people with a healthy dose of skepticism, they also admit it’s difficult to ignore the supernatural events they have witnessed at Golden Oak. Whether or not the apparitions are real, they both believe the sightings make good ghost stories for Halloween.
The late Ed Lazarrini, who once owned the restaurant on Condit Road, has been spotted sitting in his favorite chair near the fireplace in Golden Oak’s bar more than once by different people, Guevara said.
“Sometimes we can smell smoke – Ed smoked – but nobody smokes inside anymore,” she said. She’s experienced The Golden Oak’s aura for eight years.
Mito, who has tended bar at the restaurant for 11 years, says he’s noticed odd things too.
“The cash register will open up for no reason,” Mito said. “And glasses sometimes just jump off and shatter.”
There isn’t much room behind the bar for someone to sneak up and play a trick on him.
Mito also reports hearing unearthly doings in the stock room.
“In back we’ve heard a real loud high-pitched scream, like a loud yelp,” he said. “Nobody was there.”
Guevara said she was sitting in her office and saw someone come in. She called out, “Hey you can come out now,” but no one ever materialized, she reported.
Mito remembers when a man visiting friends sensed the apparitions after stopping in for a drink at the bar
“Wow, this place is really hopping,” he said, according to Mito.
Mito thought he was kidding, but the man said “no, it’s full of spirits.”
The man, who claimed to be a medium, told Mito there were seven or eight spirits, including Ed. The man and another self-professed medium who visited Golden Oak at a later date told Mito the alleged ghosts were friendly.
The sightings were not isolated to Golden Oak staff and visiting mediums, Guevara said. She remembers when accountant Jenny Amville’s son, Jake, supposedly saw Ed once. Though he was 4 years old at the time, Jake reportedly saw a man sitting in a chair even though his mother saw nothing.
Mito said another man claimed to spot a gray-haired woman peering over a wall in the bar while waiting for a drink. Though Mito told the man it was impossible, a friend of his claimed to see a similar woman in the same place two years later.
Other employees have seen spirits too. Hector Fernandez says he saw a ghostly presence sitting at table 11 in the dining room, while he was setting tables – twice.
And Golden Oak regular Gil Thomas heard running on the roof on night, but no one was found. Members of the bar’s regular band also reported seeing a woman singing on the roof as they left one night.
Guevara and a hostess at the restaurant even went as far to reach out to the ghostly residents by playing with a Ouija board, a board with letters on it that is believed by some to spell out messages from the spirit world, one night.
“We met the spirit of a 9-year-old boy who died here,” she said. “He was murdered (or died in an accident) in the cellar room – drowned in the wine holding tank and was buried on the property.”
Originally the winery of the LaMalfa family, the 1933 building’s walls are of hand-made bricks, the roof of redwood. Lazarrini remodeled it into a restaurant in 1984. Ken Harlan now owns the restaurant while Raymonde (Ramona) Etchebarne owns the building.
Etchebarne admitted that she didn’t really know about the building’s ghostly reputation when she bought it.
“But as long as they are friendly, they don’t bother anybody – and people only see them once in a while,” Etchebarne said
Mito said the staff isn’t concerned with alleged hauntings at the restaurants and deal with it through a healthy dose of disbelief.
Nonetheless, he invites both skeptics and believers to stop by and find out for themselves.
“We share spirits with the spirits,” he said.
