by Debbi | Feb 22, 2009 | Our Ghost
Last month, during a busy night at The Sandbar, someone found a green Fossil wallet on the floor and turned it in to the bartender. It sat behind the bar and waited for it's owner to claim it.
A few days later, the wallet was still there. I saw it behind the bar and decided to try to track down the owner. The first thing I looked for was a driver's license- and there wasn't one.
Hey Dave? There isn't a driver's license in this wallet.
So?
Well, how did the person get in the bar without an ID?
Oh. Good question. Well, maybe they had their driver's license in their pocket?
Good point, I do that sometimes because it's easier to get to. I found a debit card in the wallet and tried to call the bank, to see if they could call their customer and tell them where their wallet was, but the bank was closed. I didn't have any other bright ideas that day so I gave up.
Last weekend, I noticed the wallet was still at the bar, only now it was upstairs in the office. "This is ridiculous," I thought. I grabbed the wallet and went back downstairs to call the bank again.
I opened the wallet to pull out the debit card- and the first thing I saw was a driver's license staring back up at me. A driver's license that was most definitely not there the first time I opened this wallet.
Hey Dave? There's a driver's license in this wallet now...
I know! And I swear it wasn't in there on Thursday when I put the wallet upstairs!
Not only was there a driver's license, there was also a military ID that also was not there before. We are both convinced that the Sandbar ghost was at work again. I don't know how else to explain it.
On a side note, the wallet has been reunited with it's owner. I tried calling the bank again, but they were closed again. It's very strange in this 24-hour world to encounter a place that's closed. However, I used some detective skills (and the internet) to track down the owner and her cell phone number. She seemed very happy.
She must have finally stopped by to reclaim her wallet, because I haven't seen it at the bar lately.
by Debbi | Nov 3, 2008 | Our Ghost
Last night we had an emergency in the giant fish tank.
Our astute bartender Joe called Dave sometime during the evening to tell him that one of the pipes in the fish tank had dislodged. The tank was still bubbling, which meant the pump was working, which meant Dave wasn't too concerned. Frankly he was mostly impressed that Joe had noticed the pipe.
Throughout the night, Dave kept checking the webcam, and even though the bar wasn't busy, around 1:30 a.m. he decided he'd run down to the bar to check things out.
Well, when he got there, he discovered that the pump had just stopped working- no bubbles in the tank anymore. The fish tank has a highly specialized pump that you can't just run out to the store and buy.
Fortunately Dave has become something of an expert in maintaining fish tanks, and he had a couple of smaller pumps on hand that he was able to install to keep the fish tank going (and keep the fish alive).
He spent all day today at the bar trying to fix the tank. He found a place to work on the special pump, and finally around 7 p.m. tonight he came home completely exhausted but victorious. The fish tank is back to normal and all of the fish are alive.
Dave is convinced that the ghost had a hand in this– knocking the pipe (which had absolutely nothing to do with the pump) loose; alerting Joe to the loose pipe so he would call Dave; and bugging Dave enough that he finally went to the bar. If he hadn't gone down there last night, all of the fish would have died.
And Coleen doesn't have enough room in her freezer for all of them.
by Debbi | Dec 10, 2007 | Our Ghost
Erick worked here several years ago and still makes frequent visits. Here’s a funny experience he had. I like to think it was our ghost messing with him.
I was turning off the lights upstairs and there was a picture on the ground from the mermaid wall and I picked it up and put it back on the wall. Another picture fell off the wall so I picked it up and the picture was of my mom dancing on the bar. It was pretty damn wierd.
Of all the hundreds of photos on that wall, this was the one that fell. Because that’s what every guys wants to see, a photo of his mom dancing on the bar in the very place he works. Erick’s mom is cool.
We used to have quite the collection of mermaid polaroids on one of the walls upstairs. {Yes, I realize that there are no "mermaids" in this photo, but we allowed non-mermaid pictures of people we liked to be taped to the wall too.} Now they’re sitting in a dusty pile in my house, awaiting a new home. When I ditch the cubicle and stay at home eating bon bons and working on this blog all day find some extra time I’ll start scanning them and create a new Mermaid Wall of Fame on the blog so you can see all the beautiful mermaids we’ve invited to stand on our bar through the years.
by Debbi | Dec 8, 2007 | Our Ghost, Stories
Our ghost made an appearance today. Dave and I were at the bar this morning so he could do inventory and make a bank deposit, and while he was weighing and measuring bottles we heard a loud crash from the back room. We just kind of looked at each other and shrugged. Later, as we were leaving, I noticed fog coming out of the fog machine, but I thought that was normal so I didn’t even mention it to Dave.
After the basketball game (yay! KU won!) we stopped by the bar again and Coleen excitedly informed us that the ghost must be present, because fog had been coming out of the machine all day even though it wasn’t turned on. Okay, so maybe what I saw earlier wasn’t normal. I mentioned that some fog had escaped earlier and got some funny looks, like "why didn’t you say something?"
The Sandbar ghost first made an appearance on Tuesday, March 18, 2003. It was around 3 a.m., so technically it was really March 19. It was also- of course- a full moon, because every time there is a full moon something strange happens. Although usually it’s one of Dave’s ex-girlfriends making an appearance, not our ghost.
Dave and Dean had worked that night, and it was a fairly quiet night for a Tuesday, probably since our annual holiday of St. Patrick’s Day was the night before and everyone was tired.
Around 3:30 a.m., the boys were counting their tips and handling other routine closing duties, when half of a dollar bill came floating down from the ceiling and smacked onto the bar as loudly as if it had been thrown. They both heard it hit. It had "Dean" written on the dollar bill. Spooky, huh? It was like the dollar was trying to talk to Dean.
They kind of laughed it off and went about their business.
There is much more to this story, but unfortunately the guys didn’t write the whole story at once, and it’s spread amongst multiple notebooks, and I can’t find the rest of the story right now, so you’ll have to wait for another day to hear how it ends.
