Some ghostly regulars visited the old tavern

COEUR d’ALENE — A large black raven swooped from the roof of the old Fort Ground Grill on River Road before flying into the ocher leaves of a nearby tree as a magpie clucked amid the rustling of the leaves, setting an eerie mood.

Although the historic 1907 building has been quiet for a few years, the spirits of its occupants may still manifest themselves as former employees remember.

“I definitely think there’s liquor here, I really do,” said Diane Beck, who worked at the Fort Ground Grill from 2016 until it closed in 2022.

After visiting the building late Monday night before Halloween, Beck walked through the empty former restaurant and tavern, recounting the frequent supernatural occurrences she and her colleagues have encountered.

“It looks like our sightings were of some kind of spirits, ghosts, whatever we could imagine them to be, they were regular,” Beck said. – The same thing happened, not isolated cases, things that they seemed to expect. And I think friendly sentiments.”

Beck mostly worked during the day, but she heard a few horror stories from those who worked the last shift.

One common story was “The Closing Couple.”

“Table 17 was right here, the little table under the window, and that’s where the Final Couple always was,” she said, pointing to the south-facing window facing River Road.

Her colleagues were receiving cash at the register, and they could see a man and a woman sitting at a table out of the corner of their eye.

“As soon as you look, there’s nobody there,” Beck said. “They seem to really like the place, Final Couple.”

Tunister was accused of the men’s toilet mysteriously locking and unlocking itself. Customers would tell staff that the door was locked, so Beck would put a sign on the door saying “Please use the ladies’ room” because she didn’t have a key.

The restaurant would be busy and eventually the staff would notice that the guests were using the men’s room because the door was unlocked.

“I’d take the sign off and go, ‘Um,'” Beck said. “I subscribed more than once. I don’t know how he opened himself up, so it was always kind of weird.”

In the women’s room, a painting of a regal woman in an orange dress would give customers a sense of comfort.

“Some even said they looked up with this sensation and saw her lips moving,” Beck said.

Before it was a grill or tavern, the building at 705 E. River Ave. housed Gray’s grocery. According to a 2006 press article, until 1967 the River Avenue store was located on old U.S. Highway 95, which led to a bridge that crossed the Spokane River, which had long since washed away. Before that, the building housed a pharmacy and a confectionery. In 1959, an inn was added to the western side of the building. Currently, there is a room above the west side of the building, accessible only by a ladder.

They say that there is another entity.

“We called it The Bowler because it sounded like a ball rolling across the floor. Sometimes there was a little commotion at the end, you could hear it from the ceiling,” she said, stamping her feet. “Or something was thrown, but there was nothing there. Our theory was that it took a strike or a chute, and if it was a gutter, we didn’t hear anything else, but it sounded like a ball rolling across.”

The butter knife incident was something that still makes Beck laugh. One evening, two of her colleagues were closing up when they heard sounds coming from the kitchen—dishes clattering, dishes falling to the floor, typical restaurant noise.

“There was also some kind of mumbled conversation and it was just the two of them,” Beck said.

The closers asked each other: “Did you hear that?” to see if their imagination wins. They both confirmed what the other had heard.

With nothing left to defend themselves, they armed themselves with butter knives.

“That’s how scared they were that someone was there,” Beck said. “So they went back with their butter knives to the kitchen and nobody was there and they didn’t really see anything too bad.”

The disembodied voices fell silent as they investigated, but they were still shaken by the experience.

“When I came in the next day, one of them said, ‘That was so crazy,'” Beck said. – And they were two nice guys too.

Who knows if the invisible patrons of the Fort Ground Grill will continue to dine and be entertained since the place has no living inhabitants?

“I believe that anything is possible,” Beck said. “We know little about the entire universe. The opportunity exists; this is my vision. I would never deny that.”