Beall’s 1860 Restaurant – Macon, GA

I worked at Beall’s 1860 Restaurant years ago when it was located in the Bell House in Macon. I was there for quite a while, and one thing I learned pretty quickly was that if you worked there long enough, you would eventually hear a story about the building.

Most of the stories I heard involved the upstairs part of the house. I never really paid much attention to them at first because old buildings make noises. Floors creak, pipes make sounds, and when you work in a restaurant, you’re constantly hearing people moving around.

One night after closing, there were only a handful of us left finishing up our side work before going home. Everybody who was still working was downstairs. I remember hearing what sounded like somebody walking across the floor above us. At first I assumed one of the servers had gone back upstairs to grab something they forgot.

A little while later, I heard it again. It sounded exactly like somebody crossing the room. I asked another server if someone was still upstairs, and she immediately said she thought it was me. Neither of us had been upstairs.

Not long after that, a few of us heard it again at the same time. It wasn’t loud, but it was distinct enough that everybody stopped what they were doing and looked up.

One of the managers finally went upstairs to check. Nobody was there.

After that happened, I started paying more attention. It wasn’t every night, but every so often you’d hear footsteps upstairs after closing. Sometimes it sounded like someone crossing the floor. A couple of times, it sounded like a chair being moved.

The funny thing is that the employees who had worked there the longest hardly reacted anymore. New people would want to go investigate. The people who had been there for years usually just kept working.

I remember one coworker saying, “If it’s not asking for a menu, I’m not worried about it.”

Everybody laughed because that was kind of how people dealt with it.

I never saw a ghost or an apparition. Nothing dramatic like that. Just sounds that were hard to explain.

Maybe there was a perfectly normal reason for it. It was an old house with a lot of history.

But there were definitely nights when every employee left in the building was downstairs, and it still sounded like somebody was walking around upstairs.