PELICAN CLUB
Location: A popular New York City nightspot in its day, the Pelican Club is located on the corner of East 52nd and Fifth Street near the Vanderbilt Mansion on Manhattan at the end of what was known as Jazz Row in the Forties.
Description of Place: Enjoying a front theater facade, the Pelican Club has an entry and foyer befitting the most elegant Manhattan hotels. Basically run as a restaurant with a live band, it has a number of side venues including the Comedy Room for private parties and the Under-The-Street Bar in the basement for a taste of life in Prohibition-era New York. Five stories high, the top floor is utilized as offices, storage space and living quarters for a few tenants.
Ghostly Manifestations: Modern teenagers don't recall anything beyond anything before their lifetimes, but there was a time when adults went out to nightclubs and congregated with other adults. Compared to now, the old nightclubs of the Thirties and the Forties seemed sort of tame compared to the drugs and alcohol sub-culture of today. The modern teenager rebels against authority, but back then, the Mafia wasn't rebelling, it was in an all-out war against the Federal government to make as much money as it could off the illegal manufacture of liquor and a little prostitution on the side. The Pelican Club was no different than the other nightclubs of the time. From behind the facade of the comedians, dog acts and lines of chorus girls, criminals were amassing fortunes on par with senators and celebrities, sometimes with a local police chief or judge in their pocket.
Today, the restored Pelican Club is a shadow of what it once was. Now a fine restaurant with a lounge singer named Tanya Pickler and a house band, the customers no longer have to dine in fear of a mobster's bullet accidentally striking the wrong target. However, there is something else that leaves some guests somewhat discomfited. Some report feeling watched from empty corners while ladies who visit the ladies powder room hear sounds of a strong argument from nowhere. A playful prankster also makes his presence known, relighting candles and moving candles at closing.
"Hello, and welcome to the Pelican..." Constance Underwood is the general manager of the restored Pelican Club. Today, it has re-opened as a location for enthusiasts of Big Band music of the Forties. Live acts often include comedians like Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Engvall and Jeff Dunham, but during the day when staff is preparing to open or after hours when things are winding down, there is activity that distracts the employees from their work. Underwood has called the CGS to evaluate the location and see if there is a rational explanation for what is going on here.
"Staff has heard voices and footsteps, seen guests before opening, things move in the kitchen..." Underwood continues. "At night, we blow out all the candles on the tables and put up all the chairs on the tables, and yet, as we're heading out, that chair is always down with the candle burning." She points to a side table with two chairs. According to research, that was the usual seating area for Anthony "Ten Grand" Jackson, the mobster who controlled much of the rackets on the East Side of Manhattan in the 30s and 40s. From the side, Jackson could keep an eye on everyone coming into the night club, arrange secret meetings and plot his criminal endeavors. Whether he is still returning to his seat is anyone's guess.
Stories suggest that a mob informant was murdered here or an entertainer was accidentally killed during a mob meeting. The story is that he accidentally came upon their plotting, and he was taken out to keep him from repeating what he'd heard. Legends say he died there, but there are also other versions to the story. Some claim the Mafia had a bootleg bar in a part of the basement, and that the entertainer came across it. It ended badly for the singer, and people have reported seeing his ghost, wearing the tuxedo and tails he would have died in.
Most of the ghosts that have been reported through the Pelican Club's
lengthy history date back to Prohibition and Post-War New York. Some of them
shake glasses in the bar; others cause the lights to flicker and napkins to be strewn
throughout the dining area. Furniture in a locked room would be toppled by
mysterious interlopers. Locked doors occasionally opened by themselves. Women
sitting at the bar reported feeling someone’s breath on their necks and even
tickled or caressed by a very playful yet mischievous prankster.
Backstage, one can hear the sounds of voices from almost a hundred people, echoes of
dogs barking (old photos show dog acts were once performed here) and feeling the sensation of
pushing through a crowd of people. In the kitchen, objects move around by themselves. Head
chef Corey Guarini Once reported seeing a severed head staring up at him from the
prep area. He just looked at it, barely acknowledged it then looked back, but it
was gone. Meanwhile, assistant chef Constantine De Santis has periodically seen people sitting
in the dining area before the building has opened.
"I was a cocktail waitress at the Pelican for one extraordinary year of my life during 1981 and 1985." Demi Caldwell now works in publics relations for the location. "After the party died out and the last glass was washed, another kind of show began. At that hour, the club was in the hands of Quentin "Q-Ball" Huff, a charming, funnyman who doubled as security. One night on his way out the back door, he heard banging on the piano in the Comedy Room, a small venue on the second floor. Some of the waitresses had already reported odd occurrences in there; pranks, really. One of the young women would open the room, light candles, arrange tables and leave. Five minutes later, she'd return to find the candles out, the lights off, the door locked. When she returned with the key, she'd find the door open and the room set up again. Quentin rushed upstairs when he heard the piano, thinking someone was locked in. As soon as he unlocked the door, the noise stopped. He flipped on the light, but no one was in the room. He checked all corners, then locked up. As he turned to leave, he heard it again, someone deliberately banging the keys of the piano. He's heard the piano on numerous other occasions. There was never anyone to be seen in the room. just a playful spirit with a tin ear having a laugh."
"Another night, Quentin made the final rounds in the large dining room which had been the Pelican's showroom. He moved to lock up, but stopped in his tracks. A chair on one end of the stage began to slide across to the other side. He stood frozen, watching as the chair glided effortlessly three feet, ten feet, twenty. In a flash, he found his feet and got out of there. Still another night, he went to the rear of the empty stage to turn off a light. Seconds later, he turned around to find forty chairs silently piled center stage, ten feet away.
Quentin's wife had her doubts when she first heard the stories, but she got all the proof she wanted one evening waiting in the car for him by the back door. As he turned the corner and walked toward her, he saw her go pale, her mouth open. She pointed and he spun around. A ghostly form, a transparent male figure was peeking around the corner of the building at him, making sure the coast was clear.
Sightings weren't limited to night. One afternoon, as Quentin played a video game in an annex off the kitchen, he felt a man watching from several feet behind. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a guy in a pin-striped suit and bowler hat. Quentin reached a break in the game and turned to acknowledge the guy.
"He disappeared right before my eyes." Huff says.. "I didn't even wait for my bonus man, I just ran."
Later that afternoon, the same figure was seen in a third floor office, crouching in terror in a corner. Psychics believe ghosts often recreate the moment of their deaths. If that's true, then it would appear this man met his maker here. The mob had fingers in this club in the '40s and '50s. Back then, mobster Ten-Grand Jackson shook the place down every week. Chances are someone got bumped off.
"There were so many occurrences at here we called the psychology department at New York University in the summer of 1982." Underwood continues. "One of them, Dr. Ray Stantz, whose New York Paranormal team gained fame with the "Ghostbusters" movie, very eagerly decided to visit the location. The moment he entered the basement, he fell to the ground, struck with agonizing pain in his legs. His believed he had tapped into excruciating pain that someone sometime had suffered in that spot. He felt very strongly that this pain was no accident, that it was purposely inflicted. The basement to him felt like the heart of the building, where the mob carried out evil deeds. Quentin agreed with him. Around 3AM one morning, he had heard a spectral laughter coming from the basement. He stood in horror as the padlocked gate across the entrance began to rattle and shake as if someone was trying to break through it. The gate groaned, then suddenly snapped back in position, but standing in the hall was a hulking blacker-than-black amorphous figure almost seven feet tall.
"I got a tremendous feeling of malevolence from it," Caldwell vowed never to go to the basement alone again. "As the fates and owner Simon Cunningham would have it, Quentin did have to go to the basement again. To be safe, he took two friends with him, dishwasher Bill Bice and waitress Monica "Nikki" Clarkson. The trio was no sooner downstairs than one of them saw a black shadow rising from a corner. Quentin didn't see anything this time, but he didn't have to. He grabbed his friend's hands; they were burning hot as if he'd held them against a stove, and yet, they could see their breath like it was freezing. As they clambered up the stairs, a piece of cardboard fell from out of nowhere and hit Quentin on the hand. He picked it up. It had his name written on it."
Psychics visiting the night club years ago claimed to see numbers of people in fine dress sitting in the chairs of the show room as if waiting for the show to start. One in particular reported that an employee had been killed by accident by the Mafia and buried behind one of the club's basement walls. The body has yet to be found, but in the psychic’s defense, the search was called off early. Unfortunately, during the 1987 renovation, the basement was almost entirely gutted, redone and expanded to accompany a wine cellar, basement bar area and other amenities. If there were any human remains down there, they might have been carried away as debris or ground up and encased behind the concrete walls.
"I do know there were rumors of a secret speakeasy under the street that dating back to Prohibition." Underwood adds. "With the attention focused on finding it, I doubt they would have missed remains of a body buried in the walls."
Some rumors claim the building was built on a Quaker cemetery from the 18th Century, but there seems to be little historically to agree with this story, and although most of the deaths and hauntings seem tied to Prohibition, there was much more recently the murder of one of the club’s owners.
Shortly before the murder of restaurateur Simon Cunningham who owned the place in 1990, Radio Station 105.7 was going to hold an annual Halloween séance at the club. The medium reportedly was too anxious to do the normal séance there; participants claim he warned Cunningham that the spirits were telling him something bad was about to happen. The two business partners had purchased the Pelican in 1987 as a former shipping company and had spent money restoring it back into a restaurant and nightclub, but the task was bigger than they expected. As the business faced financial difficulties getting started, Cunningham and his business partner, Andy Jefferson, argued over how to handle the dwindling budget. One was ready to pack it in, the other wanted to redouble their efforts, then, on December 27, 1996, Andy found Simon’s lifeless body crouching in the corner behind his desk in his upstairs office. Many believe this might have been what others had seen several years before in a vision in 1982. He had been shot. Suspicion was quickly cast on Jefferson, but the Assistant Chef back then, Brenda DioGuardi, provided his alibi. She later recanted it, realizing she was mistaken on the date, and Randy Jefferson was later arrested and found guilty of murder. He is now serving a life term in prison.
"Today, we hear sounds and noises from that office." Underwood continues. "I've heard the chair squeak by itself, and it sometimes rolls out from behind the desk to the center of the room. I've never seen Simon's spirit, but I believe he's still here looking over the place and trying to keep the other ghosts in check."
History: Now a restaurant and music hall with occasional live acts, the Pelican Club was once one of the most popular night clubs in New York City through the Twenties to the mid-Fifties. Opened in 1704 as a theater, the building served as a tavern, general store, boarding house and post office. Aaron Burr met clients here, and men like Patrick Hale, Benjamin Franklin, Governor George Clinton and Alexander Hamilton dined and stayed here while it was an inn. Completely renovated in 1912 and refurbished in 1986, it got its name from Pelican Port, a city in Maine where former owner Monte Rossen was born.
Identity of Ghosts: The most popular of the ghosts reported here is Buster "Buzzy" Bellew (real name: Robert Dingle), a comic entertainer from Schenectady who turned informant for the police in the murder of a stage dancer named Choo-Choo La Verne (real name: Wilhelmina "Minnie" Smith/Schmidt). Believed murdered backstage after his show, his body was found dumped in the lake in Brooklyn's Prospect Park three weeks after his death. Dancers and entertainers even report they saw Buzzy several times backstage even in the days before his body was found. Although his playful and mischievous ghost is blamed for the pranks and mischief on the main floor, the more sinister presence in the basement is often credited to Anthony "Ten Grand" Jackson, the mobster who ordered Buzzy's death, coming and going through an underground speakeasy many believe still has yet to be found. Other apparitions are blamed on the psychic imprint or place memories on the site, specifically the backstage area where much of the costumes, props and sets from the Forties still remain.
Source/Comments: Wonder Man (1945) - Activity and history based on the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, California, the Quantum Leap Cafe in Manhattan, New York, the Hollywood Roosevelt in Hollywood, California, the Old Eagle Club in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the General Wayne Inn in Merion Station, Pennsylvania.