Fall has arrived, and that means it’s spooky season. Legend holds that as nights grow longer, the veil separating the material and spiritual worlds thins, bringing haunted happenings and unseen forces. For whatever reason, the veil in Pittsburgh has always been extra permeable, and the region boasts a preponderance of places believed to be haunted. For this year’s Fall Guide, Pittsburgh City Paper zeroed in on some of our favorite haunted restaurants and bars (and the list we offer is by no means complete). From a ghost lady in white to a haunted railroad station to a lurid Biddle brothers connection, these eerie establishments are sure to make your hair stand on end — or at least offer a storied place to grab a beer.
The Abbey on Butler Street
4635 Butler St., Lawrenceville. theabbeyonbutlerstreet.com
One theory about why Pittsburgh locales are so haunted is that buildings go through so many renovations. In this respect, The Abbey on Butler Street stands a head above, as the huge cruciform-shaped space in Lawrenceville was formerly a Methodist church, a brass foundry, and a funeral home, converted during the Great Depression. The Abbey’s website details all the artifacts uncovered during its “massive” remodel: industrial foundry lights above what’s now its coffeehouse; a church hall formerly at 47th St. and Butler St.; and the remnants of a stone-carving business that was transformed into a patio and bar.
Today, The Abbey evokes an otherworldly past. The softly-lit coffeehouse, pub, and bistro is decorated with Old World-style heavy wood, reclaimed stained glass windows, vintage signs, and gold medieval script that winds throughout the building.
Naturally, most of the haunting rumors are tied to the former funeral home. Staff have reported seeing ghostly figures and hearing doors slam on their own.
“Respectfully, we honor the lives and all of loved ones that met here to send off what some refer to as the Greatest Generation,” the restaurant wrote on its website.
Shawn Kelly, founder of the Pittsburgh Paranormal Society (and one of the only ghost hunters to explore the National Aviary), tells City Paper, “Funeral homes are the best. I love funeral homes.” Kelly has investigated a handful of the haunted restaurants on our list.
In his opinion, funeral homes become haunted not simply because the dead passed through them, but because a family-owned funeral parlor offers some measure of comfort.
“I think a lot of spirits feel comfortable at a funeral home because it’s [a] somewhat decent [place],” he says.
Grand Concourse Restaurant
100 W. Station Square Dr., South Side. grandconcourserestaurant.com
One look at the Grand Concourse and I’m willing to believe the rumors of Station Square’s death are greatly exaggerated. The upscale restaurant — which boasts “unmatched grandeur” and is a perennial pick for Best Brunch in CP’s Best of PGH Readers’ Poll — was originally the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Station, which opened in 1901.
In 1976, the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation began converting the entire freight yard site into Station Square, establishing the Landmarks Building. Within it, they turned the historic railroad terminal, with its marble columns, cathedral ceilings, and Victorian and Edwardian architecture, into the Grand Concourse Restaurant. Haunting rumors have persisted since.
The Haunted Pittsburgh ghost tour compiled stories about the restaurant. After hours, there are apparently “creepy otherworldly sounds.” A kitchen worker “confided” that faucets turn on by themselves. Morning staff discover objects knocked over or misplaced overnight. Once, a cart of dishes was found dumped on the floor; managers played back security video to see the same cart untouched all night.
Apparently the hauntings extend to the entire Landmarks Building (which also houses the Foundation’s offices). In April 2004, visitors reported being terrified after glimpsing a “white translucent figure” in a corridor. The specter was hovering mid-air with one arm draped over a railing. Not exactly what you expect to see, even after some strong mimosas.
Max’s Allegheny Tavern
537 Suismon St., North Side. maxsalleghenytavern.com
There’s something spirits love about the North Side. Before Pittsburgh officially had an H in its name and Allegheny City was a separate municipality, the area was developed by German-speaking (and later Croatian) immigrants, with many buildings from that time still in existence today.
Max’s Allegheny Tavern, a staple in the Deutschtown neighborhood, began as a grocery store nearly 175 years ago. In 1860, it became Farmers and Drovers Hotel (later the Hotel Rahn), and the contours of the original hotel survived into the 21st century.
Reopened as Max’s in 1903, the tavern has always been family-run, specializing in traditional German fare including potato pancakes, sausages, Bavarian soft pretzels, and “the great schnitzels of Europe.” The restaurant has also kept touches from prior centuries with two antique five-door wooden ice boxes, now used for storage, and is furnished with solid wood and Tiffany-style stained glass for an Old World aura.
With such a storied history, hauntings should come as no surprise. Largely, the family seems to keep the tavern’s supernatural happenings under wraps, but a couple years after forming the Pittsburgh Paranormal Society in 2006, Shawn Kelly and the team were invited by a friend to explore.
“They knew it was haunted. They were OK with the ghost[s] in there,” Kelly tells CP. “They just wanted to see what they [had].”
Objects had been moved around. Bartenders heard whispers and disembodied voices while getting ice and beer from the stone-walled basement (also reportedly a speakeasy during Prohibition). In the old hotel space upstairs, heavy oak doors slammed by themselves. Kelly says the paranormal team investigated using cutting-edge technology, which in the late 2000s meant digital cameras and voice recorders.
“There was a lot of activity in there, and it was all good,” he remembers. Apparently, the ghosts felt attached to the old neighborhood.
“It was mainly the spirits from that time when the North Side was really picking up … [around when Max’s opened] when it was in its heyday,” Kelly says.
800 Vinial St., North Side. pennbrew.com
Penn Brewery is Pittsburgh’s oldest and largest brewery, which naturally comes with its share of spooky tales. Though the modern Penn Brewery that Pittsburghers know began in 1986, the site was originally settled by the Germans of Deutschtown, including the Eberhardt and Ober families. Breweries existed on the site as far back as 1848, and, before refrigeration, brewers kept barrels of beer cool in what Penn Brewery’s website describes as “a labyrinth of stone caves and tunnels.”
These lagering caves remain today — some of only a handful left in the United States, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places — perpetually kept dark and chilly at 55 degrees. Odd things have been spotted in the dungeon-like subterranean caves.
Hauntings at Penn Brewery don’t end there. According to the brewery, the women’s bathroom is “notoriously particularly haunted.” Visitors should also stay wary of the basement, where a new employee was recently assisted by a man in suspenders who showed her where the brewery’s to-go boxes were. After going back upstairs and telling two kitchen workers about the man who helped her, they informed her that no one else was in the building except the three of them. Later, another employee saw the same man in suspenders in the brewery’s lobby.
Harold’s Haunt
142 Grant Ave., Millvale. haroldshaunt.wixsite.com/haroldshaunt
Completing the North-of-the-Allegheny trifecta, Harold’s Haunt sits in the heart of ultra-haunted Millvale. The newest establishment on our list, the witchy-themed “haunted they bar” and inclusive LGBTQ space has already embraced its many ghostly connections.
Harold’s is named after the ghost from the bar’s sister business, metaphysical and LGBTQ gift shop Maude’s Paperwing Gallery. After co-owners Athena Flint and Indigo Baloch opened Maude’s in 2021, they noticed a malevolent presence (Flint describes the experience on the podcast Ghoul on Ghoul, hosted by CP’s A&E Editor Amanda Waltz). Electronic devices would fritz out, and a medium who visited the store — now located above Harold’s — picked up on the poltergeist energy. The Maude’s team hired a medium to communicate with the surly ghost, revealing he was a 60-year-old man caught in a “time loop” who apparently made racist and sexist remarks.
In an ironic turn, the team dubbed the ghost Harold and named the bar after him (even creating a mustachioed version for the Harold’s logo). But they found out shortly after that the space came with its own spirits. While setting up the bar, Flint brought in a box of tarot cards and witnessed three cocktail strainers launch out of a glass. An unseen force (now believed to be the ghost of a former bar owner, Paul) also intervened at a crucial moment, when a light inexplicably turned on inside the dark bar. The light alerted Flint and friends to a cooler leaking directly over an electric outlet. Flint and her friend Ringa Sunn recently recounted the incident, which they believe averted a fire, to paranormal investigators at Bump in the Night Society. This is just a taste of the many haunted happenings at Harold’s, where you can regularly catch spooky events like a Dark Histories Walking Tour of Millvale, a funeral-themed second anniversary celebration, and full moon parties.
Shiloh Gastro
123 Shiloh St., Mt. Washington. shilohgastro.com
Shiloh Gastro has the distinction of not only being a haunted hotspot, but connected to Pittsburgh’s most infamous true crime. The Victorian house-turned-gastropub atop Mt. Washington was the family home of Kate Soffel, the woman who risked it all to spring the Biddle brothers from Allegheny County Jail in 1902. Soffel, who was married to the warden and ministered to condemned men, met the brothers on death row. Though they’d been convicted of a string of robberies that left a grocer dead, the dashing younger Biddle, Ed, pled innocence.
Soffel, a 35-year-old mother of four, became infatuated with 24-year-old Ed. She smuggled in a file to saw through his cell bars and the trio broke out. Ed and Kate are believed to have consummated their affair before being caught by police. Both brothers were shot and killed, while Soffel tried to shoot herself but survived. Today, her ghost supposedly waits around the house on Shiloh St. pining for her dead boy toy to return.
CP visited Shiloh Gastro to investigate the haunting rumors and it more than delivered. Staff reported smelling cigarette smoke — supposedly coming from the Soffels’ former bedroom — hearing phantom noises, and seeing floating orbs in the upstairs dining room. The women’s bathroom is known to conjure Soffel herself, and when I went in alone and called her name, the lights flickered and my phone froze. Go for the comfort food and patio, then try out this Beetlejuice maneuver if you dare.
Church Brew Works
3525 Liberty Ave., Lawrenceville. churchbrew.com
Though long rumored to be haunted, Church Brew Works was catapulted to a new level of fame when it was featured on a 2022 episode of Ghost Hunters. Paranormal investigators were called to “The Most Haunted Brewery” at the behest of longtime owner Sean Casey, who, at least for purposes of the show, was concerned staff were getting too spooked.
In the episode, a Church Brew Works accountant reports seeing a chair move on its own. A cook feels followed in the kitchen. Other staff hear footsteps, phantom voices, and faint music from the church organ when no one else is in the building.
Naturally, the ghost hunters look into the Church Brew Works’ former life as St. John the Baptist Church, established in 1902 to serve Lawrenceville’s Irish and Scottish Catholic parishioners. The sprawling original property included a convent (which Casey recently purchased), a school, and the rectory, which became the brewery’s kitchen, all out of sight for patrons today. Filming over three nights, the Ghost Hunters team posted up in an especially dark and derelict part of the former school, spoke to a wayward spirit or two — even claiming to pick up a worshipful ghost rasping “Jesus” on an electronic recording — and considered the case closed.
Church Brew Works Head Brewer Matt Moninger tells CP that, for him, the reality is more complex than the reality TV.
Moninger shares the most spectacular story in the Ghost Hunters episode, describing his encounters with a pale young woman — he puts her age at 16 to 22 — in a long white dress. Though he can’t recall exact dates, he was working as a brewer in 2006-7, in his late 20s, and she ultimately appeared four times over several months before vanishing.
He first glimpsed her going up the old rectory steps that connect to the brewery’s kitchen. Initially, Moninger thought the specter was a server he didn’t recognize.
“She wasn't somebody who had vampire teeth or six-inch claws or [who was] hissing at me,” he remembers. “She seemed to be [a] kind of lost, maybe scared, needing help, sort of apparition who just seemed to be out of place.”
“Don’t get me wrong … it’s off-putting,” he adds. “It wasn't normal … but she wasn't terrifying or even aggressive in any way, shape, or form. So it was hard for me to frame it that way.”
Another peculiarity was that only he could see the ghost, even though she appeared in the busiest parts of the restaurant. She manifested at a table along the apse at the front of the church and behind the altar where there are visible brew tanks.
But the final sighting was a private moment of communion, and Moninger remembers it vividly.
Walking out of the kitchen one morning, he suddenly spotted the ghost five to 10 feet away, among the restaurant’s tables.
“She was standing right there, just looking at me,” he tells CP. “We were just making eye contact for [maybe] one to 10 seconds. I have no idea … Even just talking about it gives me goosebumps because it was just that intense.”
“I don't know how to describe it, because there’s absolutely nothing romantic about this,” he says. “But it's just like when you lock eyes with somebody that you feel passionate about and you have that feeling of something's leaving your body and going into theirs, and something’s leaving theirs and coming into yours. It’s like you have this fixation. That's kind of like what it was [like], really intensely, and then she was just gone … After that, I never saw her again.”
The “weirdest part” Moninger believes, is that the ghost didn’t fade or “poof out of existence” like in a cartoon. She simply disappeared as if never there, leaving him “struck or mesmerized.”
Moninger is particular about how he describes the apparition. He doesn’t want to come across as narcissistic or paternalistic or imply the ghost was a “damsel in distress” uniquely in need of his help.
For her, “nothing came out of it,” he tells CP. “I chased her around the building a couple of times … I would have been the scary one in that situation.”
Conversely, seeing her changed him. For Moninger, it engendered an interest in the paranormal, neuropsychology, and human consciousness. He remains “agnostic” about trying to assign a definitive explanation to the experience — profound as it was — or even make basic assumptions like the ghost being a dead person. In the years since, the encounter expanded his view of reality.
“We[’ve] evolved to see what we need to see in order to survive,” he says. “This is tiny compared to the electromagnetic spectrum … we live in [a] tiny, itty bitty sliver of the universe.”
Even resisting complete explanation, Moninger admits that the ghost sightings steered the course of his career 15 years later. After leaving Church Brew Works in 2014, he returned to film the Ghost Hunters episode in 2021, and ultimately came back aboard as head brewer.
“Rather than me helping her,” he says, the common interpretation, “she was responsible for bringing me back here.”
