Chester Chatter: Giving them a ghost of a chance

By Ruthie Douglas
©2021 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Year’s ago, on a warm summer day while I was working at Raspberries and Tyme restaurant, a woman and her son came in for lunch.  A waitress invited the pair to sit down as they finished setting up.

After a while, the woman asked one of the waitresses what the building had been used for before it became a restaurant. Since the waitress was fairly new to town, she grabbed me from the kitchen.

I brushed myself off and went out to the dining room. The woman told me she was a psychic and that while sitting there she had “seen” several men dressed in various U.S. military uniforms, all drinking at a small bar.  She asked me what it was all about. I told her that the building had once been the American Legion Hall.

“Oh, that was it. Now I know why men were out there marching on the Village Green,” she said. Those men, she continued, were not in uniform but were practicing. She also told me that Chester was loaded with ghosts of all kinds. Some of the waitresses laughed in disbelief.

She also told me that living in the basement was a grandfather-like figure and his 12-year-old granddaughter. In the basement is where I prepped all the vegetables for the many salads and vegetarian dishes we made.

Every morning thereafter I called out “Good morning Becky. Good morning Al.” There was never any indication of a ghost in the place, but I thought to give them names just in case.