Is the ‘lady in red’a ghost at Hunter's?
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By Bill Wundram | Saturday, January 27, 2007 |
(John Schultz/QUAD-CITY TIMES) Bob Curtis, manager of Hunter’s Club in Rock Island, and the oil painting that is a saloon classic.
Set ’em up, Joe. One for the road … but what’s that? Is it real? Or is it a ghost?
“The first time I saw her, which was after the place had been long closed for the night, she was in a red dress.”
Mark Polaschek, a co-owner of Hunter’s Club, is talking about phantom things that are happening at the Rock Island landmark bar that he and a partner are tearing apart to give a new look and new life. It’s claimed there are strange goings-on in the bar that has had an Illinois liquor license since 1933. After all those years, anything could be expected, but it’s the “lady in red” ghost that makes a believer out of Mark.
“I’ve seen her. I will swear to God on a stack of Bibles that I have seen her,” he says.
“The first time was at 6 in the morning; I came to check the safe to see how much we took in the night before. In the back stairwell I heard something. There she was. Red dress. Dark hair in a bun, an attractive woman about 55 or 60. She smiled at me. I started to say, ‘Who the hell are you?’ when she disappeared. I ran all over the place, trying to find her. She had vanished.”
Mark saw her on another occasion, by the Hunter’s oil painting of a nude that is an icon in saloon art. She was still in red dress, disappearing up the stairs to the second floor that is said to have once been a brothel. Those tales are usually illusory. Every joint was said to have had naughty girls.
“But I know she’s around. She’s a good ghost. I think she’s happy that some young guys are running the place again.”
Mark’s partner, Ray McDevitt, says there are new TVs at Hunter’s, but the volume goes up and down without any reason. “Stuff falls off the shelves when it shouldn’t,” he says. Lights that were off at night when the place locked up have been back on in the morning.
Bob Curtis, the manager, tells of being alone in the place when the long kitchen spray hose began swinging in the air like wild. “And the water wasn’t even turned on,” he says.
Mark is especially spooked by two glasses on the bar. “I have closed up the place, wiped off the bar so it’s clear, and locked the door with the only key. Next morning I can be the first one in and there will be two empty glasses on the bar. There had been drinks in them, with water at the bottom where the ice cubes had melted.” He is serious and wants to hire a poltergeist expert to check out the place.
Few Quad-Citizens have spent more time at Hunter’s than Rich Johnson of Moline. Rich played there for 23 years with the Riverboaters with such great pianists as Warren Parrish. “Ghosts at Hunter’s? I wouldn’t doubt that. I wouldn’t doubt anything about that place,” says Rich.
I scoped the place, looking up the stairs toward peeling wallpaper.” There were no ghosts. None in the basement, either. That was where prohibition days hooch was said to be cooked.
Maybe if I return in the wee small hours of the morning, the lady in red will be there to share a drink. “One for my baby, and one more for the road.”
Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com.
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