BELLEVUE, Ky. — When he bought an old house to convert to a bar, a northern Kentucky man didn’t realize he was also inheriting some old house guests.
Since then, the owners, employees and guests all say they have had several supernatural encounters. Three Spirits Tavern in Bellevue has certainly been living up to its name since it opened.
One of Charlie Zimmerman’s favorite drinks to make when he’s working the bar is the “Funken Old Fashioned.” The drink is an ode to Nicholas Funken, a coal broker who built the building the bar currently occupies as a house in 1883.
It stayed in Funken’s family until Zimmerman and his wife, Leslie Blair, bought it in 2017. They converted the ground level into Three Spirits Tavern, and kept floors two and three as living space, which is now being used as a VRBO rental.
“Unbeknownst to us, when they left, some of the family members stayed here with them,” Zimmerman said.
“Three Spirits” was originally meant to have a double meaning, the first being beer, wine and bourbon, and the second being the three members of the Zimmerman family.
These days, it can be taken to have three meanings, based on the spirits Zimmerman says he, his employees and his guests have seen and heard. One example is the time he was working in the basement, waiting for a contractor to come by.
“I hear the door slam shut, and someone hard stomping across the floor. I’m thinking that’s got to be my guy,” Zimmermans said.
But when he came up, no one was there. So he thought he better lock the door.
“I’m looking around for my keys. I look over to the door. And my keys are still inside the door and it’s locked. No one had opened the door. No one had come through the building,” he said.
Or there’s the time he was coming in, and saw a reflection on the door.
“An old man standing by this back door. Handlebar mustache, long white blouse, trousers pulled up way high like they did in the old days. And I knew it was him. Old man Nick Funken, staring right at me. And for a second you just kind of freeze,” he said.
He said there’s been countless other things going missing, taps on the shoulder and voices coming from places like the women’s bathroom.
But don’t just take his word for it. Alex Van Winkle has been working at the bar for about three years and has plenty of his own stories.
“We hear footsteps running up the stairs from downstairs to the middle floor,” he said. “And then a couple seconds later it sounded like the same person, but ten times heavier, ran down the stairs. So at that point, we both got up from the bar. Because I was a little freaked out. We ran downstairs, and as soon as we got down, we saw the shelves that hold all the bourbon were kind of rocking a little bit back and forth, and then it got really cold, and we ran the hell out.”
Jordan Perez has only been working there for about eight months. One night, while opening, he was looking out on the patio through the window.
“And this thing just opened wide open, completely shut,” he said, pointing to the door. “And nobody was here, so I was like, oh first customers. Nobody ever came in.”
He used to be a skeptic of the paranormal, but not anymore.
“I don’t really believe in that kind of stuff, but you see something like that, it’s hard not to. So I kind of understand that this is their turf. I’m just here, I’m visiting, I respect what they’re doing,” Perez said.
That’s the philosophy Zimmerman has taken as well. And because of that, he said the encounters have been, for the most part, peaceful. He likened them to a drive-in movie.
“You’ll have a screen over here, and you’ll have a screen over here, right? Two movies at the same time playing. Every now and then somebody will bump the projector and they’ll kind of be overlaid like that, just for a few seconds, and then go back,” he said. “We’re gonna make this an awesome place for people to come and to congregate and share ideas and have spirited conversations and great drinks and good vibes, and that’s exactly what we’ve done,” he said.
People into that kind of thing can come for the spirits and stay for the spirits.