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CHAPTER 5

Bone Head’s BBQ

WILLIS

I WAS SITTING AROUND with some friends the week after Easter talking about the book I was writing. Everybody knew about the project, knew my deadline was fast approaching, and was excited to hear how it was going. They weren’t saying “no” if I happened to offer up a couple of ghost stories, either. One of them even had a ghost story for me.

“We were at Bone Head’s BBQ a few months ago,” my friend Jayne told me. “And my son swore he saw a guy standing by the foot of the stairs leading up to the second floor. When I looked up, I didn’t see anything, but when he told our waitress about it, she said it was probably one of the ghosts.”

I’ve known Jayne long enough to consider her reliable, even if I’ve never met her teenage son. “So where is this place?” I asked.

She grinned. “Ypsilanti, I think. I can’t remember which road—you can probably find it online.”

When I got home, I did a quick Internet search and found out that Bone Head’s BBQ is actually in Willis, a tiny community that’s little more than a dot on the map, just south of Ypsilanti Charter Township. I mapped out my route, packed my gear and an overnight bag, and headed westward on I-94 once again. Willis is actually within easy driving distance of metro-Detroit, but I like to be prepared and was planning a couple of other stops along the way.

I timed my arrival at Bone Head’s for lunch because I love BBQ-style food, but I nearly missed my destination and had to turn around. The restaurant did not look like much from the outside, and the town around it consisted of little more than railroad tracks, a post office, and a few streets of older-looking homes. But sometimes the best food is served up in the most out-of-the-way places.

The exterior of the old wood-sided building may have been unimpressive, but as soon as I walked in the door, I knew that I’d come to exactly the right place, both for lunch and ghost stories. The décor was reminiscent of an old general store, the atmosphere was relaxed, and the smells coming from the kitchen were enough to convince me I wouldn’t be disappointed. I was greeted by a friendly server and told her that while I was definitely staying for lunch, that wasn’t the real reason for my visit. I was writing a book about haunted places and wondered if there might be somebody there who could talk to me about ghosts.

She hesitated a moment before suggesting I should maybe check out their website.

Of course, I would definitely do that when I got back home. “But what I’m really hoping to get are some more personal stories,” I went on. “Anything you’ve experienced, or maybe something one of your co-workers or customers have told you.”

Over the course of my travels, I’ve learned that sometimes I’ve had to ask more than once. If someone says “no,” or “not interested,” I’ve backed off—some businesses really do not want a “haunted reputation.” But sometimes people have hesitated either because they weren’t sure what I was really asking them for, or because they didn’t want to come off as sounding crazy. Sometimes just talking to folks for a few minutes was the best way to get them to open up.

This was one of those times. My waitress looked over at a woman who was walking through the dining room and asked her if she had a few minutes to talk to someone writing a book.

The second woman introduced herself as Niki LaChance, one of the owners. Niki said she had a few minutes, but she was really in the middle of getting ready for lunch, so she couldn’t talk too long.

“That would be fantastic,” I assured her. Before becoming a full-time writer, I was a full-time waitress, so I completely understood the restaurant business and that sometimes a few minutes is all someone has to spare.

Niki refilled her iced tea and showed me over to a table, telling me that she and her husband, Jim, had bought the business about three years ago. “We opened up on Friday the thirteenth,” she said.

“That sounds auspicious,” I joked.

She laughed too. “It was. Actually, I like to say we came here by fate,” she added. The business had been struggling before they bought it, but Niki and Jim managed to turn Bone Head’s into a thriving, friendly neighborhood restaurant. “We’re definitely a ‘destination location,’” she added, when I mentioned almost missing the place. “There isn’t much else around here.”

Numerous spirits have been spotted by guests on the steps leading upstairs at Bone Head’s BBQ.

Niki told me that the village of Willis was named after Willis Potter, one of the area’s original landowners. “He came here around 1825.”

She took me over to the staircase—the same staircase where my friend’s son said he’d seen a ghost—leading up to the second floor to show me some of the old photos hanging on the wall.

“Originally, the building was a stagecoach stop,” Niki told me.

She told me that it was built in 1865 and had been the home of many different businesses over the course of the last century and a half. “It was a granary, a butcher shop, an ice house, a post office, a boarding house, and even a general store.” Then she went on to tell me that the staircase is one of the most active areas in the restaurant. Maybe that was why I had the chills as we stood on the stairs talking—or was it because I’d already heard about a ghost hanging around the stairwell?

“One of the waitresses told me once that she was standing at the base of the stairs and felt someone touching her hair,” said Niki. “She turned around expecting it to be one of the cooks messing with her—but no one was there.

“The building was completely restored back in the 1980s,” Niki went on, emphasizing that it was restored, not renovated. The former owners wanted to recapture the feel of the original building. “They brought in antiques and fixtures from all over the state,” she said, pointing out stained glass windows from an old church up north and a huge, old apothecary’s cabinet on the far wall filled with antiques.

As she continued telling me about the restaurant’s ghosts, it sounded as if more than just antiques were brought into the building when it was restored, however. Besides the man that my friend’s son had seen around the staircase, Bone Head’s is, according to the staff and customers, haunted by a pair of female specters. One of them is described as a teenage girl, who apparently came into the building along with that apothecary’s cabinet. The other female ghost is an older woman they call Nellie, who has, according to Niki, been with the building for as long as anyone could remember. One of the cooks claimed to have seen Nellie walk across the kitchen and out the back door—literally going through the door.

“We have a ghost cat, too, named Pickles,” said Nikki. “It was … 2009, I think. We’d just opened up, and I had a customer ask me why we allowed animals in the dining room. I told him that we didn’t. He swore he saw a white cat walking along the back wall. Other customers have seen him over the years too.”

Niki told me that they’ve had things like that happening from the very beginning. “One of the first things I personally witnessed was this big vase of flowers sliding right across one of the tables out on the sun porch. I was sitting right over there with three other people.” She pointed to a table by the window. “The vase went from the middle of the table right over the edge and broke.”

I had to admit, that seemed a little unusual.

“There was another time,” Niki went on, “when a lady came out of the restroom really shaken up. I asked her what happened. She told me she’d been standing in front of the mirror—there’s a wreath behind the mirrors. One of the glass globes on it just exploded. I made that wreath,” she added. “I know how well the ornaments are glued in place. There’s no reason for it to have just shattered like that. It didn’t fall, it just … exploded.”

That wasn’t the only ghostly encounter someone had had in the ladies’ restroom. Another time, Niki told me, one of the waitresses was in there by herself. “She told me that she dropped her cigarette lighter,” said Nikki. The lighter must have slid across the floor, because Niki said the waitress told her that as she was bending over to pick it up, it slid back to her, “like somebody had kicked it over to her.”

I supposed incidents like that were why Niki categorized the restaurant’s spirits as “friendly”—just a little mischievous from time to time. “Sometimes doors open and shut upstairs, or lights flicker. The old owners told me that sometimes the lights would sway back and forth in the bar for seemingly no reason at all,” she added.

Then Niki told me that after they bought the place, she asked the former owner if she had ever had any unusual experiences in the restaurant. “She lived in the apartment upstairs,” Niki explained. “She said that one morning she came down to get the paper from the front porch. She didn’t realize it was raining until she got downstairs, so she went back up to get her slippers. When she came back down, she found the wet newspaper sitting on the inside of the locked front door.”

Niki was also told that numerous people have seen “someone” cleaning the front upstairs windows—after the former owners moved out, but before Niki and her husband bought the place and moved into the upstairs apartment with their teenage daughter, Franchesca.

Antique humidor at Bone Head’s BBQ.

“What’s it like living in a haunted building?” I asked.

“At first my daughter was a little nervous—and sometimes it’s a little freaky when doors open up upstairs all by themselves. But the first thing I did when we moved in was ask God to watch over us and drive out anything bad. I figured the good spirits could stay, since they were here first. We haven’t had any problems; they’re just mischievous.”

Niki pointed out the clock on the wall and said that it had come with the restaurant, but it had never worked. The previous owners weren’t even sure it had “guts” or if it was just decorative.

“Then one night, at exactly eleven-thirty, it started bonging and the minute hand started to move. We were closed up for the night, all the lights were off, and there were just four of us in here. I’d just pulled the cash drawer and was taking it upstairs,” she said. “I turned around because I couldn’t figure out what the sound was at first. Then I realized it was the clock, and I called to the bartender and my brother-in-law, who were sitting in the bar area talking. I wanted them to see it. My brother-in-law got a chair and took the clock off the wall—all this time it had been bonging,” she added. “But as soon as he touched it, it stopped, and suddenly the time read five o’clock. It hasn’t made a sound or moved since then.

“And just recently,” she went on, “It was about seven-thirty in the morning, and I’d gone out for a run. When I got back, Jim told me that he could have sworn he heard me come in, walk up the stairs, go into the office, and open up the liquor cabinet. The cabinet door squeaks,” she explained. “It’s a pretty distinctive sound. He wondered what I was doing, so he went into the office—only I wasn’t back from my run yet. No one was in the office. The dog heard it too,” she added. “Jim told me the dog started barking when he heard the footsteps on the stairs.”

Niki said that they’d had a number of paranormal teams come out to investigate the place since they moved in. There have been a lot of orb photos taken as well as EVP (electronic voice phenomena) evidence and video clips, all of which can be accessed from Bone Head’s website.

Just about then Patrice, Niki’s office manager, came in. Niki called her over and explained what we were talking about, adding that Patrice had accompanied a couple of the paranormal teams when they were at the restaurant doing their investigations.

“Did you tell her about Bob?” Patrice asked.

“No, I almost forgot,” said Niki. “Bob used to live in the attic, right at the top of the stairs—it’s not much more than a crawl space, but I guess it used to be a bedroom. When the last team was out here they were communicating with him, weren’t they?”

Patrice nodded. “I think I remember them saying Bob told them he used to work on the property as some kind of caretaker or maintenance man.”

I wondered if maybe that was the apparition my friend’s son had seen.

“Have you had any experiences?” Niki asked Patrice.

“Not really … well, there was that one time I was sitting here with a friend of mine. She’s really sensitive to stuff like this,” explained Patrice. “She said she saw a little girl tugging on the apron sting of one of the waitresses.”

Later on, when Patrice asked that particular waitress if she’d felt anything unusual that night, the gal told her she’d felt a tugging on her apron string, but had just blown it off as “nothing.” Everyone agreed that was a little freaky. I thought so too.