Is Brentwood Restaurant & Wine Bistro really haunted? According to the patrons that have dined at Brentwood, it is, and the owners, Chef Eric Masson and his wife Kim, will confirm that they have seen strange, unexplained phenomena during the time that they have owned Brentwood.
A few of the strange happenings at Brentwood Restaurant that cannot be explained are sighing voices in the walls, ashtrays teetering on the edge of tables, multiple orbs in digital pictures, wine glasses falling off tables, equipment starting by itself, and a shadow in the corner of the bathroom that disappears as quickly as it appears. It has also been reported that customers declare that they feel something upstairs near the bar. They also get a strange feeling in the upstairs bathroom and sometimes getting locked in.
Kim and Eric Masson have also had some strange encounters with ghostly phenomena that cannot be explained. One day, Kim’s daughter was upstairs playing and looked at the security camera. Seeing a small child following her mother around, she ran downstairs and asked to play with the little boy. Her mother responded that there was not a little boy in the house. The little girl said, “No Mommy, he was standing right there next to you.” Kim was dumbfounded.
After that strange incident, Kim downloaded a cell phone app with an electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) that is commonly used by ghost hunters to record paranormal sound. After downloading the app, she had a strange feeling and asked, “Who is here?” and the reply was, “Clarence”. Kim does not feel that it is a coincidence that the original owner’s name was Clarence. Although Kim has been convinced that there are ghostly presences in the house, she says that she does not feel threatened. She feels more like she is being watched over.
The Brentwood Restaurant & Wine Bistro, located at 4269 Luck Ave in Little River, South Carolina, is a beautiful Victorian home that was built in 1910 for Clarence and Essie McCorsley. When Clarence passed away in the late 1940’s, the four children they had raised in the house were grown and married, so Essie turned the house into a bed and breakfast for fisherman who were visiting Little River for $1.50 per night. The building was moved from across Route 17 to its current location sometime in the 60-70’s. It has been owned and operated by various restaurateurs periodically until Chef Eric Masson and his wife purchased it, and it became the Brentwood Restaurant & Wine Bistro, bringing with it a rich, mysterious, paranormal history.
Eric and Kim Masson had been told that Brentwood was haunted when they bought it, but were skeptical that it was true. They had heard all the stories about glasses smashing and ash trays falling off tables. They had even taken a ghost tour in Charleston and learned that if there is paranormal activity in a house that the phones will have static. They had purchased many phones, and they all had static. They were still not convinced that Brentwood was haunted until an old picture was moved from the men’s restroom into the entrance hall, and a glass from the bar fell very hard, smashing into a million pieces. At that point, Eric started looking at pictures he had taken earlier, and sure enough, he saw orbs in them, convincing he and his wife that there was paranormal activity in the Brentwood.
One unforgettable night, Eric recalls equipment starting by itself, hearing voices, and things mysteriously moving. Eric says that it is hard to deny the obvious when things happen that cannot be explained. According to Eric, he has now made an agreement with the ghost that if the ghost leaves him alone, he will leave the ghost alone. He feels that the agreement has worked out well thus far.
If the above information has not convinced you that the Brentwood House is haunted, we will share one last story with you. The P.I.T. (Paranormal Investigation Team) Crew, which operates out of North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, spent the night in the Brentwood Restaurant on January 20, 2010 and captured the paranormal activity on camera. The following story was taken from https://monstervisiontv.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/25/. According to the PIT Crew, the night started out like any other investigation, but quickly turned into one of the most productive nights of paranormal activity that they have ever experienced.
“When you have researched and investigated a countless amount of allegedly haunted locations and you eventually find the treasure chest you have been looking for, it really gives you the most rewarding feeling… …it is almost spiritual,” said Head Investigator Stephen Lancaster.
Before the actual investigation started, the P.I.T Crew was given a tour of the facility by the owners who pointed out the “hot spots” where the most activity had been seen and felt. The owners also described the mysterious incidents that they had experienced in the restaurant. Afterwards, the crew set up their equipment to document the paranormal, and the investigation began around midnight after everyone had left Brentwood except for the P.I.T Crew. It did not take long before the paranormal activity began—doors closing, mysterious voices, objects moving, and a loud crash not far in front of the crew.
According to Lancaster, “Without a doubt, the Brentwood Wine Bistro is the most active location for paranormal activity that I have ever had the privilege of researching. That night changed a piece of me, and that piece will remain a very important part of my existence until the day I become what I’ve been looking for all of these years,”
One of the P.I.T Crew, Brad Hayes was positioned on the stairs where he could see both a portion of the downstairs and the upstairs at the same time. In the exact spot where the Brentwood employees had claimed to see an unexplainable shadow, Brad saw a black, shadowy figure walk across the second-floor hallway. He was so shocked that he thought the shadow must be a member of his crew, but the cameras later accounted for all the crew members proving that it was indeed a paranormal sighting.
“The Brentwood was definitely one of the most interesting places I have investigated in terms of the unexplained occurrences that were experienced. It’s not very common to find a place that has so many different types of unexplained events and experiences happening together,” P.I.T. Crew Researcher Brad Hayes stated. “What I experienced that night was quite intriguing and has yet to be explained,” added Brad.
As the night progressed, the activity continued to grow more frequent, and right after both Brad and Stephen experienced a severe temperature drop and a stationary camera powered off, they both heard a voice say, “What are you doing?”. As the crew went back through rooms that had been previously investigated, they found that things had been moved around—a dirty rag from inside a hamper in the kitchen was found outside of the hamper; a cork from a wine bottle was found in the middle of the bar area; a door that kept opening and closing was discovered open even after a chair had been placed in front of it, and the chair was placed back under the table.
“Brentwood had a mysterious atmosphere. It felt different from any other place I’ve investigated – especially in the kitchen and around the 2 bars. There were some events that could not be explained, like the loud crash on the lower level,” P.I.T. Crew Researcher Kevin McCray said.
As the night went on, the paranormal activity continued to escalate, which led to one of the most exciting experiences the team had ever had. As they walked towards the stairs, they heard what sounded like a female sighing upstairs and went upstairs to investigate. The camera upstairs had been drained of power, and Brad’s camera went dead as well. “At that moment, a six foot, three-dimensional, solid black silhouette of a person was seen walking behind the bar twenty feet in front of the investigators.” This not only validated what Brad had seen earlier, but it also confirmed the Brentwood employees’ paranormal sightings.
Although most of the cameras had been drained of power at the time of the sighting, the one that had been placed upstairs to document paranormal activity while the rest of the P.I.T Crew was in other areas of the restaurant caught a few seconds “of what appears to be a full bodied, completely black entity walking towards the camera” moments before it also powered off.
According to Stephen, the head investigator of the PIT Crew, “If you are lucky, you may experience one or two unexplainable occurrences during an investigation. All others can easily be dismissed through various debunking methods. The Brentwood was much different. These strange occurrences just kept happening, one right after the other, almost always on cue of the team making a verbal deal, or our cameras becoming drained of battery life. Uncanny is the best way to describe it.”
If you are renting Myrtle Beach Real Estate or living in North Myrtle Beach Real Estate and would like to join Mike Neff for a three-course dinner featuring delicious French cuisine, hear about ghost stories, and tell about your own experiences, you can sign up for the Brentwood Ghost Dinner and Tour at 843-249-2601. Take this opportunity to experience the strange paranormal phenomena, as you are guided through the 100-year-old house and told of all the strange and ghostly sightings that customers and owners have experienced. You can get more information on the event at Http://www.thebrentwoodrestaurant.com/.
