A Spooky Spot: The Cantina Bar
By: Alexandra Sutter WMBD/WYZZ
Updated: October 30, 2012
PEKIN -- With Halloween just one day away, we wanted to take a look at some of the area's spookiest spots. We found a bar in Pekin called The Cantina... and it brings in some unusual visitors.
Every place has a history... but the Cantina bar in Pekin has one that doesn't want to go away.
Co-owner Sylvia Shultz said, "The thing about this building is it used to be the headquarters for the Knights of Pythias and their seal is worked into this ceiling."
But here's the catch. Shultz tells us, "When we got the keys to the bar last August, we were talking with the former owner and he said, that oh by the way, your bar is haunted."
Shultz has brought in several mediums, people who claim they can communicate with the dead. They all tell her the same thing. "There are people from years upon years upon years and they're all living in different layers and they're completely unaware of each other."
One spirit that the bar often sees is a man in a top hat... he walks up the stairs, and into the bathroom, but he never comes out.
Shultz said when the bartender first saw the spirit, he went in the men's room to check on him and the guy was gone. She calls that ghost "top hat guy," because she says he always comes up the stairs and goes into the restroom.
She said some of her bartenders get nervous when they're alone. She said the jukebox flips on and the floor will move with the sound of invisible footsteps.
She also said there's an old bartender from the 1920s. "There's a guy behind the bar, his name is Max or Melvin or something and he is kind of irritated when people come in looking for ghosts. He says we're not a three-ring circus."
As for the skeptics, Shultz said she doesn't need you to believe... She's had enough experiences to know her bar is the hang out for another kind of visitor.
The Central Illinois Ghost Hunters has investigated the Cantina. It said the Peoria area is filled with haunted spots including the Peoria Public Library, Springdale Cemetery and of course, the old Bartonville State Mental Hospital.
