Spooky investigations

Five Crowns restaurant Manager Rose Stone still gets spooked sometimes when she’s closing up at the landmark Corona del Mar eatery on East Coast Highway late at night.

“I run out of the building some nights,” she said.

Five Crowns is an old, creaky building with twisting, narrow hallways that hold as many stories as the wine list is long. The faux candle-flame light bulbs in the light fixtures regularly blink and flicker off and on, much to Stone’s irritation, who is forever adjusting the offending bulbs.

There is a secret compartment in one dining room where guests can leave notes. Cabinets and doors fly open on their own for no particular reason. A stack of plates at a server station has rattled as if shaken by an earthquake.

Some even say the mock-Tudor building is haunted.

Now a group of paranormal investigators from the newly formed Orange County Supernatural Society want to have a look around the place. With the blessing of the restaurant management, the investigators have plans in the next few weeks to set up audio and video recording equipment around the establishment during the wee hours of the morning to hunt for ghosts.

“Video is best, and a full-body apparition is the Holy Grail,” Orange County Supernatural Society member Jeff Mobley said.

A small group of part-time ghost hunters and paranormal enthusiasts, the Orange County Supernatural Society hopes to pick up voices or some sort of apparition with its recording equipment.

“It’s an old building, and who knows what has gone on there,” Mobley said.

Construction on the building that houses Five Crowns in Corona del Mar began in 1936.

Patterned after an old English inn, the building has housed several restaurants over the years. Police busted an underground gambling room on the property in the 1940s.

Run as an inn under the name the Hurley Bell in the 1940s, the establishment became a popular hideaway for Hollywood stars.

Howard Hughes and Rita Hayworth courted there. Ava Gardner, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart also visited.

Five Crowns has operated out of the building since 1965.

Snooping around the Five Crowns dining room at all hours of the night will be the fun part of the investigation, Mobley said.

Sifting through all of the recorded material after the fact, looking for any traces of ghostly activity can be labor intensive, he said.

“You can stare at the screen for hours and not see or hear anything,” Mobley said.

Stone, who has worked at Five Crowns for the past five years, swears she saw a pair of ghostly hands reach up and adjust a lighted Christmas garland in one of the upstairs dining rooms during her first holiday season at the restaurant.

Five Crowns staff members say they’ve seen a man in a top hat and a woman in a flowing white chiffon dress skulking around the building.

Two diners sitting out on the patio recently swore up and down to restaurant staff members they saw ghosts in the courtyard outside Five Crowns, Stone said.

“They said, ‘Two ghosts just ran across your lawn,’” she said.

Staff members at any other restaurant might have chalked it up to one too many glasses of wine and offered to call a cab for the diners, but Five Crowns employees are used to hearing such tales.

Emma Jo Edwards, who has been a part of the Five Crowns dining room staff for the past 37 years has become a collector of employee ghost stories over the years.

One waitress was busy burnishing the silver in one of the upstairs dining rooms when she was overcome with a strange sensation.

“All of the sudden this thing enveloped her, she described it as ‘being marshmallowed,’” Edwards said.

Busboys have complained of a mischievous ghost pushing out the dining room chairs, Edwards said. For the most part, the ghosts seem friendly.

“It’s kind of like an initiation,” she said.