AV Restaurant & Lounge

Basement was a 1918 flu morgue. GM hears children running upstairs when upstairs is empty. A tall man stands on the back stairs.

The basement was a morgue in 1918. When the flu pandemic overran Scranton, the building at 320 Penn Avenue took the overflow. Before that, in the 1879 city directory, the address belonged to R. Schoenfield, an undertaker and coffin-maker. Later it was a dry-goods store and an Irish bar called The Banshee. In 2017, Julie Thomas opened an Italian restaurant there and called it AV, short for altra volta, "another time." The name did not age quietly.

The Food Network put AV on a list of the most haunted restaurants in Pennsylvania and the staff have a hard time arguing. Julie Thomas, the general manager, keeps a running list of what she's seen and what her kitchen has seen. Shadows on walls. Sudden cold in the banquet room. Footsteps above her head when the upstairs was locked and empty. The servers do not want to go down into the basement alone, which makes sense given what the basement was. Upstairs is almost as bad.

Her own most specific memory is from before opening night, finishing prep late with a small crew. "We could hear what sounded like children running back and forth upstairs in the banquet room," Thomas has said, "even though no one was up there." She was not drunk. She was not alone. Two or three people heard the same thing.

Diners have added to the file. Objects slide off tables. Lights flicker for no reason. The most repeated description, from both guests and staff, is a tall man in a long black overcoat who stands at the foot of the back staircase and does not move. People describe him in enough agreement that it reads less like suggestion than like a fixture: same coat, same posture, same spot.

Scranton was not spared by 1918. The flu killed an estimated 675,000 Americans that year and Pennsylvania was hit as hard as any state. A basement full of bodies, even for a few weeks, leaves a mark on a floor plan, whatever you believe about that mark.

The food is good. The espresso is excellent. The second-floor dining room is lovely. Whoever is running upstairs can have the banquet space after closing.