The Brentwood Restaurant

Housed in a 1910 Queen Anne mansion, the Brentwood is considered the most haunted restaurant in South Carolina. Diners report company they didn't seat — guests from a much earlier era of the building.

The Brentwood Restaurant occupies a Victorian-style house built in 1910 by Clarence and Essie Bessent-McCorsley in the fishing village of Little River, South Carolina. After Clarence died in the late 1940s, Essie started renting rooms to visiting fishermen for a dollar a night, with an extra fifty cents for breakfast. She ran the boarding house for decades, becoming a fixture of Little River. In the 1970s, when she finally agreed to sell, she insisted the new owners move the entire house across Highway 17 at her expense rather than see it demolished. Essie died shortly after the move was finished, but plenty of people believe she never actually left.

Paranormal investigator Stephen Lancaster, who studied the property over the course of a year, called the Brentwood the most haunted location along the Grand Strand and a "Holy Grail of haunted spaces." The primary ghost seems to be Essie herself. The most commonly reported figure is a dark, fast-moving silhouette spotted repeatedly at the stairwell and in the second-floor dining room. This shadow has been seen passing by the upstairs bathroom into the front room and, on several occasions, moving directly through the upstairs fireplace as if the wall weren't there.

Kitchen equipment has turned on by itself. Shadows drift through the bar and dining room. A glass once fell from the bar and shattered at the exact moment an old photograph was moved in the men's restroom. People have seen a face staring from the upstairs window when the entire upper floor was confirmed empty. Floating orbs show up in photographs taken throughout the house, and sighing sounds have been heard within the walls. Patrons have been locked in the bathroom by doors that staff insist can't lock on their own. The activity has gotten intense enough that some employees have quit rather than keep working there.

During a formal investigation using a psychic medium, the entity identified herself through the initials E.M. -- matching both the owner at the time, Eric Masson, and the original owner, Essie McCorsley. The psychic also picked up the letter C, thought to represent Clarence, Essie's husband, who was sensed as always watching over the property. A third spirit, identified as Mary Platt -- a later owner Essie apparently had conflict with -- was also detected. Essie's death date of October 15th happened to coincide with the date the Massons closed on their sale of the restaurant, and the two streets nearest to the house's original location are named McCorsley and Bessent -- Essie's married and maiden names -- forming a crossroads that seems to bind her memory to the land.

Today the Brentwood operates as a Lowcountry-inspired French cuisine bistro under owner Johnson Lewis. The restaurant leans into its reputation, offering a three-course Ghost Dinner and Tour on select Tuesdays and Thursdays, where guests eat in the haunted dining room and then get a guided tour of the most active areas.