The Brentwood Restaurant

Essie Bessent-McCorsley ran a fishermen's boarding house in this 1910 Victorian home in Little River until the 1970s, and investigator Stephen Lancaster called it the "Holy Grail" of haunted spaces after nine years of study. A psychic medium identified the ghost through initials E.M., and Essie's death date matched the exact date future owners closed on the property.

Essie Bessent-McCorsley rented rooms to fishermen for a dollar a night, with an extra fifty cents for breakfast. She ran her boarding house in the fishing village of Little River for decades after her husband Clarence died in the late 1940s, becoming so attached to the Victorian house they built together in 1910 that when she finally agreed to sell in the 1970s, she insisted the new owners move the entire building across Highway 17 at her expense. She'd rather pay to relocate the house than watch someone tear it down. Essie died shortly after the move was completed.

She does not appear to have left.

Paranormal investigator Stephen Lancaster studied the Brentwood for nine years. He called it the "Holy Grail" of haunted spaces and the most haunted location along the Grand Strand. Within the first hour of his initial investigation, the team experienced mysterious voices, objects moving, doors closing on their own, and a loud crash with no source anyone could find. A separate team, the P.I.T. Crew, spent the night and reported the highest level of activity they'd ever encountered, concentrated in the kitchen and bar areas. Lancaster's findings eventually formed the basis of a 2017 documentary, FANTOME: The Haunting of Brentwood Wine Bistro.

The primary presence is a dark, fast-moving silhouette that appears at the stairwell and in the second-floor dining room. Staff have watched it pass by the upstairs bathroom into the front room and, on several occasions, move directly through the upstairs fireplace as if the wall weren't there. Kitchen equipment starts on its own. A glass once fell from the bar and shattered at the exact moment someone moved an old photograph in the men's restroom. People have seen a face staring from the upstairs window when the entire upper floor was confirmed empty. Patrons get locked in the bathroom by doors that staff swear can't lock without being manually engaged. Sighing sounds come from inside the walls. The activity has been intense enough that employees have quit over it.

During a formal investigation using a psychic medium, the entity identified herself through the initials E.M., matching both the original owner, Essie McCorsley, and the owner at the time, Eric Masson. The psychic also picked up the letter C, interpreted as Clarence, Essie's husband, with the note "always watching." A third presence, identified through the letter P, was connected to Mary Platt, a later owner that McCorsley descendants confirmed Essie had conflict with. The psychic's automatic writing produced the numbers 15 and 17 and the phrases "Moved," "My ending is your start," and "I Feel Lucky." Essie's death fell on October 15th, the same date the Massons closed on their purchase of the restaurant. During the initial meeting, the ceiling became inexplicably covered in ladybugs.

The two streets nearest to the house's original location are McCorsley and Bessent, Essie's married and maiden names. The psychic also whispered "1954" near the stairwell, the year Hurricane Hazel struck Little River, suggesting Essie may have sheltered her neighbors through the storm without charging a cent.

Today the Brentwood operates as a Lowcountry-inspired French cuisine bistro under owner Johnson Lewis. On select Tuesdays and Thursdays, they offer a three-course Ghost Dinner and Tour: eat in the haunted dining room, then walk the most active areas with a guide. The restaurant has published a list of "strange happenings" on its website documenting specific eyewitness accounts from staff and customers. The fishermen stopped coming a long time ago. The woman who charged them a dollar fifty for a room and breakfast, by all accounts, has never checked out.