Grandview Restaurant

The Grandview Restaurant sits partway up Mount Hamilton Road, nineteen miles of switchbacks above San Jose, and the people who work there keep seeing a girl on the balcony. She stands at the railing, looking out over the lights of Silicon Valley. What they remember about her is the eyes — an intense green, said to carry even in an apparition. Try to walk toward her, the staff and diners say, and she's gone before you get close.

Who she is comes down to lore, not record. The story locals tell is that a young girl went missing somewhere on the mountain around 1954 — one of several children said to have vanished, never recovered. No name survives in any account. No newspaper, no report, nothing written down ties a real disappearance to this building. It's the legend's premise, passed mouth to mouth for decades, and the restaurant has carried it the whole time.

What is on the record is the building, and it's older than the story by a long stretch. The Grandview began in 1884 as a stagecoach hotel and tavern, serving travelers headed up toward the new Lick Observatory on the peak above. It ran for decades, fell on hard times, and burned — more than once. The original went, its replacement went, and the place was rebuilt and remodeled into the Italian steakhouse standing there now, the South Bay laid out below it.

The reports didn't stop with the rebuild. The lights in the dining room flicker, and staff say they've come on by themselves when the building is empty. A chef working a closing shift says his cell phone was picked up and thrown across the room. The balcony doors are said to open and slam shut on their own, late, after the diners have gone.

It's the same balcony where they see the girl with the green eyes, watching the valley, who leaves before anyone reaches the railing.