In Brief
At Margaritas in Concord, New Hampshire, you can book a table inside a 19th-century jail cell, iron bars and all. The staff say a former prisoner named George stayed behind. He finishes your drink, throws food, and once slid a glass across a table on camera.
The Full Story
At Margaritas Mexican Restaurant in Concord, New Hampshire, you can ask for a table inside a real jail cell. The bars are still there, and so is the stone, and so, the staff say, is a former prisoner named George.
The building was the Concord police station for 85 years, from 1890 to 1975, jail cells included. When the restaurant moved in, in 1985, under its original name Tio Juan's, they didn't tear the cells out. They set tables inside them and in the hallways between, and you can request one when you reserve. So you eat enchiladas behind the iron bars that held people under arrest, in a small stone room built to keep someone in. The cells caught on. They made the place a local favorite, and the company grew into the Margaritas chain across New England.
George is the one who supposedly stayed. The staff describe him as a pest more than a threat. He moves furniture and place settings, finishes drinks left unattended, and throws food. A WMUR report on haunted eateries added another habit: faucets turned on and left to overflow. People also report shadowy figures at the edge of the eye, dropped dishes, knocks, and cold spots in the cells.
Who he was depends on who's telling it. When the hosts of the New England Legends podcast dined in the cells for an episode they called "Concord's Most Haunted Jail," they tied George to George Stubblefield, one of two Iowa prison escapees captured in Concord in 1945. The pair were nicknamed the Toothbrush Twins for filing lock-picking keys out of toothbrush handles. It's their theory, not a fact in any record. Nothing ties Stubblefield to the building past one brief detention.
The most-circulated piece of evidence is a short video. The Northeastern Paranormal Research Society filmed a glass sliding across a table on its own while its owner was busy ordering from a server. The clip has made the rounds through local news and ghost-hunting sites for years.
A regional ghost blogger named Theresa watched the same video and had a flatter explanation. A cold glass builds a thin film of condensation underneath, she wrote, and "I've seen first hand many times how even a very small, thin layer of condensation on a water glass can cause a cushion on which the glass can seemingly float." A glass that floats can drift, no George required. She watched the whole thing and still recommends a table in the cells.
