Schmidt's Sausage Haus

A cleaning crew found four chairs mysteriously arranged back-to-back in an empty upstairs banquet room, and one worker named John saw an elderly man smiling and waving at him in the north wall mirror, though nobody else was in the room. The ghost at this 1886 German Village restaurant in Columbus is believed to be founder J. Fred Schmidt, and staff have nicknamed him "Grandpa" for his friendly demeanor. Five generations of the Schmidt family have run the business since 1886.

The cleaning crew was finishing up after closing when they heard a clatter from the second floor. All three workers stopped. They looked at each other. Then they went up the creaky wooden stairs to the larger of the two banquet rooms, where they found four chairs had been moved to the center of the room and arranged with their backs touching, like a conversation circle for people who weren't there.

That would have been unsettling enough. But one of the workers, a man named John, glanced at the large mirror on the room's north wall and saw an elderly man smiling back at him. John spun around. Nobody. The figure in the mirror waved at him. John ran.

Schmidt's Sausage Haus sits at 240 East Kossuth Street in German Village, Columbus. The building dates to 1886, when J. Fred Schmidt, an immigrant from just north of Frankfurt, Germany, opened the J. Fred Schmidt Meat Packing House. Before the restaurant, the structure served as a stable, slaughterhouse, and packinghouse. J. Fred's son George L. Schmidt took over the business and in 1914 opened a food stand at the Ohio State Fair (Schmidt's is the oldest concession at the fair and returns every year). George L. also became majority stockholder of the Columbus Bullies professional football team in 1938. In July 1967, J. Fred's grandson George F. Schmidt opened the restaurant just around the corner from the original packing plant, using meat recipes from the packing days and dessert recipes from the German women hired to run the kitchen.

The ghost, according to the Ohio Exploration Society, is J. Fred Schmidt. Employees report footsteps on the second floor when nobody is up there. Lights turn on and off on their own. Staff describe the sensation of people moving past them quickly in the dining room, as though someone is watching them and occasionally brushing against them. The general manager's account (the mirror incident) was documented by local historian John Clark in (614) Magazine's October issue in a story titled "To Dine For."

The staff have nicknamed the presence "Grandpa," which fits both the friendly, elderly appearance of the figure in the mirror and the family history of the place. Five generations of Schmidts have run this business. John, Geoff, and Andrew Schmidt handle day-to-day operations now. If the ghost really is J. Fred, he's been watching his family work for over a century.

The restaurant is known for its Bahama Mama sausage (voted one of the official foods of Columbus) and half-pound jumbo cream puffs. Servers wear traditional lederhosen. There's live accordion music. It's the kind of place that feels frozen in a good era, which might explain why a ghost would want to stick around. The building has character that most modern restaurants will never have, and J. Fred seems to appreciate it more than anyone.

If you're hoping to see Grandpa, the banquet rooms on the upper floor are where the encounters concentrate. Late at night, after the diners leave, is when the chairs tend to rearrange themselves.