Twisted Vine

The Twisted Vine in Derby, Connecticut is an Italian restaurant inside an old bank, and the staff have a name for whoever it is downstairs. They call him Sam.

Sam was a bank clerk. In the version the Travel Channel's *Kindred Spirits* told, a customer altered a check from 25 dollars to 2,500 — about 75,000 in today's money — and Sam waved it through. When he understood what he'd let happen, the story goes, he took his own life out of guilt. The investigators figured out his name was Samuel Lessey, and pinned the worst of the building's activity to him. "The spirit, we figured out, was a bank clerk named Samuel Lessey," Adam Berry said.

The building was a bank for over a century. It started as the Manufacturers Bank of Birmingham in 1848, became the Birmingham National Bank, and got its current home in 1892 — a terra-cotta landmark designed by Warren R. Briggs, who also built the Connecticut State Building for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. The restaurant moved in during 2005. The original vault is still there. The *Kindred Spirits* episode was called "Vaulted Secrets."

The downstairs bar sits on the old bank floor, where depositors once lined up, and the worst of it stays down there. Investigator Adam Berry described the jukebox turning on by itself, glasses sliding across the counter, shadow figures. "They would hear a male voice calling down to someone who worked there," he said — a man's voice, from upstairs, addressing the living by name.

In February 2019, a local team called Ghost Storm ran the place from 10:30 at night to 4 in the morning. Their lead, Nick Grossman, asked the spirit to answer by turning a flashlight on the bar. He says it rotated a full 360 degrees. Twice.

The owner never tried to bury any of it. He turned it into a business — a buffet dinner and a guided walk from the attic down to the cellar, still running in 2026. You eat where the depositors stood, in the building Sam never managed to leave.