Pasta … with a side of paranormal

COEUR d’ALENE — Remnants of an old bordello can still be found in the shadowy basement of Tony's on the Lake.

Original wooden doors with original silver numbers open to storage rooms that once served as cribs where ladies of the night entertained their clients.

The original checkered tile floors make one wonder how many souls passed through this space in its heyday, when Coeur d'Alene was a speck on a map, and Coeur d'Alene Lake Drive was the main highway in and out of town.

The creaking stairs and dark corners in the basement give the imagination much to devour, as, for unexplained reasons, the knees weaken, the pulse quickens and hair stands up on the back of the neck.

"We had a psychic that worked here for a while, and she said there’s weird energy downstairs," said Cheyenne D'Alessandro, who owns Tony's on the Lake with parents Paul and Bonnie.

"I’ve never felt any bad energy," she said. "It’s almost like they don’t want to leave. They’re having a good time."

A former delivery man would probably beg to differ. Bonnie said the previous owner told them of a vendor who refused to deliver to Tony’s after spending some early mornings alone in the basement.

“He just told his boss he wasn’t going to do it anymore, because he saw things,” Bonnie said.

Tony's was built as Jeanette's Club in 1939 by an industrious, independent woman named Jeanette Winters — for whom the D'Alessandros named a house red wine, and whose name is imprinted in the cement front stoop.

Bonnie said Winters was well loved by the community.

"When we first started in 2004, there was a gentleman who came out and told me stories about her," she said. "He said she was the one that would sponsor the teams for the kids and help the widows. When she got sick and was in the hospital, he went to see her in the morning and when he came back after work, her room was full of flowers."

Winters was small in stature, but people knew not to mess with her.

"One time there was a man that was sitting at the bar that called her a bad name, and she picked him up by the scruff of his collar and threw him out the front door,” Bonnie said, chuckling.

When things go missing, staff will ask aloud, "Jeanette, where'd you put it?"

During a visit to the lakeside restaurant before it opened for the evening Oct. 22, Cheyenne and Bonnie shared a few stories of the past, as well as some of the eerie occurrences they've experienced.

“I’m down here by myself a lot,” Cheyenne said, her eyes growing wide as she spoke.

“There was one night that we stayed. It was after work, we were sitting at the bar and it sounded like — it was almost like a cartoon — it was like a bowling ball fell on the ceiling and then slowly rolled all the way to the end of the bar," she said. "Needless to say, we were out of here in 10 seconds."

One year, every Tuesday night for about five weeks, the internal security alarm would go off around 2 a.m. Police would check the property, inside and out, and find no one.

"Movement outside wouldn’t trigger it,” Bonnie said. “It’s only movement inside."

One New Year's Eve, the heat went out and the water wasn’t working, so Cheyenne was running around stressed out getting ready for a big party that night.

"I went to go upstairs, and the door upstairs just swung open,” she said. "That was the only time I got the chills. And then I didn’t go up there all night long."

Upstairs is a 1,600-square-foot apartment where Winters and the bordello girls once lived. It's also where namesake Tony Carneiro, who purchased the building in 1952, raised his four children as he ran the restaurant on the main floor.

And, one year ago today, it's where employee C.J. Lopp had a paranormal experience.

"Last Halloween, I don’t know if it was just the mood or what, but I come up the stairs and there was something between the door and the bathroom door. It was right here,” he said, pointing to an area between the living room and bathroom. "It was a dark silhouette."

"That turned him white as a ghost," Cheyenne said.