Karen Veitch Perrino believes there are spirits in her childhood home. And she’s not alone.
“I think at one point all five of us slept in one large bedroom with a gas space heater on the second floor together,” the Saratogian says of the building that’s now Olde Bryan Inn. “My sister Nancy often spoke of seeing a woman in a green dress. I never saw her myself, but I had my own experience—a mischievous spirit who would push up the mattress from under my bed each night. Once, I saw something peek around my parents’ bedroom door just after I had gone to tell them about it.”
John Kosek, longtime employee and resident historian of the Olde Bryan Inn, says that in paranormal circles, limestone, the material out of which the OBI was built, is believed to conduct and store psychic energy, acting almost like a recording device for intense emotional events.
Could that explain one report of a Revolutionary soldier in a red coat riding a horse? Or how about the fact that, alone in the building one morning, Kosek heard a woman’s voice command, “Shut up and get out.” He promptly left. Later, Kosek learned that Kevin Veitch, Karen’s brother, had heard this same voice 30 years before when he lived in the house. Today, Kosek gives tours of the restaurant to local schoolchildren. The kids’ favorite part is when John describes “ghostly events,” such as the “woman in the green dress wandering about” (a green dress also just so happened to have been found in a trunk in the attic) or when a diner at the restaurant saw a man in a top hat and 19th-century garb. He complimented the staff for wearing “period costumes”—though no such attire was worn that day…at least by any living member of the staff.
