Restaurateur LeRoy's ghost may be alive and well at Russian Tea Room

Nation's Restaurant News,  August 20, 2007  by Elissa Elan

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NEW YORK -- Some employees of the resurrected Russian Tea Room think legendary owner Warner LeRoy, who died in 2001, is haunting the restaurant.

In fact, his daughter, Jennifer, believes her father's spirit is alive and well at the upscale watering hole she inherited from him but later had to sell.

According to the New York Daily News, one spooked staffer said, "There are mysterious shadows on the security monitors." Another worker said he saw "an apparition of a bleeding man."

Daughter Jennifer remembered the night she began to believe her father's ghost was haunting the establishment. It was, she said, "at the end of a night ... after most people had left, and the elevator started opening and closing," she said. "It happened quite a few times. I felt like someone was watching us. I said, 'It's Dad telling us to stop sitting at the bar, that we should be standing at the podium welcoming guests.'

"It sounds like Dad is there and wants [the current owners, RTR Funding Group] out and us back running that restaurant."

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