Arnold's Bar and Grill

The story

Arnold's Bar and Grill stands on East Eighth Street in downtown Cincinnati and is generally described as the oldest bar in the city that has kept operating without interruption, and one of the oldest anywhere in the United States. Exactly how old it is depends on whom you ask.

The bar's own account, repeated on Wikipedia and Wikidata, says Simon Arnold opened a tavern there in 1861 and lived above it. Wikipedia also passes on an older claim, credited to Cincinnati historian Michael D. Morgan, that the place began in 1838 as a brothel run by a woman named Susan Fawcett. Morgan himself has since revised that picture. In a 2022 essay for Cincinnati CityBeat he explains that Smith and Susan Fawcett acquired the lot around 1833 and that Susan supervised the construction of the buildings about 1838; the brothel connection, he now says, is speculation rather than documented fact. According to Morgan the property became a saloon during the 1860s, and Simon Arnold only bought it in 1878. The bar's own history page adds that in the late 1830s one of the two addresses was a barbershop and the other a feed store.

What is not disputed is the long Arnold family run. Around 1900 Simon's son Hugo took over and raised his wife and six children in the rooms upstairs. Hugo annexed the building next door, which, according to food historian Polly Campbell, gave the bar a separate entrance and a room where women could be served. According to Morgan, Hugo was arrested in 1919 after carrying whisky into the premises. In the 1920s his son Elmer took charge and began serving food as Prohibition shut down legal drinking; Campbell suspects he was also selling gin made on the premises, and the bar operated as a speakeasy in those years.

The Arnolds kept the business for three generations, until Elmer sold it in 1959 to Jim Christakos, a former professional wrestler with reputed mob ties, and his brother George. In 1976 the bar passed to Jim Tarbell, then a member of Cincinnati's city council, who moved in upstairs as his predecessors had, and added a large outdoor courtyard. Longtime server Ronda Breeden bought the bar from Tarbell at the end of the 1990s (sources give 1998 or 1999) to run with her son Chris, who took over ownership in 2020, according to the bar's owners page.

The legend

Ghost stories at Arnold's are mostly told by the people who work there, and they cluster around the older upper floors. Wikipedia notes only that "some believe the building to be haunted," but local reporting and a 2022 essay by Michael D. Morgan fill in the details.

The best-known spirit is a much-loved Arnold's cook who died in 2012. Staff members and a cab driver say they have seen him standing outside the front of the bar, and he is said to settle into one particular chair in the Bathtub Room to swap his shoes, a habit from his working days. Because he died in 2012, this part of the legend is necessarily recent.

Other figures are less certain. A voice recorder on the third floor reportedly captured the name "Chris." Some connect it to Jim Christakos, the 1959 owner, but Chris Breeden has pointed out that one of the bar's past employees was also called Chris. Cornerstone Paranormal describes a Prohibition-era bootlegger busy at the old gin tub upstairs, in the room the bar now calls the Bathtub Room. Upstairs, people describe a woman with dark hair wearing a navy-blue gown in a nineteenth-century style; some identify her with Susan Fawcett and the brothel tale, though Morgan openly labels that idea speculation. Co-owner Bethany Breeden has said she hears two children running and playing on the second floor. Morgan also mentions an unnamed, unwelcome presence without describing it.

The reported activity is varied. The WCPO and FOX19 reports describe pounding on the wall or door of the women's restroom when nobody was inside, which reportedly stopped when Chris Breeden laid a hand on the door. Staff talk about doors closing and lights coming on by themselves, shadowy shapes upstairs, something moving on the stairs once the bar has closed, and a tap on the shoulder. Ronda Breeden told WCPO that wine bottles shot off the shelf behind the bar, going "straight out and then down." Morgan adds a strong scent of roses upstairs, glasses gliding along the rack and dropping into tidy stacks, customers feeling a pat on the back, and the Bathtub Room sink turning itself on. FOX19 reported that some employees will not go up to the third floor at all. A spiritual adviser once told Ronda Breeden that two underground waterways beneath the site "trap" spirits there.

Cornerstone Paranormal, led by Dave and Theresa Howard, has investigated several times, including in 2017, bringing audio recorders, sensors for static and vibration, and an adapted Xbox camera. The group says it consulted geologists and meteorologists to rule out vibrations from traffic, and it reports figures near the tub and the "Chris" recording. These claims come from the investigators and the bar itself; no independent review exists, and our sources found no dated ghost report earlier than the 2010s.

The famous bathtub deserves its own caution. A second-floor tub is said to have been used to make gin during Prohibition, and the bar presents this as legend. Campbell finds it plausible, reasoning that a bathtub made it easy to pull the plug if police raided. The bathtub cart parked outside the bar and rolled out for local parades celebrates the story, and in 2019 the bar worked with Woodstone Creek distillery on a Hugo Arnold's Bathtub Gin.

What remains today

Arnold's is a working bar and restaurant, not a ruin. The nineteenth-century buildings still hold the bar room downstairs and the upper rooms where generations of owners lived, including the Bathtub Room with its tub. Behind the buildings is the outdoor courtyard added under Jim Tarbell. A photograph of the interior from around 1900 survives on Wikimedia Commons and makes an interesting comparison with the bar today. Cincinnati Magazine praised Arnold's in its 2021 "Best of the City" issue, and Cincinnati Enquirer critic Keith Pandolfi has called it "part of the soul of Cincinnati."

Visiting

Arnold's is open to the public as a bar and restaurant, so visiting is simply a matter of going in during business hours; the address is listed on its official website. Please treat the upstairs as private unless staff invite you, since it is part of a working business.

The bar has hosted its own paranormal investigation nights using Cornerstone Paranormal's equipment; in October 2020 these ran from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. on several nights. Whether and when they are offered changes, so check the bar's current schedule before planning a trip around one. Past sessions have been held in October. Be considerate of staff and other customers, and remember that the people described in the stories, including a much-loved cook, were real members of this community.

Sources

1. Wikimedia Commons category : Arnold's Bar and Grill — Wikimedia Commons
2. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Cincinnati, OH 1957 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1957 · Public domain (USGS)
3. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for West Cincinnati, OH 1914 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1914 · Public domain (USGS)
4. "Arnold's Bar and Grill is a hot spot for paranormal activity, owners say" (Maxim Alter) — WCPO 9 — WCPO 9
5. "Enter if you dare: Cincinnati's oldest bar offers paranormal investigations" (Morgan Parrish, 15 Oct 2020) — FOX19 — FOX19
6. Official website
7. "Our History" — Arnold's Bar & Grill (official site) — Arnold's Bar & Grill (official site
8. "The story behind the (mostly) friendly spirits who roam Arnold's Bar & Grill" (Michael D. Morgan, 19 Oct 2022) — Cincinnati CityBeat — Cincinnati CityBeat
9. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.