COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:

Do you believe in ghosts? I do. You can make fun if you want. I don’t mind. I’m used to it. If you do, especially with Halloween just days away, I have a ghost tale for you. Quick — when I say “Five Crowns,” what do you think of? Correct. You think of great prime rib and Yorkshire pudding, served with a lifetime of special birthdays and anniversaries, romantic moments, Mother’s Days, Easter Sundays, Christmastime dinners and on and on. You think of wonderful servers like E.J. Edwards and wine captain Tommy Martin, both fixtures at Five Crowns for some 40 years. Did you notice that ghosts appear nowhere on the list? If you promise to keep an open mind, when we’re done, you’re either going to say, “Oh, hah!” or you’ll never look at Five Crowns the same way.

Last week, I interviewed the executive chef, most of the managers and a number of servers. Edwards, the Five Crowns’ unofficial historian, gave me the full-on paranormal tour of every room and introduced me to everyone who would own up to a close encounter that was a little too close.

Both the true believers and the skeptics told me about case after case of doors slamming shut and flying open on their own, wine glasses shattering with no one nearby, lights turning on and off, and noises coming from rooms and closets where no one could possibly be. Most of the events took place upstairs, many of them around closing time or later.

Those who saw an apparition mentioned two figures. The most frequent is a woman or a female presence in a long dress, either white or cream-colored. The other is a man or a male presence, always dressed in black. Each seems benign and nonthreatening, just a palpable presence that is there and gone in the blink of an eye.

According to Five Crowns general manager Chris Szechenyi, they have had a rotating cast of cleaning crews and exterminators, who generally do their work during the night, because a number of them have either refused to work upstairs or come back at all. Like the large, burly and clearly shaken exterminator who walked into Szechenyi’s office without knocking one morning and announced he and his crew wouldn’t be back because while he was working alone in the wee hours of the morning, he heard a rustling behind him. When he turned around, he saw a female figure in a long white dress gliding across the far side of the room.

In 2003, server Maria Mena was heading upstairs with a stack of unfolded linen napkins on her shoulder. A few steps from the top, someone tugged hard on the napkins and almost took her and the napkins down. Maria spun around to explain how totally unfunny that was, but there was no one to be seen.

Earlier this year, executive chef Dennis Brask came in early, as in 5 a.m. early, to prepare for a special event later that day. He unlocked one door to get in and relocked it behind him. Some time later, he stepped inside a walk-in cooler, heard the heavy door gliding closed behind him, followed by the “click” of the deadbolt lock being turned.

Manager Rose Stone has seen glimpses of the woman in white on a number of occasions, and in December 2003, she went to check the upstairs dining rooms just before opening. As she reached the top step, she saw a man in black in the empty Brighton room. He was standing with his back to her, with arms outstretched toward a string of Christmas lights at the top of one wall. As he touched the lights, the bulbs between his hands went out but the others remained lit. In the time it took to blink her eyes in disbelief, he was gone. Two weeks later, while closing at 12:30 a.m., she stepped out of the bar and saw a man in black walking up the stairs. Rose now spends as little time as possible upstairs.

Last Valentine’s Day, manager Kristen Stratton was checking the upstairs dining rooms at closing. She checked the Hurley Room first, then the Brighton Room, turning off lights as she went. As she stepped back out into the darkened hallway, she saw the ladies-room door closing and the bottom of a long, white chiffon dress disappear inside. Worried that it might be a lagging customer, she opened the door of the ladies room but found no one inside. Kristen hasn’t closed upstairs since.

In 2002, server Rosa Bellemo, who is from the delightful city of Foggia, in Italy’s Puglia region I might add, was waiting for her last table to leave, a young couple seated in the Greenhouse terrace. It was their first visit, they seemed to have a great time and were very complimentary about the food and service. Rosa left for just a moment and was surprised to see the young couple gone when she returned to the Greenhouse.

Worried that something was wrong, Rosa walked to the front door where a host told her that the couple had just left, in a rush, and said something about seeing a woman in a long white dress glide across the far end of the Greenhouse moving a candle from one table to another.

Earlier this year, while checking the Greenhouse at closing, server Melissa Scharfe was startled to see a man in black sitting in the darkened, empty room. Frightened, she stepped back inside, but saw the man move from one table to another as she did. She found Szechenyi and told him to come with her, fast. When they went back into the Greenhouse and turned on the lights, there was no one there, but one chair was pulled out from each table where the man had been sitting.

I could go on for days, but let’s get to the question you’re dying to ask. Who are these people anyway? No one knows, but I have a theory, based on virtually nothing, as all my theories are. Here is the hyper-compressed history of Five Crowns:

It’s the turn of the 20th century. The building that you know as Five Crowns is built by a New York woman by the fabulous name of Matilda “Tillie” Lemon, who marries a Scot named John James MacCulloch. J.J. is loaded, which allows Matilda and her daughter, Marguerite, to visit the States often. Matilda and her daughter are bonkers for California, especially the nascent community of Corona del Mar in particular, where they buy a small farm site on the new Pacific Coast Highway.

The girls decide it would be fun to build a classic English country inn in Corona del Mar. They do some research and discover “Ye Olde Bell,” a charming old inn in Hurley-on-Thames, about 30 miles west of London. In 1936, the M&M; girls cut the ribbon on their new place, which Matilda names in honor of Ye Olde Bell. She calls it “The Hurley Bell,” and they move in for the next four years. They then lease the inn to a succession of restaurateurs.

That gets us to the wonderfully shady period of the Hurley Bell, Five Crowns — pick your period. By the late ’40’s, there are rumors that you can get a lot more than a bed and breakfast there, including an hourly rate. At the same time, a nearby cottage turns out to be a gambling joint, and there is a lot of cross-pollination between the two. The casino’s heydays are numbered when the place gets busted and the owner gets caught with an unauthorized friend and his wife shoots him dead, which can ruin your whole day.

Are either of the MacCullochs the woman in white? I think not. Rumors about the haunting of Five Crowns or its predecessors started while both women were alive. You can be either alive or a ghost, but typically not both. What about the man in black? I say it has to be the casino owner with the see-through head. It takes a while for the stories of the man in black to crop up, and it’s too coincidental for that kind of thing to be going on next door with no residual energy.

So there you have it. Matilda and Marguerite, ghosts, gambling and Yorkshire pudding. You’ll have to decide for yourself on the ghosts of Five Crowns, but I can say with certainty that they still have the best prime rib in the universe — this universe, anyway.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at ptrb4@aol.com.