06/26/2026
Kelly’s Ghost
The Man by the Fire Pit
It’s been a while since I’ve written one of my Kelly’s ghost stories. Things have been pretty quiet around the Roadhouse lately, and there really hasn’t been anything strange happen that made me stop and write about it.
This actually happened almost a week ago, but life has been busy and I just haven’t had a chance to sit down and write it until now. The more I thought about it over the last several days, the more I realized I couldn’t just let it go without sharing it.
Friday night was one of those nights that reminds me why I love this place. We had a great band out on the patio, motorcycles lined up along the orange rail, people gathered around the fire pit, awesome music, a lot of laughter, and a lot of good conversation. It was one of those nights where everything just seemed to come together.
After the band packed up and headed home, Blackline stuck around for a while. They played pool, played Jenga, laughed a little longer, and eventually headed home too. Once they left, the motorcycles were gone, the parking lot was empty, and I was the only person left in the building.
By that point I had already been at the Roadhouse for about fourteen and a half hours. I had the patio door propped open because it was such a nice night outside. I spent the last part of the evening carrying glasses in from the patio, putting the umbrellas down, straightening the tables and chairs, and getting everything put back together for the next day. The patio lights were off, but there were still glowing embers deep in the bottom of the fire pit, and every now and then you could still catch the smell of the wood smoldering.
When I finished outside, I went back in and checked both bathrooms one last time before heading home. I came out of the women’s restroom, walked over to the bar, and set my cleaning supplies down. As I turned and started walking toward the patio door to close it and lock up for the night, I happened to look outside toward the fire pit.
Standing there was a man.
The thing that has stayed with me is that I didn’t catch movement out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t mistake a shadow for a person. I looked outside and saw what appeared to be an older man standing near the fire pit. He had shoulder-length gray hair, a dark t-shirt, and loose-fitting pants.
I stopped right where I was.
My first thought wasn’t that I was looking at a ghost. My first thought was that there was a man standing on the patio and I was alone in the building.
As a woman standing in a bar by herself after midnight, that’s enough to make you stop in your tracks.
I’m in that building by myself all the time. Before we open. After we close. On my days off if I need to run back up there because I forgot something or something came up. It has never really bothered me. There have been other strange things happen over the past year. Burners have turned on by themselves. Bottles have been moved. Barstools have been out of place. I’ve smelled cigarette smoke when there wasn’t anyone there. None of those things ever really scared me.
This was different.
I had just been outside. I had cleaned the patio. I had carried in the glasses. I had put the umbrellas down. There hadn’t been anybody out there. The parking lot was empty. Blackline had left. Everybody had gone home.
The other thing that kept bothering me was that there wasn’t anybody at the Roadhouse that night who fit the description of the man I was looking at. Not with the band. Not with Blackline. Not among the bikers who had been there earlier. Nobody looked like him.
I stood there for a moment trying to make sense of what I was seeing and then watched him start walking away from the fire pit toward the fence that separates the patio from the parking lot.
I hesitated for a second and then started toward the patio door. My plan was simple. Close the door, lock it, and figure out who was out there.
Before I reached the door, he had walked out of my view.
When I got to the doorway, I immediately looked toward the area where I had just watched him walk.
Nobody.
I stepped outside and looked around the patio.
Nobody.
I looked toward the parking lot.
Nobody.
What made it even stranger was the fence. It’s not a normal gate that someone can quietly push open and walk through. To get through it, you have to physically slide the fence rails open. The fence was exactly the way it had been all night. Nothing was open. Nothing had been moved.
There wasn’t a motorcycle leaving the parking lot. There wasn’t a vehicle pulling away. There wasn’t anybody walking down the road. There wasn’t anybody standing by the fence.
There was simply nobody there.
I stood there for another minute, looking around, smelling the smoke from the embers in the fire pit, and listening to how quiet everything had become.
Now, after a fourteen-and-a-half-hour day, maybe there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. Maybe I was tired. Maybe my eyes played a trick on me. I honestly don’t know.
What I do know is that when I turned away from that bar and looked toward the patio, I was absolutely convinced there was an older man standing by that fire pit.
Maybe there’s an explanation.
If there is, I haven’t figured it out yet.
