The legend of the ‘Blue Lady’ still haunts former speakeasy in Moss Beach

Almost a century later, one of its former guests is said to still roam the restaurant, with waitstaff and visitors reporting sightings of her and experiencing unexplained movement and noises over the years — such as images of a woman in the bathroom mirror reflection, giggling noises when no one else was around and bottles shifting on the bar area. 

Those who have witnessed her presence claim she typically donned blue clothing, which she was known to wear while she was alive. 

Loyd Auerbach has frequented Moss Beach Distillery many times since the 1990s to investigate the ghost claims. He said he has felt the Blue Lady’s presence and has even heard an unfamiliar female voice say hello to him while he was speaking with one other person in the room.

Usually he doesn’t experience ghosts’ presence as vividly as he has at the distillery. 

“It is unique for me to have those types of psychic experiences,” he said. 

In Auerbach’s book, “A Paranormal Casebook: Cases from a Parapsychologist’s First 25 (or so) Years,” he said that the Blue Lady ghost had “been reported in and around the building since the very early 1930s, when she was seen first on the beach just days after her murder.” The passage added that most encounters with her were visual until the 1970s, when patrons and staff began noticing her presence in other ways, such as hearing her voice or other unexplained physical effects, such as some of the lamps moving, bottles shifting on the bar or glass thrown across the room.

“The place was taken apart in 1997 because it had slid down the hill and for safety and ADA compliance [reasons],” Auerbach said. “They had to reconstruct the bar and main area exactly the way it was, and during that time the construction guys were having experiences too.” 

The Moss Beach Distillery was also featured in the TV series Unsolved Mysteries. 

According to the legend, the woman frequented the establishment often, falling in love and maintaining an affair with the restaurant’s piano player until she was fatally stabbed while walking with him on the beach one night. Her lover was also assaulted but survived. Many accounts suggest the husband as the murderer, especially as he went missing soon after she was discovered. Official records identifying the woman have proven difficult to locate, as the establishment’s illegal activity often resulted in a lack of investigations or inaccurate reports, the book passage added. 

The restaurant’s website added that employees and guests have also experienced levitating checkbooks, locked rooms from the inside without any other means of entry and multiple reports of customers losing one earring that all end up in the same place weeks later. 

Luckily, it added, “she is not destructive with her pranks.”