Category: Hungry Memphis

People still remember the old Grawemeyer’s restaurant, where they enjoyed wiener schnitzel, apple strudel, and other German cuisine.

But how many of them remember the haunted piano that resided at the restaurant at 520 South Main Street?

I frequented Grawemeyer’s, but I never heard the piano, which isn’t a player piano, play by itself. But others have.

It’s also included in the “Haunted Rooms America” website and can be seen in the movie, Christmas at Graceland: Home for the Holidays on the Hallmark Channel.

Since pianos seem to be coming back to Memphis eating/drinking establishments, including Elwood’s Shack on Park Avenue and Zinnie’s on Madison Avenue, I asked Cynthia Grawemeyer to tell me the history of her haunted piano.

“I play the piano,” Grawemeyer says. “So, our daughter at the time, Leah, was probably 8 or 9 years old. She wanted a grand piano. That’s all she kept saying. I wanted one, too.”

Cynthia’s late husband, Mark Grawemeyer, kept looking for a good deal on a grand piano. “One day he found this piano for sale on Craigslist at such a great price.”

So, Cynthia and Mark drove to an apartment in Millington, where the piano was located. They were greeted by a man in his 30s. “This piano takes up the entire tiny little dining room. And the guy is chain smoking one cigarette after another. The whole place smelled like smoke. He was sweating and nervous and kept loosening his tie.”

Mark asked him, “Why are you selling it? You must be moving. You need to get rid of it?”

The owner told him he still had six months on his lease, but he was staying at a friend’s apartment. And he said, “I can’t stay in this apartment with this piano.”

Mark offered to give him a lot less than the man was asking for the piano. “The guy said, ‘I’ll sell it to you at that price if one, you pay me cash, and two, you keep the piano. You don’t sell it. Keep it for your daughter like you said because it’s a family heirloom.”

And, Cynthia says, “The guy said his mom lived in a house in Frayser and she was getting older. His family wanted her to be in a safer place.”

The man told them they were in the process of moving his mother to Knoxville, but she never made it. “She was killed on the piano.”

According to the story, three intruders broke into her home. “The mother’s boyfriend was there. He shot one of the intruders, but they shot her and then him. I think he may have been surprised. But she got blood on the piano. So, then he felt like the piano was haunted.

“He said this piano was her prized possession and she had gotten it from her parents as her 16th birthday present. It’s an old Hamilton Baldwin piano. An old stage piano that they said could have come out of Chicago.”

The Grawemeyers took the piano anyway. “Mark thought he had found a deal.”

Then things began happening. And, Cynthia says, “I’m not ordinarily a ghosty person.”

She was playing the piano one winter afternoon while Mark was at work. “The dog was laying up under the piano and I’m in this big room and there’s nothing but me playing classical music and that dog.”

Then she suddenly felt something. “You know when you’re in a house and it’s wintertime and you’ll open the window and you get the suction feeling when you let the air in?”

That’s what she felt. “The dog stood up under the piano and his hair stood on top of his head and he was growling.”

Cynthia thought Mark had let himself in the house, which made air rush in. She called to him, but he didn’t answer. She got up and checked the door, but she discovered the deadbolt was still fastened on the inside. “I remember I had locked the door from the inside.”

About a week later, Cynthia was asleep in bed and Mark was in another room. When he returned to the bedroom, he said, “Wow, what was that beautiful piece you were playing?”

Cynthia asked him what he was talking about? She told him she didn’t get up and play the piano. He said, “You didn’t get up and play the piano and go back to sleep? I swear I heard the piano playing.”

The Grawmeyers later moved the piano to their restaurant, Grawemeyer’s. But, apparently, that didn’t stop the piano from doing its thing. A man they knew told him he was entertaining friends by taking them to different downtown restaurants. They walked past Grawemeyer’s after it closed. “He swears he heard the piano playing by itself from the inside.”

He wasn’t the only one with a similar story. “Tenants who lived in my building or next door called me and said, ‘That radio got left on at the restaurant.’ They could hear the piano playing. But nobody would be there.”

Darryl Taylor, who worked at the restaurant and now works at the Grawemeyer home, heard the piano play by itself when he was at the restaurant. He asked Mark who was playing it. “He said it was the ghost piano,” Taylor says.

But Taylor also heard the piano play by itself play at Cynthia’s house. He thought it was the Grawemeyer’s daughter, Emily Alagic. But Emily told him she thought she was hearing him play it. 

And, Taylor says, “They didn’t just play a note. They played a nice long tune.”

So, why doesn’t Grawemeyer sell her haunted piano?  “I wouldn’t mind getting rid of it,” she says. “I actually have a nicer one that I play. It has so much history and story I’d feel bad getting rid of it. I’m assuming one day Leah will put it in her house in Texas. She’s in Fort Worth.”

Post script: “A new player piano sits where my piano sat at South Main Sushi,” Cynthia says.

That’s the restaurant that occupies the space at the old Grawemeyer’s. Cynthia still owns the building. But the “player” on that piano is mechanical. Not metaphysical.