An Orlando court is asked to decide that, and whether a building a restaurant refuses to occupy is haunted.
By wire services
Published September 9, 2005
ORLANDO - The owners of a Japanese restaurant who say a newly renovated building is haunted are being sued by their landlord for refusing to move in.
An offer to hold an exorcism was refused, according to the $2.6-million lawsuit filed by the owners of the Church Street Station entertainment complex last month in Orange Circuit Court.
"I asked them if these were good ghosts or bad ghosts, and if they were good ghosts why it was a problem," said David Simmons, an attorney representing the building's owners, who include boy band promoter Lou Pearlman. Christopher and Yoko Chung, owners of Amura Japanese Restaurant, had planned to move across the street into the building at 125 Church St. in October, but backed out of the lease.
The building once housed Lili Marlene's Aviator's Pub & Restaurant during Church Street Station's tourism heyday in the 1980s.
The Chungs' attorney, Lynn Franklin, said Thursday that several subcontractors and other individuals have reported seeing ghosts or other apparitions at night. A company called Orlando Ghost Tours regularly led visitors through the property until it changed hands in 2001.
"It's very serious," Franklin said. "A lot of people are corroborating having seen incidents."
A subcontractor on the renovation told the Orlando Sentinel this year that workers saw a ghostly bartender and two dancing girls reflected in a mirror late last year.
Emilio San Martin, head of Orlando Ghost Tours, said such reports are nothing new. He said the floor above the restaurant was once occupied by the Strand Hotel.
"That was kind of an unofficial brothel," San Martin said. "The ladies there entertained many a gentleman of wealth."
Visitors - San Martin included - claim to have heard crying from the spirits of the prostitutes' illegitimate children, supposedly put to death to hide their well-to-do fathers' indiscretions.
Others claim to have seen a slender man in a black coat playing a piano or reflected in a mirror.
"Late at night, staff members and guests alike would hear the piano playing by itself," San Martin said. When approached, the man would smile, nod and disappear.
Franklin said Christopher Chung's beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness require him to "avoid encountering or having any association with spirits or demons." Chung also objected to the offer for an exorcism, a rite not acceptable to a Jehovah's Witness, Franklin said.
The lawsuit asks a judge to decide whether the building is haunted and, if so, whether the ghosts would interfere with the restaurant's business. Franklin said her clients would answer the lawsuit by Sept. 22.
Renovations stopped when the Chungs backed out of their lease, and the building remains empty.
