Smalley’s Inn: A Spirited Place

Smalley’s restaurant serves up ghosts and goblins along with lunch and dinner in the hamlet of Carmel. Smalley’s Inn on Gleneida Avenue is steeped with the rollicking history of Carmel, more so than any other structure in the hamlet. Besides feeding residents and visitors since 1852, Smalley’s has served variously—and sometimes simultaneously—as the town’s hotel, bank, saloon, and morgue. But the history at Smalley’s may be present in a more real sense: Some former patrons reportedly have opted to stick around long after departing from this world. Today, ghost hunters make pilgrimages here seeking the spirits who continue to haunt the old inn in the heart of Carmel hamlet.

If you stop in the restaurant for a meal or head to the bar for some spirits, chances are the staff will tell you the ghostly tales. In fact, they need little prompting. Owner Tony Porto might even bring out a stack of photographs taken by ghost hunters, or “paranormals,” as he calls them, which reveal the faces and faint outlines of ghosts throughout the building. The spirits, it seems, only appear through the medium of a photograph.

Diana Culhane “A lady came from Middletown, asked if she could take pictures after lunch,” Porto recalled on a recent Friday afternoon. “She found a face in the hallway, coming out of the wall!” he chuckled, pointing to a disturbed image on print-out of a digital photo. “Looks like a gargoyle!”

“You’ve seen all those things, it will make you a believer!”

But Smalley’s is not only about the ghosts. Though it looks like a bar from the outside, the restaurant is a familyfriendly spot serving a variety of hearty meals, from burgers to pasta and seafood dishes at decent prices. During the weekday lunch hour, you are likely to run into the county’s key players given the restaurant’s location across from the courthouse. The bar itself is housed in a separate room with its own entrance on Gleneida.

DIANA CULHANe The history of Carmel is told on the walls, covered with photographs and sketches of the early days of the hamlet. The atmosphere is a cross between a Victorian pub—with privacy walls between booths—and a Cracker Barrel, loaded with artifacts such as wagon wheels, wood carvings, and a stuffed deer’s head. And each table is covered with pennies, painstakingly place under the glass by Porto himself.

The inn, built by James J. Smalley, who served as sheriff, treasurer, and coroner, was used as a morgue during the Civil War—a fact that spurs the imagination of those seeking the ghosts of Gleneida Ave. Bodies brought back to Putnam were identified in the basement before they were moved down the road to Union Cemetery. But some say that the souls stayed at Smalley’s.

In addition to the Civil War veterans, Smalley’s is reputed to be the home of the ghost of “little Elizabeth Smalley.”

Some years ago, contractors digging a foundation on Gypsy Trail unearthed the tombstone of the young daughter of James Smalley. The workers brought the stone to Smalley’s, and, according to Porto, little Elizabeth “followed it here.” Some years later, a Smalley descendent living in Manhattan came to the inn to do research on a book she was writing about her family. She brought Elizabeth’s tombstone with her back to the city, but, Porto said, the ghost chose to remain at Smalley’s, hanging out in the back dining room.

“I think she used to play here when she was younger,” he said, matter-offactly.

As we sat there discussing the ghost of Elizabeth Smalley on a Friday afternoon, a shadow flew across the room.

It was no shade, though; rather, a large crow had landed on the outer surface of the skylight to sip from a puddle of rainwater. Porto noted that the skylights were once the glass doors of an empty shopping center, which he installed to illuminate the room during the day.

“I needed the light in here because it was too dark,” he said.

In the main dining room, a large mirror hangs on the wall, imported from Europe in the 1850s. Porto said that thousands of faces have stared into that mirror over the years—especially when it used to hang over the bar. According to photographs taken by the “paranormals,” some of the faces have remained etched into the mirror, frozen in time, long after the souls have departed.

On the other side of the dining room, at booth 22, a 19th century lady reportedly lingers. Porto has a photograph showing the slight outline of a ragged dress hovering next to the table. Some patrons claim to have felt tugs at their clothing. There have been other reports of strange occurrences. Porto recalled one day when

every single phone on the premises­—

including

all of the cell phones of the patrons sitting at the bar—rang simultaneously. Caller IDs displayed the number of one of the house phones at Smalley’s.

Because of such events, “the paranormals come here at least twice a month, from all over the country,” Porto said. “They come in with all their equipment.”

Porto acknowledged that the ghost stories might scare away some customers— some want to have nothing to do with such tales.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” he said. “Some people don’t like the ghosts and they don’t come in.”

Despite the ghost tales, the atmosphere is not macabre. None of the paranormal photographs are displayed on the wall, the staff is friendly, and the food is the sort that warms one up and sticks to the bones. Still, if you’re nervous about encountering other-worldly spirits while dining at Smalley’s, you could take the advice offered by Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Upon feeling the chilling tug of a spirit at your the sleeve, “as a stranger, give it welcome,” and go about enjoying your Smalley’s feast, with the knowledge that not too long ago, in the scheme of time, that spirit, too, was flesh and blood, consuming fine food and drink, perhaps even sitting in the chair presently occupied by you.

A Conversation with Smalley’s Tony Porto

In 1924, Smalley’s was ravaged by fire, and the inn was never rebuilt. Porto himself took over in the 1970s. A native of the Bronx, he was part of the Carmel High football team that won 35 straight games over four years in the mid-1950s. After graduation, he entered the Navy Sea Bees, and later returned to Putnam to open his first business, the Portly Dragon, a former pizza joint in Lake Carmel. Over the years, he has been in involved in several ventures, notably, a once famous restaurant for the rich and famous called Dreamwold, in a mansion on Gypsy Trail that has since burned down.

Today, Porto can be seen talking frequently with customers, about ghosts, history, or politics. He notes that Smalley’s has had a number of famous visitors, including Wilt Chamberlain, who lived at the nearby Sedgewick Club.

Smalley’s is full of conversation— from the chatter at the bar to the spontaneous conversations when old friends run into each other. Porto himself likes to talk politics, and it does not take much to get him going on the topic of taxes.

“They’re driving a lot of people out of Carmel with the taxes,” he said. “The taxes are too high. They have to start putting a cap on our government spending in this town. It’s killing us.”

Porto complained that the state government “wants to tax soda more, tax all the liquor, tax all the wines, making cigarettes go up, and blah blah blah. They want to put a road tax on your car driving back and forth to work.” Growing more animated, Porto asked, “where’s the money going? I’d like to know where all this extra money is going? You got lottery, you got sales tax, gasoline tax. Everything is going up and up and up.”

At the same time, Porto is hoping to secure a state grant to construct a new inn—in an old style—in behind the restaurant. He hopes that the hotel will attract those in town on county business, lawyers, people in town for funerals, and perhaps even a few ghost hunters.

—Joe Lindsley Jr.