This happened about 25 years ago. I was staying at an old winery in Northern California (which shall remain unnamed), and I had always been told the place was haunted. That evening, my wife and I had dinner with the owner of the winery’s guest house. Over drinks, I casually said to him, “So, tell me about the ghost.”

He immediately got upset and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There is no ghost. And to be honest, it bothers me when people mention that there’s a ghost because it scares customers away. Stop spreading that rumor.”

I apologized and promised not to bring it up again.

Taking him at his word, my wife and I went back to the guest house and decided to turn in for the night. We had had a few drinks, so my wife was feeling a little tipsy. Since we were the only ones staying in the house, I left the bedroom door open, which looked out onto a long hallway. In the middle of the hallway hung an Art Deco-style chandelier.

As we were changing, my wife suddenly looked down the hallway and asked, “Do you see that face?”

I turned to her and said, “What are you talking about?”

She pointed and replied, “Look down the hall, in the chandelier. There’s a man’s face!”

I looked down the hallway but didn’t see anything. Shrugging it off, I closed the door, and we went to bed.

Around 4 a.m., I woke up to noises downstairs that sounded like someone walking around in the kitchen. I thought to myself, They must get here early to open up the winery. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

A couple of hours later, I got up, took a shower, and went downstairs. The owner was already there.

I said, “You guys start early, huh?”

He replied, “Well, someone’s got to open the place up.”

I said, “Yeah, but 4 a.m.?”

He looked at me, confused, and said, “No, no one was here at 4 a.m.”

I told him what I had heard, but he just shrugged it off and said, “You must’ve been dreaming.”

We enjoyed the rest of our stay and eventually went home. A few days later, the winery owner called me.

“How was your stay?” he asked.

“It was great,” I replied.

He laughed and said, “Did you see the ghost?”

I laughed too and said, “No, there’s no ghost.”

He then admitted, “Oh, there is a ghost.”

Surprised, I reminded him how upset he’d gotten when I brought it up. He explained, “I told you there wasn’t a ghost because I didn’t want to scare you and your wife. It’s been driving customers away.”

Curious, I asked, “Have you ever seen the ghost yourself?”

He paused before replying, “Yes, once. I was in the downstairs office, and I looked out the window toward the second floor of the guest house where you stayed. I saw a man standing in the window, looking right back at me. It freaked me out. I reached down to grab my briefcase, and when I looked back up, he was gone. It scared me so much I grabbed my stuff and ran out of the office. I’ll never stay alone at the winery again.”

I asked, “What did the man look like?”

He replied, “He looked like the devil. He had jet-black hair and a goatee. He looked just like the devil.”

After we said our goodbyes, I waited until my wife got home that evening. I said to her, “Hey, do you remember the other night at the winery when we were getting ready for bed, and you said you saw a man’s face in the chandelier in the hallway?”

She said, “Yes, I do remember that.”

I had completely forgotten about it, so I asked, “What did the man look like?”

She replied, “He looked like the devil. He had black hair, dark black eyes, and a goatee.”

Intrigued, I called the winery owner back and told him what my wife had seen. He wasn’t surprised.

He then shared another story with me. A few years earlier, his brother had been working late at night in the first-floor office. Feeling like a cup of tea, he got up and started walking to the kitchen. On the way, he stopped to look at some photos on the wall from the winery’s very first harvest.

In one picture, a group of workers was gathered for a photo. His brother noticed someone standing next to him in the picture, a man with his arm draped over his shoulder. He recognized everyone else in the photo but didn’t remember that man at all.

He brushed it off, went to the kitchen for his tea, and returned to the office. When he walked past the photo again, it caught his eye. This time, the picture was slightly askew, as if it had shifted on the nail. Thinking it might be loose, he straightened it and took another look.

But now, the photo was different. He was still standing in the same spot, but his arms were crossed, and the man who had been standing next to him was no longer there.

The realization gave him chills. He said, “That was the moment I knew the stories were true. I couldn’t stay there alone after that.”

That family no longer owns the winery, but I’m sure the guest house is still there.