If Alhambra Irish House has ever felt enchanting, supernaturally so, that’s because it just might be.
The doors of Alhambra, located at 831 Main St., first swung open in 1896, unveiling a lavish theatre for the Bay Area’s rich and famous. It later became a site for clandestine Masonic rituals, among other curious uses. Today, Alhambra is an Irish pub, a preferred watering hole in Redwood City, and notably, the site of alleged paranormal activity.
“We want to be known for Irish hospitality, which is characterized by warmth, friendliness and generosity towards strangers,” said Erika Barry, the co-owner of Alhambra Irish House. “I’m definitely convinced our Alhambra ghost is helping us achieve that.”
Barry owns the spot with her husband Erik, and had noticed a handful of occult events at her bar well before she caught wind that she had a phantom neighbor. When she mentioned the news to two Alhambra regulars, Stu Robertson and Mark Holtz, the duo took it upon themselves to unpack the place’s centuries-old history.
Biographical accounts and newspaper archives from the turn of the 19th century have helped to unearth the property’s alluring past and illuminate just who this playful spook might be.
About a year ago, at a 50th-birthday Alhambra buyout, Barry recalls balloons popping “by themselves,” which was so jarring and inexplicable that guests started to get scared. Barry laughed it off, blaming “our ghost for Halloween,” she said in jest.
The joke didn’t last long.
One lady, sitting at the bar, interjected: “but you do have a ghost — I’m a psychic.”
Immediately, Barry wondered, “Who could be the ghost? Did something tragic happen?”
The proclaimed psychic said the spirit likes the Barrys’ ownership because they host many live music events and Alhambra’s initial use was as a center for operas, plays and musical performances.
She also attributed the ghost’s favor to the fact that Barry and her husband restored the space’s name to “Alhambra” for the first time since 1921, when the Redwood City chapter of the Freemasonry fraternity purchased the building and renamed it the “Masonic Temple.” Since then, the building has gone by many names and worn many identities, most recently being the gastropub Martins West.
The Alhambra Theater, named after the Moorish palace in Granada, Spain, cost $17,000 to build and was described by the Redwood City Standard, the city’s historical newspaper, as “one of the most successful events in the history of society’s triumphs.”
On opening night, “each countenance beamed with pleasure and satisfaction… the music was unusually fine and the occasion most enjoyable,” the historical article stated. The theater was “filled from orchestra to the gallery,” with attendance from “nearly every adjacent town or hamlet.”
Two days later, the renowned architect of the San Francisco Ferry Building who constructed the theater, A. Page Brown, died. A grievous horse and buggy injury at the Burlingame Country Club months earlier rendered Brown with four broken bones, and ultimately, his last breath.
Barry, Holtz and Robertson believe Brown to be among the contenders for Alhambra’s haunting, though they posit it could be any of the notable visitors from the bar’s storied past.
The Alhambra Theater was first commissioned by Charles Josselyn, a San Francisco-born businessman, who set out to establish the finest theater from San Jose to San Francisco, which many would say he achieved. On opening night, the antique newspaper described Josselyn as “akin to…a successful debutant.”
The theater attracted big names like Wyatt Earp, a mustachioed lawman of the American West who was famous for killing outlaws in gunfights.
Josselyn chose to establish The Alhambra Theater in Redwood City, which had a population of 3,000 at the time, because it was considered “macadamized, watered and free of dust,” and “the health of the town consequently good,” the old newspaper stated. Redwood City “is no mean city.”
The Prohibition mounted in 1920, which watered down the theater and eventually prompted Josselyn to sell it to the Freemasons in 1921. Freemasonry is the world’s first and largest fraternity, whose principles are “fellowship, charity and the search for truth,” according to its modern California webpage.
Notably, the fraternity has always engaged in secret ceremonies, like for the funeral of George McNulty, a master and tiler at the Masonic Temple. A newspaper article from 1955 in the Redwood City Tribune described one such ritual, in which a member announced that a “man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble,” while men in lambskin aprons sat “stolidly” as the master, the marshal and the senior warden performed their “appointed chores.”
The organization would continue to own the Alhambra for over half a century, renting its bottom units to all kinds of shopkeepers, including the Redwood City Tribune, but would maintain the theater for its covert ceremonies, brotherly events such as vaudeville shows, and other public happenings. The Job’s Daughters Bethel female society eventually started to meet there too and also conducted rituals.
In 2001, the inside of the theater caught on fire and burned down while workers attempted to install a new roof atop what was then a 105-year-old building.
Barry and her husband purchased the property in 2019, restoring it to a liquor-focused space, as Josselyn had intended more than a century ago. In the six years since, a number of ghoulish events have transpired.
After the “psychic” informed Barry of the specter in her pub, Barry said another woman, who is part of the Redwood City Woman’s Club, said she “can see ghosts” too and also believes Alhambra has one. The spirit, she said, is both friendly and male.
Barry started to realize the bar might indeed be haunted.
She recalled a live performance by blues artist Walter Jebe on Feb. 10, 2024, when bottles of champagne started to fall from a display rack on the wall, completely unprompted, Barry said. Nothing broke and no one got injured, despite a server station existing beside the wall.
Another ostensibly mystical moment took place during closing, late at night, several months ago. Alhambra bartender Anthony Vasquez said he had shut off the lights and was on his way to leave when the kitchen door flew wide open. No one was in the kitchen, he said.
Most tragic was when Barry said she fell from a ladder and twisted her ankle at the pub while she was alone at the bar the morning after last year’s Halloween drag show. She believes the injury was prompted by the ghost.
Alhambra Irish House isn’t the only establishment in the zone to have reported paranormal activity.
So too has Sensation Mixed Martial Arts, a gym run by former UFC fighter Andre Soukhamthath, which technically occupies part of the space of the historic Alhambra Theater.
Soukhamthath said he comes from Southeast Asia and believes in spirits, so he had the gym blessed when he first took over, just to let the “spirits know we’re here now” and to “give us good fortune.”
Every time he enters and exits the building, he greets and says goodbye to the spirits, he said, to “try to stay in good faith.”
Soukhamthath has had some eerie moments, he said, like when a clipboard fell off the desk on its own, or when the punching bags swung by themselves. “Some of my trainers just run out” in fear, in reaction to such events, the ex-UFC fighter said.
Once, Soukhamthath recalled, a 5-year-old child he was training couldn’t stop staring at the back corner of the gym and then started to wave. Nothing was there, he said.
“There’s a lot of energy that comes in and out of that place,” the fighter added, “so we just try to keep good energy.”
While the jury is still out on whom Barry, Holtz and Robertson believe to be the ghost of Alhambra, the variegated history of the space suggests it could be the legacy of the Freemasonry, the grievously injured architect, the gunslinging lawman, the ritzy clientele of the turn of years past — or, maybe a visitor whose story has been lost to time.
“If there is a ghost,” Barry said, “we like to think he is raising a pint right along with us.”
Alhambra Irish House has a litany of trick and treats ready for Oct. 31, starting at 8 p.m., with live music by Magic Nostalgia, prizes for the best 1920s-inspired costume and a late-night dance party.
