The Haunted House restaurant near Route 66 in Oklahoma City reopened during the July 4 weekend with a slightly different name but the same unique decor, according to the new owner’s website, its Facebook page and a recent article by Dave Cathey, food editor at The Oklahoman newspaper.
In April, the restaurant was sold by auction for $215,600 to Patrick M. Boylan, who owns J. Bruner’s Steakhouse in Osage Beach, Missouri, and PDC Productions event-planning firm in Norman, Oklahoma. Longtime previous owner Marian Thibault, 89, decided to put the restaurant on the block because of her fragile health and died just a few weeks after its sale.
Boylan said his goal is to change very little about the restaurant and continue to operate the place where he’s been wining and dining potential clients since he began PDC Productions in 1982.
The Norman native who was raised primarily in Iowa before returning to the University of Oklahoma for school in 1982 said the biggest changes he has in store for the restaurant, should the deal close, have to do with marketing.
“Marian never did any advertising,” Boylan joked. “We will have a Facebook page, we will have a Twitter account — we might even buy some advertising in The Oklahoman!” Boylan said.
The restaurant name now is J. Bruner’s at The Haunted House. Boylan changed little else, other than trimming the trees on the road leading to it. He also said the menu and service needed some updating, but didn’t elaborate.
The Haunted House is on a dead-end road near a road that was Route 66 from the 1950s to the 1980s. Because of its semi-secluded location and good reputation, the restaurant included Bob Hope, Lauren Bacall and Liberace among its celebrity customers. Many members of the Oklahoma Legislature dined there, as well.
The 1935 stone-walled former residence is named because three deaths — including a homicide — were linked to it. Automobile dealer Martin Carriker was found shot to death there in 1963. Carriker’s wife died before the murder trial started. Their stepdaughter, who was indicted but acquitted of organizing the killing, died of a drug overdose not long after that.
The restaurant played up that macabre past and added some ghost decor after it opened in 1964.