History & local legend
The building at 320 Penn Avenue in Scranton housed the Banshee Pub before AV Restaurant & Lounge moved there in 2017. Staff stories describe a tall man in an old-fashioned black coat near the basement stairs, as well as a girl in white upstairs.
In an October 2025 interview on The Creepy Side of NEPA, AV general manager Julie Thomas repeated an account from the Banshee years. A woman dining there noticed that her son had wandered away. She found him in the basement and asked why he had gone downstairs. The boy said that a man in a black coat had told him to follow.
Thomas also described an experience of her own while preparing the restaurant to open. Working late with a colleague, she heard what sounded like children running back and forth on the floor above. They went upstairs to investigate and found nobody there. On another occasion, she and a coworker returned to the upstairs bar to find its cupboards and cooler all standing open.
Sources
- WNEP, The Creepy Side of NEPA, Julie Thomas interview, October 23, 2025
- Time-coded transcript of Julie Thomas’s firsthand account at 3:59 and former Banshee dinner story at 7:39
- City of Scranton Historical Architectural Review Board, 320–322 Penn Avenue, 2016 survey page 98
- AV Restaurant & Lounge, current name and address
- Esri, address point on Penn Avenue
