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The Red Garter is a charming little Inn and Bakery in Williams Arizona, a nice stop along the way to the Grand Canyon. The building was built in 1897 by August Tetzlaff, a German tailor. He planned to cash in on what he thought was going to be a huge boom of silver and gold mines planned for the nearby Grand Canyon. It was around this time that the Southwest was filled with Mining camps and boomtowns, like Tombstone and Bisbee.

Even though he was a tailor the building was a saloon with a prostitute ‘cribs’ upstairs, essentially a bordello. The working girls, like the mannequin that is there now, were known to hang out the window and flag down passing railway workers. The business, both upstairs and downstairs did well, but Arizona outlawed prostitution in 1907, yet that law wasn’t that strongly upheld and the business continued until a murder occurred in the Red Garter in the Forties. The town started to enforce the law, and a lot of men being away in World War II led to the business closing down.

The Current owner, John Holst, bought the building in 1979, and after renting it out for several years, took control in 1994 and opened the Red Garter Bed and Bakery. Mr. Holst, though an admitted non-believer does hear sounds like a door closing and admits that sometimes when a picture is taken a young lady appears who isn’t there. He says her name is Eve, and she is the only one smiling in the picture he posted on his website, which he says is common, that she is always smiling and always happy. That she is not a mean ghost, one that is really shy but that picks people now and then to try to connect with and smile in their pictures.

Guests have heard footsteps up and down the stairs and doors slamming. Sometimes they see depressions in their beds as if someone was sitting there. That is what you will find at the Red Garter now, not prostitutes and liquor but coffee, warm and delicious pastries and nice and friendly people, including the ghost.