From left to right, Lindsey and Emanuel Spanos stand together behind the bar in the Burnt Secrets Cellar on Saturday night. Photo by Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Shepherdstown now is home to its first speakeasy since the end of the Prohibition era.

This past weekend, Panagiota’s Taste of Greece held a soft opening for the new speakeasy in its basement, the Burnt Secrets Cellar. The 1920s-inspired speakeasy will be opening to the public this weekend, with regular hours from 8 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. every Friday and Saturday night.

“We’re really excited about this,” said Lindsey Spanos, who owns the business with her husband, Emanuel Spanos. “This is something we’ve been dreaming about opening here, since the very beginning.”

The speakeasy is located through a door in the restaurant’s coffee room, which leads down a dark staircase into a plush lounge area, with seating for up to 35 people. It’s a space the couple hopes will become a popular place for groups of friends to hang out, as well as for people to rent for special occasions. Admission is rather exclusive, with the speakeasy requiring an online reservation and passcode for entry.

“The first day we walked in and saw the stone walls and said, ‘We’re going to make this into a speakeasy,'” Emanuel said. “Everybody thought the ceiling was too low and that it wouldn’t work to turn this into a speakeasy, but it’s turned out that was not actually the case.”

A hole in the wall shows where exhaust was let out, when cremations were being done in at 115 East German Street in Shepherdstown a hundred years ago. Photo by Tabitha Johnston

According to Emanuel, a concerted effort has been made to give the space a Prohibition-era atmosphere. This includes everything from purchasing a working 1918 phonograph, to planning special nights with a live jazz trio, to creating mafia-themed charcuterie board and cocktails.

“We wanted to give this place the whole feel of being an underground pub in the 1920s,” Emanuel said. “It needed to feel authentic.”

The business, which opened at 115 East German Street this past October, underwent some intensive cleanup efforts over the past several months.

“We started cleaning in here from day one. It took a huge amount of work. If we could have opened three months ago, we would have,” Lindsey said. “It was full of broken chains and furniture and other kinds of junk from who knows how long ago.”

She added that there was also human ash in the basement, from back when the building served as a morgue and crematorium. The building was constructed in 1798 and served as the town’s morgue and crematorium for around a century, before it was converted into a restaurant. This history, she noted, is what has given the building its designation as the most haunted building in Shepherdstown.

Emanuel Spanos gives a tour of the Burnt Secrets Cellar on Saturday night. Photo by Tabitha Johnston

Many individuals — including both Emanuel and Lindsey — have had experiences with spirits there. They have come to recognize various ghosts that they believe dwell in the space, and have even set up a permanent table in the back of the speakeasy for the ghosts to sit at, if desired.

“We’ve partnered with the Shepherdstown Ghost Tours, we’ve had mediums come through and we’ve had a lot of experiences, ourselves, with spirits down here,” Lindsey said. “I know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I think it’s fascinating.”

Reservations to the speakeasy can be made here.