Just ask owners Michael and Theresa Manchik, who bought the structure three years ago and opened Boomer's Tavern. The two sometimes stay upstairs in rooms reserved for their exclusive use.
The three-story hotel was built in 1855 with a ballroom on the top floor.
In 1962, a fire gutted the entire third level and today the tavern graces the ground floor and 10 rooms comprise the upstairs.
A few months ago, paranormal investigators Brian O, founder of Macomb County Michigan Scientific Paranormal Investigators, and his assistant, Colleen Squires, stopped by in search of an area cemetery.
"We just started discussing the old hotel. It was built before the Civil War and everything, and they got to thinking that, well, a lot of things have happened in the last 155 years; things that I'm sure we don't even know about, so it was right up their alley," Mr. Manchik said.
Equipment was set up in a bedroom and old community bathroom.
"We basically had Mike take us through what we call 'hot spots,' the areas where there might be activity, so we kind of had an idea of where we wanted to set up," Squires said.
Her boss, an investigator for over 14 years, said their equipment includes digital thermometers and K2 meters that measure electromagnetic fields.
Paranormal activity might be indicated through smells, cold spots, footsteps or sounds like tapping, moaning or yelling he added.
"Personal experience is when you have something tug on you or something that is out of the ordinary or not normal."
Squires said the pair has crisscrossed counties in their efforts to track paranormal activity, including their latest effort at a haunted barn in Capac.
"We've been all over. We investigated a house in Roseville, in Ferndale and Detroit. We even did a movie theater," she said.
Brian added that the Memphis Hotel is a swarm of activity.
"There was a lot of footsteps, movement, shuffling. There were a few moans, two separate apparitions, possibly a male and female. There was object manipulation with our flashlight, with our K2 meters. There was lots of activity at this location," he said.
Manchik said activity levels were high in the old bathroom.
"A lot of energy orbs ... They said they were just phenomenal, the best they've ever seen. If you think about it, every person that stayed here was in that bathroom. Maybe that is why there is so much energy there," he theorized.
The investigators said the proof was unbelievable.
"I don't want to believe it," Theresa Manchik responded half-jokingly.
Ghostly tales have swarmed about the old hotel for years.
"I had heard different stories ... about people seeing ghosts," Mr. Manchik said, "and (a guest) had passed away in the upper bedroom here in the corner probably 20-some years ago. ... There was another death too. Like I said in 155 years we don't really know how many people might have passed away here so, you know, there are a lot of possibilities."
Theresa has also encountered unexplained phenomena.
"When I was behind the bar, Mike was shooting pool one night ... and there was only one other person at the bar and I was down at this end. (Mike) had this 'See no evil, Speak no evil, Hear no evil' monkey statue down at the other end of the bar and it just flopped over and the head broke off. Nobody touched anything," she said.
When they first bought the building, the Manchiks took friends on tours of the hotel.
"I had all the keys in the doors and all the doors unlocked because that way you could just show people in. At the one door where ... (a guest) supposedly died, every single time we went up there that door was locked. Every single time," Theresa said.
Once she set her purse on a milk crate and came back to find the purse flipped over and its contents soaking in a nearby water bucket.
Bartender Terri Mirch recalls the night of the non-playing, satellite juke box.
"People were starting to complain, which we've never had before, that the juke box wasn't playing their songs," she said.
Several attempts were made before the customers were given their money back.
"About a half hour after they left, the place was quiet and I was closing up and the juke box popped on ... It was the song they had been requesting. I had the strangest feeling. It lasted for, maybe, five seconds. I was kind of disoriented when I kind of came out of it and it took me a good minute to get my bearings," she said.
Last week the investigators came back to present their findings and the tavern marquee invited the public to witness the event.
Memphis residents Kurt and Pat Marter were ready for a little paranormal partying.
"I've heard over and over, since we've moved here, that this place was haunted," Pat remarked.
The Marters, themselves owners of an historical home built in the early 1850s, have encountered instances of unexplained phenomena such as smells and sounds within their own Main Street dwelling.
They were joined by the faithful and the non-believers who were ready to be wowed.
The investigators presented their film and recorded findings on a modest television located behind the bar that left some people straining and complaining about the visuals.
Screen activities revealed instances of light manipulation, sounds and moving orbs as well as a scene of a heat-like specter crossing over a doorway.
Scoffs from several in the audience sounded while others expressed amazement at the apparitional sights.
"Well that was something," Memphis resident Tim Ross said, raising a glass toward the screen.
Joanie Korotko, who writes for the Emmett Village News, is a believer in paranormal activity but, with respect to the case at hand, she felt that the tavern's small television screen prevented the investigators from properly presenting their case.
"They didn't know this was going to be a full-scale demonstration or situation. They are working with a small screen. At other locations they'll go and set up and show people and they will have people running up to it and they can see more of the details that they are trying to point out," she said.
Her seating companion's observations were somewhat more sardonic.
"I am not a believer. I think the only spirits here are behind the bar," Dan Gregory of Emmett cracked.
The Manchiks remain open-minded about the entire experience.
"From the people around I can tell there was a lot of skepticism, you know, anybody can make a flashlight turn off and on ... but that last part, where the orb went over the doorway ... I can't see any way he could have created that to happen. I got goose bumps from that one. It was almost like you could see a heat go across it. That one convinced me," Mr. Manchik said.
He and his wife have invited the investigators back for a future sweep.
"The aura here is not evil," he said, "and by no means aggressive. When we moved in, we kind of riled things up ... moved in and stirred things up. I truly believe in the hereafter and the spirit. There is just too much evidence to say positively that there is no such thing."
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