It’s Tuesday, it’s trivia night at Antrim’s Duncan Tavern, the place is packed, and Erika Hauptman is really busy trying to get everybody their food and first round of drinks before Toni VanNess takes microphone in hand and starts stumping the trivia teams with questions. (Really, who knows what country has the oldest flag?)

“I do enjoy working here,” says Erika, who can’t talk long as she’s on her way back into the kitchen. “You get to know a lot of people in town. John and Abby are doing a great job. We’re very lucky.”

John and Abby Campbell are the new owners—in June it will be two years.

“We just live a couple of miles down the road,” says Abby, who can’t talk long, either, as she’s also needed in the kitchen. (“I like to mostly stay in the kitchen,” she confesses.) She says she and John have owned other businesses. They have been in Tioga County about fifteen years, which makes them relative newbies, but she says people have been friendly and very accepting. Helpful, too. Sherry Davis Johnson, who had owned the place for twenty-five years, still comes in and works two or three days a week.

The Duncan, at 292 Antrim Main Street, was a payroll office way back when Antrim was an active coal mining town. The township of the same name was, according to the 1897 edition of the History of Tioga County, named for Duncan S. Magee, a bigwig with the Fall Brook Coal Company, and was created in 1873 from bits of Delmar, Charleston, and Morris townships. The township boasted 2,449 residents by 1890. Its lands were nearly all owned by the Fall Brook Coal Company, and most of its residents—coal miners and their families—lived in Antrim, which was named for County Antrim, Ireland. There were ten dwellings in Antrim on January 1, 1871. In October of the following year, the railroad line from Lawrenceville was completed. A hotel and a post office followed, and then came schools and a general store and churches. In fact, one of those churches, built in 1882 with stone from the local quarry, is still standing and is for sale (listed as contingent), complete with pews and stained glass windows.

Antrim is “a good place to raise kids,” says Steve Krystoff, who’s not playing trivia this Tuesday but is enjoying a libation at the refurbished bar. “I do miss that old bar, but the new one is nice. Back when I was a kid, they used to play bingo upstairs, and they had dances for us kids.” The first owner he can remember was a man named George Hill. He characterizes another owner, Rut Wilcox, as a “hell of a nice guy.” Steve’s own grandfather worked in the mines, and a great-uncle was killed in the mines.

The history of the building, the town, the place, is part of what makes Abby happy here. The payroll office stayed open till 1949, and the Duncan Tavern first opened its doors in 1952.

“I love being surrounded by the old, local history,” she says, and the tavern is full of it. The big chandelier over the bar consists of an assortment of oil lamps, some of which came from one of the churches. There is a lectern from the Catholic church. Old black and white pictures are grouped on the walls according to subject material.

“Over there is the general store section,” Abby indicates. “They’re pictures of the way the town was. We’re just trying to preserve it. A lot of stuff hanging here we just left.” Like the helmets—she’s talking about the helmets the miners wore.

“Those helmets have been there forever,” she continues. “There’s a helmet and a lamp from someone who came here to collect their pay.”

And, oh yeah, being a payroll office meant there had to be a safe place on the premises for the money and records—two safe places, actually. The first floor safe is now the walk-in cooler. The 600-pound door was built in 1869 with seven layers of quarter-inch steel. The safe itself is three to four layers of three-inch clay bricks. Abby says it took twelve hours to drill into it to install their tap system. The safe had a timing device on it that, if activated, prevented it from being opened, even with a combination, until the timer went off. That device has since been disconnected.

On March 17, 1934, someone failed in an attempt to blow the safe open with nitroglycerin. The $400 that was in it remained there.

The second safe was probably used for storing payroll records. It’s upstairs, along with the two coffins.

Coffins? Yes. Long-time patrons will remember that the coffins used to be downstairs. Now, “we bring them down for Halloween,” Abby says.

Which leads to the next logical question. Is the place haunted?

“I have never been bothered,” Abby says. “But other employees have. Some have smelled a woman’s perfume. Others heard someone whistling.”

Rich Weidenhammer, who’s been coming to this neck of the woods with his family since he was a little kid, has been cooking at the Duncan for over three years. He’s on a first-name basis with Abigail, and says he sees her “almost every time I’m here.”

“From what I understand, she was a mail-order bride,” Rich says. Her intended decided against marrying her, and Abigail ended up as a call girl. (There was evidently space upstairs for that sort of activity—“It was like a brothel,” Rich says a little hesitantly.) He says she wears a long, flowing dress, but he doesn’t see her face or even her head. She usually stands at the entrance to the kitchen when he arrives in the morning, and he greets her with a “Good morning, Abigail.” There are “odd things” that happen once in a while, but “I’m not real worried.”

Whether the resident spirits venture into the outdoors may not be known, but the flesh and blood patrons will be enjoying the Duncan’s new deck as soon as things warm up a bit. In the meantime, the menu, from sandwiches to salads to daily specials, is available inside, seven days a week, starting at 11 a.m. every day but Sunday, when it’s noon. If you’re interested in trivia night, it’s best to call for a reservation—(570) 353-6870—but, be aware: The questions are sometimes hard!