Tag: haunted hotel

AHS Hotel? How About Real Haunted Hotels

Posted on December 28, 2015September 14, 2015 by Anna Abner

Or, Enough Ghost Stories To Keep You Up At Night

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Truly Haunted Hotels For American Horror Story Hotel Inspiration

Written by Sean Erickson, Apr. 2015

In honor of American Horror Story: Hotel, we took a look at the classic motels and hotels that have made for some good to great cinema in the past. But what real life haunted hotels can American Horror Story season 5 use to creep the living daylights out of television viewers? Like John Cusack’s character in the movie 1408, let’s take a tour of the most notoriously haunted hotels in the US, shall we?

Crescent Hotel – Eureka Springs, Arkansas

Why not start the list off with the hotel that actually owns the URL, America’s Most Haunted Hotel? The Crescent Hotel is one of many supposedly haunted establishments that had a previous life as a dubious hospital before it was turned into the infamous hotel it is now. Unfortunately, while it was a “health resort”, it was under the control of a Norman G. Baker who had no real medical knowledge whatsoever and instead peddled “cures” for cancer which turned out to be nothing more that giving patient’s spring water.

Theodora is the most famous of the hotel’s ghosts, a victim of cancer and one of Baker’s clients, she appears as an apparition at the foot of the bed in “Theodora’s Room” at the Crescent Hotel – the second most requested room at the hotel, apparently. There’s also Norman Baker himself, who is also rumored to be haunting the premises along with many other mysterious guests – including the Irish stonemason Michael, who fell to his death while working on the construction of the hotel.

The hotel was even featured on a season 2 episode of Ghost Hunters, where they captured a full body apparition of a creepy guy in a top hat nodding his head. Book your room now, folks!

Hotel Parq Central – Albuquerque, New Mexico

parq central hotel — Hotel Parq Central / Memorial Hospital

Is a former health resort not spooky enough? How about a former mental hospital?

Trip Advisor calls the Hotel Parq Central “An Oasis, Slightly Haunted”. If you don’t mind whispery voices floating around you, the occasional cold spot enveloping you out of nowhere, or your sheets being torn from your bed in the middle of the night, this could be your ideal destination on your next stay in the American Southwest.

Previously known as the Memorial Hospital, the psychiatric institution has seemed to bring many of its former patients with it into the building’s new life as a hotel. The top floor of the right wing of the building seems to be the best place to spot the ghost of a woman hanging out and watching over the residents of the hotel. Even while it was a functioning hospital is is said that former patients and staff alike were routinely treated to floating objects, haunting voices and unexplained phenomena that gave them nightmares for years to come.

Retlaw Plaza Hotel – Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin

retlaw hotel — Retlaw Plaza Hotel, Room 717

Formerly a Ramada Inn that was formerly a nursing home which was a psychiatric hospital before that, the Retlaw Plaza Hotel has another haunted history that is right up American Horror Story‘s alley. Ratings on Trip Advisor can be summed up with, “Loved the hotel, not the ghost.”

Aside from its ghost producing past life as a psychiatric hospital, the hotel also sits on top of tunnels that were used by Chicago gangsters for clandestine meetings and other nefarious things. At some point the hotel’s owner Walter (that’s Retlaw spelled backwards) Schroeder was murdered in the hotel and his spirit haunts the place to this day.

Room 717 is the hotel’s hotbed for paranormal activity but residents and staff say the ghostly activity doesn’t stop there. In fact staff kept a daily log of weird activity which includes hair pulling, televisions changing channels, lights and faucets going on and off, banging on the walls, disembodied male voices, phantom footsteps and unseen bodies bumping into people. There are even sightings of a redheaded woman in a white robe disappearing into the walls.

If all this ins’t enough, it is believed that two of the hotel’s ghosts are man who hung himself on the second floor, which is now the ballroom, and a ballerina who jumped out of her seventh floor room window.

The Stanley Hotel – Estes Park, Colorado

The Stanley Hotel, and the infamous Room 217, is where Stephen King was staying when the idea for The Shining came upon him.

Both of the original hotel proprietors, F.O and Flora Stanley are said to haunt the hotel and can be heard playing piano at odd hours throughout the hotel. There are also numerous reports of lights and faucets going on and off and items suddenly being flung across hotel rooms.

Perhaps the creepiest tales form the Stanley Hotel have to do with the ominous sounds of children playing that can be heard in the halls of the hotel and behind the closed doors of Room 408. But when guests go to investigate there are no children. Guests of Room 408 also report to have left the room for a short period only to return and find the entire room trashed and creepy hand prints of small children all over the mirrors. *shudder*

The Stephen King tale has probably made The Stanley Hotel the most investigated haunted hotel in America, if not the world. Nothing sends shivers up the spine like ghostly kids who love to terrorize the guests at hotels in their spare time.

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<3 Anna

KY Haunted Hospital Remodel

Posted on January 26, 2015February 5, 2015 by Anna Abner

Or, Time To Check In To The Newest Haunted Hotel

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Kentucky Haunted Hospital is on its Way to Becoming a Hotel

Written by John Albrecht, Jr. in July 2014

Owners of a Kentucky haunted hospital are working hard to make it a haunted hotel. The hospital is believed to be one of the most haunted places in the world and according to an interview from an inside source today, money from ghost tours of the hospital are being used to renovate the building and the owners hope that the hotel will be finished by 2020.

The owners of the Waverly Hills Sanatorium filed a zoning plan last spring to convert the former hospital into a hotel and in February the zoning committee voted in favor for city council to approve the zoning for the project.

Owners Charlie and Tina Mattingly have plans to turn the former tuberculosis hospital into a 120-room four-star hotel, convention center, and liquor bottling business. The hotel will cater to the haunted hotel tourists as well as regular guests.

“It’s the feeling that you get in the building and all of the odd anomalies that happen in here that most people relate that with paranormal activity,” owner Charlie Mattingly said in an interview with WRDB in June.

According to the plans, the first floor will be used for a 3,050 square foot restaurant and an 8,500 square foot conference center. The second and third floors will have 120 hotel rooms. The fourth floor will have meeting rooms and a museum focusing on the hospital.

“People won’t come here just because they need a room. They’re going to come here because they want to have an experience for the weekend,” Mattingly said.

On February 25, the Louisville Metro Council’s Planning, Zoning, Design, and Land Development Committee voted unanimously for recommendations to approve zoning for the Mattingly’s project. The Louisville Metro Council met and approved the zoning change request by a 21 to 0 vote.

The Mattinglys are working nonstop to make the hotel a reality by continuing to apply for various permits. So far they have been unable to secure any loans so all of the money from ghost tours is being used for renovations on the building. The Mattinglys make sure that they thank every tourist that comes into the hospital, and they let them know that the donations they give for the tours are turning a dream into a reality.

The Waverly Hills Sanatorium hospital was open for fifty-two years, from 1910 to 1962. It later reopened as a nursing home but it finally closed in 1982. Over the years, some of the the property’s owners have proposed to turn the building into many things, some of which include a prison and a 150-foot statue of Jesus.

The Mattinglys purchased the hospital and the 29-acre property for $230,000 in 2001, and in 2012 acquired an additional 80 acres for $800,000. They have been conducting ghost tours in the former tuberculosis hospital and they estimate that about 10,000 people come on their tours every year. The revenue from the tours is used to renovate the building and the surrounding property. The Mattingly’s say that they will continue to host paranormal enthusiasts when the building becomes a hotel.

<3 Anna

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Hunting Calif. Ghosts

Posted on January 12, 2015February 5, 2015 by Anna Abner

Or, Ghosts Populate Pleasanton, CA

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Hunting the Ghosts in Haunted Pleasanton

Written by Pale Dale Roberts in July 2014

One of the most haunted hotels in Pleasanton is the Pleasanton Hotel: In 1864, five years before the first railroad arrived in Pleasanton, John W. Kettinger built the 1st hotel in Pleasanton, it was called the Farmer’s Hotel – later it was purchased by Henry Reimers in 1891 and burned to the ground on March 18, 1998 and re-built. At one time the hotel was called The Riverside Hotel and there was a minor fire in 1915. A long time resident of Pleasanton named Dwayne Simmons says that on one particular night he saw a man on fire walking on the back street, he was startled on what he was seeing and was prepared to call the police, then the man on fire vanished before his eyes. The location was very close to the hotel. Could Dwayne have seen a victim of this hotel’s past history with fires?

GHOST IDENTIFIED: MAN ON FIRE.

Many people say that upstairs at the Pleasanton Hotel is extremely haunted, the upstairs is the hotspot. People hear and see things. Doors will shut on their own. A terrified young woman has been seen wandering the hallway and many people believe she was a murdered prostitute.

GHOST IDENTIFIED: THE SLAYED HARLOT.

Every October here in Pleasanton, they have a Ghost Walk. According to Denae, she lived in a building at St. Mary’s – when you leave the closet door open, the activity begins. St. Mary’s was once a brothel. She tells me that a woman was murdered there. She says that the closet gets very cold, you can even hear a woman breathing in the closet. St. Mary’s was built sometime in the 1800s. Denae also tells me that pots and pans would fly out of cabinets. The rocking chair once started rocking and there was an old lady rocking it. As she watched this old lady, she finally just dissipated.

GHOST IDENTIFIED: THE ROCKING CHAIR GRANDMA

OTHER GHOSTLY NOTES:
1. Gay 90s Pizza – is very haunted. A patron who does not want to be identified says that one time he was ordering a pizza and the pizza flew from his hands and landed 5 feet in front of him. He said that incident scared the crap out of him.

GHOST IDENTIFIED: PIZZA SNATCHING PHANTOM

2. Tunnels underneath Main Street, Asian railroad workers worked these tunnels. Detrick Sanders says that when everyone is in bed and Main Street is quiet, you will see the heads of Asian men pop up from the streets where the tunnels are located at. Detrick saw this one time and it reminded him of ground hogs, the heads would pop up and look to the right, to the left, straight ahead and go back into the street. It was the most strangest sight he ever saw and he claims he only drank two beers that night.

GHOSTS IDENTIFIED: ASIAN HEAD POPPERS.

3. Dentist Office – Victorian building – used to be house, very haunted. A man with eyes on fire was seen there, the apparition came out of the window and floated to the ground. A couple walking past the office, looked at the ghost and it looked back at the couple and simply laughed with his blazing red eyes and then vanished.

GHOST IDENTIFIED: FIRE EYES.

4. Union Jack Pub – torn down – haunted. The ghost of a woman wearing a pink nightgown was seen floating over the land where once stood the Union Jack Pub.

GHOST IDENTIFIED: LADY IN PINK

There is a nice bridge walkway that will take you to Del Valle Parkway. Marcus Wilcox says his mother once saw a troll like creature underneath this bridge. The troll like creature was yanking the fur off a live rabbit. When Marcus’ mother saw the creature, he ran off into the thickets and vanished.

CRYPTID IDENTIFIED: PLEASANTON BRIDGE TROLL

6. The Rose Hotel: People that have visited the Rose Hotel say that lights turn off and on, a full body apparition of a male ghost has been seen moving a big dresser. Other heavy items have been moved, but according to Swala Jasine she saw a ghostly muscular man move that dresser.

GHOST IDENTIFIED: ROSE HOTEL FURNITURE MOVER.

I did some EVP work in the Pleasanton Hotel and captured a woman moaning and crying. Inconclusive, because it could have been a real woman in one of the rooms actually crying. I didn’t hear the crying with my own ears, but did capture it on my digital recorder.

Stopped off at the Pleasanton Museum at 603 Main Street and learned from the curator that in the Summer of 1917, the film Rebecca of Sunnybrook was filmed there.

The indigenous Indians that resided in the East Bay were many. Here are just a few: Ompin, Carquin, Huchiun, Saclan,Cholvon, Souyen, Taunan, Tuibun, Chupcan, Volvon, Julpun, Tamcan, Ssaeam, Tatean, Yulien, Luecha and some more! With all of these Indian settlements and all of the history of Pleasanton, you would have to believe that this place is haunted.

<3 Anna