Wednesday, October 7, 2009

My First Haunted Hotel Experience

I was up nice and early and on the road quickly which was disappointing because I didn't get a chance to say good morning and good bye to the new friend I made last night at the campsite. I made my way down to Davis to spend a couple nights with Joelle relaxing and doing a little hiking at Tiburon.


After Joelle cooked me a big breakfast and sent me off with snacks, lunch, and dinner (I would have visited a lot sooner if I knew I was going to get this sort of treatment), I headed towards Silver City, NV under the suggestion of a close family friend, Steve. As I passed through Lake Tahoe, I stopped for a short bike ride around the lake.



Just north of the 50 on the 391 was a bunch of junk on the west side of the road, or so I thought. After driving many miles, I have come to realize that it is pretty standard practice for people to leave equipment, when it is broken, out on the property to rust and sit there pretty uselessly. Some people, like the ones who own this property, decided to make art from some of their "junk". I turned around and found a place to pull over and snapped some shots of all of the art.

I had headed to Silver City originally because it had been described to me as this cool little touristy town up on a hill. When I arrived at what I believed was Silver City, I didn't see much more than run down buildings and a couple of historical markers that were not kept particularly well. Seeing no reason to turn around and go back, I kept driving to explore a little bit. When I went a little farther to go into a local thrift shop, I could tell by the bumper stickers that I was not around people who shared my beliefs. After a short wander around, i headed back down the hill when I stumbled upon the Golden Hill Hotel and Saloon where I decided to stop in and have a drink before trying to find a place to stay for the night.



As I walked up to the front door, there were two people sitting and enjoying a drink that greeted me and I began to talk with them. After a couple minutes, they asked me to take a seat and I did. One of the people happened to be Bill, one of the owners of the hotel. Bill was a somewhat soft spoken, portly man, who had many stories to share if he is provoked to tell them but he seemed more interested in hearing other people's stories. As the night went on, I met many people, both local and guests of the hotel. Many of the guests were regulars who come back every year for various reasons. Some, like myself, just stumbled upon it or found it on the internet.

With the group of people outside growing and changing constantly, I had an incredible time talking with everyone. Many of the people had done a lot of traveling and one couple had even worked for the UN for many years and urged me to look into it as well (they gave me some resources if I was interested). After a couple drinks, Carol (Bill's wife and other owner) had asked me why I wasn't staying there. When they told me it was only $50, I got a room and stayed the night, drinking and talking with the people I had met and eventually retiring to my room sometime after midnight.


(Dan and his wife worked for the UN)

 Although the hotel has history and is in a relatively nice dessert surrounding (it's cooler there because of the altitude), the main draw of the hotel is that it is haunted. There have been many sightings both from psychics and regular people. There were some young people a while back who stayed in room 18, the mining room. They saw and recorded their encounter with ghosts and sold it to the History and Discovery Channel. Room 18 was booked for 60 straight days after the piece aired. It was interesting to here Carol tell all of the ghost stories and sightings. Fortunately for them, the ghosts are generally friendly there (from what they can tell).

Even more fortunately for me, I got room 3, one of the only rooms that has never had ANY ghost sightings. The funny thing about staying in a haunted hotel is that you begin to almost expect to see a ghost. You begin to attribute everything that happens to ghosts. When something very simple all of a sudden has no explanation, you ask yourself, "is it a ghost?" Soon you realize that it's not, though the amount of time your mind takes to process normal things and tell you they're normal has somehow seemed to slow to a snails pace with the opportunity of the explanation being "ghost." It didn't help that the room had 3 different types of locks on the door (is that SERIOUSLY necessary?), old tapestries on the wall and an 18th century picture of a scary looking, pale skinned child who's lifeless eyes seems to stare through to your soul no matter where you stood in the room.



When I walked in the room, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. After realizing that I was in a haunted hotel and that would probably explain the hairs on my neck, I shoot a glance to the picture of the demon child and realize it's crooked. Is this a ghosts way of somehow communicating with me? Does it know that deep down, there's a small bit of OCD in me and I would notice this, thus proving after all, that room 3 actually IS haunted? No...wait, they probably tilted it when dusting. As I began to settle in and my nerves followed at a slower pace, I began to calm down a bit. I made sure to place everything on the floor as I had been told that the ghosts had been known to throw things on to the floor and somehow I didn't think apple would take "ghost" as a reason for a broken laptop when I took it in for warranty.

Even as I settled down and got comfortable in the room, I still paused every time I walked into the bathroom, a little darker than I would like with a rather large mirror over the sink which sat to the left of the doorway as you entered the small bathroom. I paused as the hairs stood up on my neck, every time, and I quickly looked to the mirror expecting to see someone besides as if I was in elementary school testing to see if saying "Bloody Mary" however many times in the dark would make her appear. After acknowledging that it was only me, I would look myself in the eyes and chuckle inside at my ridiculousness. And though I laughed at myself every time, I still repeated this every time I walked into the bathroom, turned around from peeing, or came out of the shower. I survived to the next morning with no sightings and some decent rest, happy to be untouched, a little disappointed I didn't have a story to tell.

3 comments:

  1. you are a survivor. be thankful. AWESOME read.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. After your camping experience, you did THIS?! My you are getting brave!

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