Haunted Houses Read online

  When Garrou showed up about noon on the third day, he asked Kate’s father if he could marry her. The surprised farmer told Garrou that he didn’t know as to how his daughter should marry a traveling man.

  “Well it’s time I settled down on some land of my own,” Lou replied, chewing thoughtfully on a blade of grass. Kate’s father liked the sound of that, and her stepmother, eager to get rid of the girl, said, “It’s high time Kate got married.”

  So a justice of the peace performed the ceremony, and afterward Morgan pressed a fifty-dollar note into his daughter’s hand. It was the first time since her mother’s death that Kate had seen tears in his eyes.

  The river looked like a sheet of gold in the late afternoon sun as the couple boarded a Mississippi packet heading south to Savannah, Fulton, Comanche, and Moline. The names all sounded exciting to Kate. But while the big paddles of the boat rhythmically pounded the water, Kate found out what her husband’s “business” was. He was a gambler.

  That night she cried and told him he had deceived her. He became angry and asked her what difference his making a living gambling made if she cared about him, and, if she didn’t, she could always go home. Kate could just imagine the anger in her stepmother’s face if she showed up at the front door. There was nothing to do but make the best of it.

  From then on Lou and Kate traveled everywhere there were gambling tables and card games. When they were not on riverboats, they stayed in cities like San Francisco or Sacramento, anywhere Lou could find games with high enough stakes. Usually, he registered Kate under the name Mrs. Anderson Barnard. Whether this was his real name or one he had chosen to protect his identity if there was trouble he would never say. But Kate did know that after the card games there were sometimes hot words and angry losers.

  In a few years she settled in Visalia, California, while Lou went on traveling. Sometimes he would show up unexpectedly, promise her he was going to change, stay for a week or two and then leave again. During one of these visits, Kate said, “Why can’t we live like other people do?”

  “You’re right, honey. We’ll buy us a little house in Los Angeles and start a family,” he said, hugging her.

  They bought the house he had promised and for a while Lou seemed content. Because he was, so was Kate. There were games around town, and money rolled in. Lou tried hard not to become too greedy. He would win a few games, then let himself lose one or two, keeping his bets small. But after four or five months of this, he began to get restless. It was just like it had always been when they stayed anywhere for long. The stakes in the games weren’t big enough, or there was more money to be made elsewhere—Frisco or Denver. Then one night he didn’t come home. He had never done that before or left town without telling her. That was the first of October 1892, and a few weeks later Kate found that she was pregnant. She wanted to tell Lou, but where was he?

  Just before Thanksgiving a letter arrived. He wrote that he didn’t think he would ever be able to settle down, and it wasn’t right for a pretty woman like her to be saddled with a drifter. He would see her in a few weeks and bring the money for her to get a divorce. “You keep the house,” he wrote. “A man like me has got no use for one.”

  Kate was heartbroken but sure that when he found out about the baby, everything would change; she would find him. One of his favorite haunts was the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego. There was all the money she had saved for an emergency under the fancy black-and-gold French clock he had once given her. The next day she bought some lovely new clothes with part of it. She would go to San Diego and join him. He would be happy over her news. Everything would be the way it was during the early years, except that now there would be the three of them.

  When she arrived at the Hotel del Coronado, she registered as Mrs. Lottie Anderson Barnard. She could scarcely wait to dress and go to the game room. When she did arrive and looked in the door, there sat Lou playing cards at one of the tables. A pretty woman, her arms looped affectionately around his neck, leaned over him as he played. Kate saw him lay his cards on the table, smiling triumphantly, and reach up to touch the woman’s arm. You might have heard a heart break. You might have heard a tear drop, if it were possible to hear either.

  Lou did not look toward the doorway and Kate never entered the room. Turning quickly away, she walked through the vast lobby out to one of the carriages sitting in front of the hotel and gave the driver the address of a shop in San Diego. When the carriage brought her back to the hotel she was carrying a paper bag.

  Back in room 302, Kate unfolded the pretty clothes she had bought the day before she left Los Angeles, threw them in the fireplace, and touched the newspaper beneath the kindling with one of the large wooden matches from the small white china match box on the mantel. Then she took from her suitcase a bracelet of woven hair with a picture of a man’s face set in the medallion’s centerpiece, looked at it, and threw it into the fire on top of the clothing. Last to go into the flames was her pocketbook.

  Picking up the paper bag, Kate started down the long carpeted hallway to the elevator. The door of the ornate brass cage closed behind her. Was there anything else she should do? Yes, one more thing.

  “Is a Mr. Lou Garrou registered here?” she asked, stopping at the desk.

  The clerk went through the cards on the rack. “Yes, madam. Through Sunday.”

  “May I have a piece of paper?” Kate wrote three sentences on it. Lottie Barnard was registered in room 302. She loved you very much. She came to tell you your child was on the way.

  “Would you have someone take this note to him in the game room in about fifteen minutes?”

  “Of course, madam.”

  It was raining heavily when Kate went out the hotel door leading to the oceanfront veranda. She heard the angry rumble of thunder and paused for a moment as flashes of lightning illuminated the scene. Then she reached into the paper bag and, withdrawing the .44 pistol, placed the barrel against her right temple and fired. Muffled by the crashing dissonance of the storm, the shot went unheard. An early riser found her rain-soaked body the next morning and a crowd of shocked guests gathered on the veranda. Whether a gambler who called himself Lou Garrou was among them will never be known.

  Opinions of the hotel staff vary from denials that anything ever happened here to admitting nervousness when they must enter the room that was once 302 and today is room 3502. An examination of the 1892 hotel floor plan reveals that this was once a larger room with a cozy fireplace made smaller to accommodate the present built-in bathroom.

  One of the elevator operators was more communicative than some other members of the staff. He said guests had questioned him about eerie lights flickering outside 3502. Once a gentleman said he had encountered a young woman in an old-fashioned dress and coat standing, soaked to the bone, at the door of the room late at night. He told of maids hearing the sound of weeping inside. The next morning when they unlocked the door to clean, the room had not been occupied.

  Over the years the stories persist. Stormy nights especially give rise to them. Does poor Kate still return to weep over her gambler husband and unborn child?

  There is no resort hotel on either coast that can quite match the Hotel del Coronado, which is a National Historic Landmark. Whether you rent room 3502 or not, a stay in this seaside palace is unforgettable. It is located at 1500 Orange Avenue, Coronado, California 92118. Call (619) 435-6611 or visit hoteldel.com/.

  THE HAUNTED HOTEL

  HOTEL IONE, IONE, CALIFORNIA

  The Hotel Ione was said to be haunted by several apparitions.

  At the foot of the Sierras in the California gold-rush country nestles the small village of Ione. On Ione’s main street once stood an uncommonly haunted-looking hotel. The building was quintessential Old West. You almost expected a gunfight to erupt at any moment, shots to ring out, and a body to pitch headlong over the second-story balcony.

  Millie and William Jones had longed to own this hotel for years; thus, when they were finally able to bu
y it, they could scarcely believe their good fortune. “We wanted to live here ourselves so that we could make it a hospitable place for other people. We moved into the three front rooms on the second floor,” said Millie, but somehow her warmth and graciousness did not offset the atmosphere of the Hotel Ione.

  When they bought the hotel in April 1977, the Joneses were well aware that it needed extensive remodeling. So they began cleaning and painting. They even moved the dining room from the rear to its present position at the front, where we now sat with a view of Main Street. Millie told me the following story.

  It was a warm afternoon, June 22nd, when I saw the first apparition. I was quite busy, for I was expecting the Chamber of Commerce for breakfast the next morning. Annie, our dishwasher, and I were the only ones there at that time of day. In the course of my preparations, I went back into the old dining room and was amazed at what I saw.

  Floating in the air in the center of the room was a cloud of what appeared to be smoke. The strangest thing about it was that it did not dissipate but seemed to retain a pyramidal shape, except for a somewhat rounded top.

  At first I was afraid that something must be on fire, but I checked and nothing had been left on the stove. For a little while I just stood there watching, almost hypnotized. Then I edged up closer and blew at it just as hard as I possibly could. I finally managed to blow it away. But in a minute or two, it came back again in exactly the same shape.

  As I watched it hover there, it began to vibrate. And as that smoky form moved back and forth, I began to tremble and could feel every hair on the back of my neck stand straight up. I don’t know when I have been so frightened. I knew I needed some help, so I hurried and got the dishwasher.

  “Annie, there’s smoke here in the dining room.”

  “There’s nothing burning.”

  “I know, but what’s that?” I asked, pointing at the pyramid.

  “There’s been a lot of people in here smoking.”

  “Not today. Not a living soul has been in here. It’s not like smoke after people leave a room. I just blew this away, and it came back in the same shape.”

  “Don’t tell me that! I was just in here and fanned it with this towel, and it went away and returned the same way,” said Annie. And then she said, “I know what that is, but I don’t want to say it, so we’ll say it together.”

  “G-h-o-s-t,” we both said, in shaky voices.

  Then do you know what we did? We ran.

  That was the first experience with our ghost, and, to the best of my knowledge, the spirit never came back in that form. During those first months that we were open, there was a customer who came to the hotel cafe regularly, a tall woman with piercing black eyes and straight, iron-gray hair that she wore in a large, soft bun at the back of her head. I remember her well.

  She had studied life after death and the supernatural and religious aspects of the afterlife. A very serious, scholarly lady she was, with all sorts of degrees. Sometimes we talked a little about ghosts when she was here and I wasn’t busy, and I made no bones about what a fright the shape in the old dining room had given Annie and me.

  “I’ll be glad to help you find out who it is,” she offered.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  But she insisted on giving me her card just the same. “In the event you have any problems, I will be glad to come and help you.”

  Of course, my reaction was, what could a puff of smoke do?

  As time went on, our dining room was completed. We had very nice flatwear and attractive placemats, and we put candles on each table. Let me tell you, there was a real thrill of accomplishment when we had it all ready for our first guests. There was just one problem, though, and it was so incredible that we didn’t know what to do about it: Except for those at one table, the candles proceeded to light by themselves.

  We tried leaving the dining room and locking the door after us, but when we came back in, the room was aglow with light. All the candles were burning. We managed to get most of them to stay out, but there was always one table where they would come back on, and that was the one right in the center of the room. This was the area where I had first seen the ghost.

  Of course, it was vitally important that none of our guests see this strange phenomenon. One night we were expecting the prestigious Historical Society from Stanford University. Since they had made reservations for a dinner party, we were going to make sure all the candles did not relight by themselves: If any guests left early, we would not extinguish the candles at their tables. Moreover, we decided that after everyone was gone, we would simply remove all candles from the dining room. That should solve the problem.

  But our troubles were not over. Shortly before our guests were to arrive, there was the most awful odor in the dining room, and I didn’t know what in the world to do. Have you ever heard that spirits sometimes have an odor accompanying their presence?

  Well, I rushed over to the hardware store, got a lamp with an aromatic candle in it, and proceeded to burn it in the dining room. In a few minutes the odor was completely gone, and I was so thankful, for everything smelled just wonderful. Everyone enjoyed a lovely dinner, and they lingered, drinking coffee and talking. Finally, after the last guest had left, after midnight, we removed the candlesticks and locked the door. The next morning I came down about five-thirty to fix breakfast, and the entire hotel smelled like frankincense and patchouli oil, sickeningly sweet.

  When I unlocked the door to the back room, the candles were burning once more. They had been moved from the top shelf of my grandmother’s buffet to the bottom shelf, and they were burned completely down to a tiny flame. That’s when I called the lady who had offered to come if I needed help.

  The hotel had burned down once, and by now you can understand that I was quite alarmed. I began to feel that this hotel was more subject to fire than most. We arranged for the woman who had studied the supernatural to come Saturday night at ten o’clock. I felt so silly even then that I remember joking, “It needs to be night, and I must have a black cat under the table.”

  When she arrived, I brought the whole staff into the dining room; then I thought it would be good if someone not connected with the hotel were present, too. I went to the front door, and the first person I found was a gentleman from here in town who was not intoxicated. I’m not saying that’s unusual, but we were lucky, because it was Saturday night.

  We all held hands and asked for a protective circle of faith from God, and each person said a prayer to himself for assistance in case this “thing” should come out. I had real reservations, and I said to the woman, “This could be frightening. It may be that I am exposing these people to something dangerous.”

  “They are here of their own free will,” she said, and she began to talk to the darkness all around us. Beside her was a candle that she had blown out but that the apparition kept lighting. We had divided up some paper into several pieces, and we each had a pen.

  “We know you are here, but who are you?” I heard her say.

  Nothing happened, and all of us just rolled our eyes around, trying to see each other’s face in the dark. I really was afraid, I must admit.

  “Come on. You are disturbing Millie Jones, and I want to know who you are. You have a problem, and we can help you.” There was no answer.

  My heart began to thump so hard that it was all I could think about. Then came a startling noise. The medium had struck her hand sharply on the tabletop. I started to cry out and said, “I really don’t want to do this.” But I heard the harsh, almost angry voice of the medium speak to me.

  “Hold on to your pen!”

  My arm hurt between my elbow and hand and got very, very hot as the pen wrote. It was as if a strong but invisible hand were guiding my own. The words formed on the paper said “Mary Phelps.” I read it and heard my own voice saying, “It fits myself,” and the medium said, “All right, Mary Phelps, you have a problem. Now, how can we help you?” My hand began to move across the paper. I
had to use my left hand to spread the pages out in order to hold the words.

  Mary Phelps wrote that she lost a baby in a room fire in 1884. Other questions were asked, but no one got to write as I did. Someone asked what was the baby’s name. The medium wrote “Baby Jon.”

  You just held your pen, though you did not have to hold on tightly. It just wrote, and when Mary Phelps was through talking through you, your arm relaxed. I tried to trick her; I asked what was the room number. They have been changed often, and sometimes on New Year’s Eve one of the guests, as a prank, will change a room number.

  I knew that the hotel had not burned until almost ten years later, in 1893, and I was puzzled. My hand began going back and forth and back and forth, and I thought it was just relaxing from having been used as an instrument. Around the whole table nothing was happening, except that my arm would not stop moving back and forth, until the medium said, “You must be more specific, Mary Phelps. Which room?”

  At this question, the pen shot off the page in a sharp line, and then my arm went limp and dropped. I said, “I just can’t imagine what this could be.” Then I realized there were no room numbers then. In a moment my arm moved once more, and my hand, traveling across the page independent of my own will, wrote, “Go where the wall is bent.”

  Two days later a member of our bartending staff said, “Why, I know where the wall is bent. It’s on the second floor, right outside Number 9.” We assumed that this must have been the room in which the baby boy, Jon, died and that it was not a hotel fire: it was a room fire. That’s why it was 1884 rather than 1893.

  A year later, in October, I was cooking dinner. Eight people came in when we were almost ready to close. After they were served the waitress came back to the kitchen and said, “You have some fans in there who would like to meet the chef!” I went in and curtsied, and they applauded. A young lady in the party was especially enthusiastic.