the ghost room....

why haven't I told you about working in a hotel that has a ghost in it?

About 7 years ago I decided the only thing I could do after radio was work in a hotel. My first hotel was not a great fit and I think I made it six months before walking out in a fit of rage on a holiday weekend. Not mature, not smart, but I couldn’t work there anymore.

I took some downtime and then the clouds parted and the sun showed its face and I was able to get a job working for the Holiday Inn through a friend I knew from doing the call arounds and another friend I knew from doing radio stuff at the brewery her husband worked at.

I got told about the room on our property that was haunted by a ghost of a woman that was murdered there. Also by the way you’ll be working nights forever, with this ghost, don’t worry about it.

Yes. Straight up. It remains a cold case today and I seriously want Christopher Lambert from the Your Own Back Yard podcast to solve it when he’s done with solving the Kristin Smart case.

We’ll get into the actual crime in a bit but first… IT’S GHOST STORY TIME!!

Below are some of my journal entries from 2017, the Year Of The Ghost:

So about a week after I started working where I work now another co-worker asked me if I knew about the ghost on our property.

I had detected some very strange things in the building from time to time, but we have a ghost? How cool is that?

(Actually probably not that cool for the ghost guest but we try to keep her as comfortable as possible.)

A pretty high profile crime was committed in our building before the current owners took over. It was called something different 20 years ago and there was a murder on the property. So every so often something really weird happens on our top floor. In that room or near by. The room numbers have all been changed so if you look up the story of how we got our ghost you wouldn’t know which room is the Ghost Room but I do.

For the most part I try not to put people in the ghost room, specifically women traveling alone because they always want to change rooms before the night is over.

About once a week if a guest gets put in that room they come down and ask to be put as close to the front desk as possible, even begging for the dreaded elevator room.

No one who’s asked to move has specifically said “There’s a fucking ghost up there” but one lady from an Eastern European country said “The eyes, they stare at me.”

I about fell over because I’ve never had any one give me a complaint that couldn’t be explained away by Earth Logic. I don’t know who the eyes are, but they were staring at this lady so I moved her room.

Common complaints about the Ghost room are random moisture nowhere near a source of water, noises coming from above which is impossible since it’s the top floor of the building, small petty things vanishing, like one night I had an older couple call me from their cell phones to tell me the phone cord from the room phone was gone.

It was definitely gone and they had used the phone like two hours before to ask me to get them a cab. We also get noise complaints about that room when no one is in it.

The strangest thing though is when the ghost calls 911. Every month or so something goes nuts with the phones and the phone that was part of the property when we got the ghost will call 911. Around the same time as the crime was committed. It’s creepy but I don’t mind.

The Ghost also likes to lock my coworkers in empty rooms and play in the elevators. Especially the one in the back hallway.

Having a ghost room is great though when someone is being rude at check in. Our “employee” ghost can keep them company for the night. She doesn’t mind.

It wasn’t just that woman

(next entry)

Lately GhostGuest been pretty quiet or our living customers have been so insane that even the GhostGuest doesn’t wanna mess with them. Oh but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t still have her fun here and there.

We have these ladies that work for some kind of schooling/public works program and they do a lot of training in our area. So some of them stay with us every other month and most of them have their favorite rooms and some rooms they don’t like. One of these ladies showed up as part of their group tonight and she asked to be on the Ghost’s floor.

So I start selecting a room and she stops me and says, “But I don’t want to stay in that back hallway. No way, never again.”

Me: Ma’am I’m sorry was there something wrong with your room last time?

TeacherLady: No but she don’t like me at all. You know who I mean.

Me: Wait… what room were you in?

TeacherLady gives me a room number that is not exactly the Ghost Room.

It’s the connector to the Ghost Room though, like if you wanted to rent that room and the Ghost room you can swing a door open between the two and sort of have a suite.

I definitely raised my eyebrows because I have this theory that the person responsible for our Ghost Guest becoming a forever resident entered the Ghost Room through those connecting doors.

TeacherLady then says “I know it’s not the room but SHE was in there and never again.”

Me: Actually I do know what you’re talking about. She’s generally harmless, a little annoying but harmless usually.

TeacherLady: Last time she jumps on my chest and tries to strangle me. I’ll never stay back there again.

TeacherLady does not look like she is joking so I gave her a room closer to the front and her friend that she traveled with was supposed to have a room of her own but after listening to all of this decides she wants to share the 2Q room that TeacherLady was staying in, so I cancel her reservation and those two go off to their Ghost Free room.

Later the TeacherLady comes back down and says “You must think I’m crazy. But that girl she can not rest. She’s angry. She’s getting angrier. This is what I felt in that room. You must think I’m crazy.”

Me: Actually ma’am I believe you. You’re not the first woman in those rooms to ask to be moved or to complain about something feeling off about the room.  I don’t think you’re crazy, I don’t really like going up there either.”

TeacherLady: Someone needs to find who killed that poor girl.

And then the TeacherLady makes the sign of the cross and takes a cookie and goes back up to her room.

Man mother eff the top floor.

When I quit

On my last night at the Holiday Inn, I went up to the Ghost Room to say goodbye to GhostGuest. The lock failed three or four times while I tried to get in. GhostGuest and I had an easy understanding after awhile. Yeah she stunk up the back elevator at random and locked my co-workers in that room and made people crazy, but as someone who believes in the paranormal and has actually done readings for people, the GhostGuest liked me for the most part and was a willing participant in annoying guests who were in fact annoying me. Piss me off? Ghost Room, have fun.

I even let ghost hunting podcasters tour the hotel one night when we were really, really slow and film in that room. They felt the vibes. I think the GhostGuest was super happy to get some attention that night because she was wilding out for them being super creepy.

But like I said I liked our GhostGuest and wanted to say goodbye to her and she wouldn’t let me in the room.

Or the lock failed like the 11,000 other times the lock failed and I was too tired to take the door apart again.

A Few Months Later

(next entry about the GhostGuest, after I quit)

So a friend of mine has been being courted by my last property for a front desk position and came to me to ask about what it’s like to work there. She currently works at an Upscale Flag of a Big Chain that pays like big shit and can’t keep a crew.

Anyway, she let me know that yes my last property is going to close for awhile this year to do so some serious renovations, meaning they are also shedding the brand flag to go to strictly boutique and “hip” like I knew they were going to.

So I asked her if they told her about GhostGuest and she said that on her second interview someone mentioned it. And mentioned that “my ghost” had been really really active lately. It’s no surprise to me as we’re getting closer to the anniversary of her check in, but if she’s locking doors and scaring guests  now, how in the hell do they think she’s gonna act during the remodel?

I guess some of her recent antics now include a mom telling someone that her toddler daughter insisted there was a lady in “fancy dwess” in their room in the middle of the night.

Y’all I never put kids up in that room for a reason, even when families wanted connectors. Just no, man.

It’s nice to know that the GhostGuest misses me I guess. I feel bad to have abandoned her.

Who is the Ghost At The Hotel?

After doing some research into the GhostGuest, I found her on the San Luis Obispo cold case list, right along with Kristin Smart.

Marina Ruggiero checked into the hotel when it was called the Cuesta Canyon Lodge, 1800 Monterey Street. If you know SLO, Monterey is Hotel Row pretty much. I have worked at 3 hotels on that street and interviewed at two more that just weren’t for me.

Marina, my GhostGuest was attending a wedding and then a reception at a place called The Monday Club. The Monday Club is across the street from 1800 Monterey street. The property is now a boutique hotel called The Kinney.

(I can not imagine how pissed and confused the GhostGuest is by the absolute hipster vibe they have. It’s still a really great building that any hotel owner would be lucky to have, it just has a ghost and looks like an Urban Outfitters inside.)

Marina, though checked in back in 1991 for this family wedding. At the reception it has been said she left to go change clothes, she didn’t go back with anyone because hey, it’s just across the street.

She never came back to the reception and her family found her murdered in a room in that building, 1800 Monterey Street.

(this is actually her)

Her sister returned to the hotel and found her stabbed to death in one of the rooms.

There are conflicting reports of how she was found… Facedown or face up with a towel over her face, stabbed numerous times. True crime junkies say the towel means whoever killed her knew her and didn’t want to see her face. There have been rumors of a mob hit put out on her, etc. She wasn’t sexually assaulted but someone, some how got into her room and killed her.

Remember though, this is 1991. There aren’t key cards yet or if they have them, it’s new shit.

Stories that are posted say there was no sign of forced entry and nothing was taken.

I spoke very briefly about this with a night auditor who worked there at the time of the murder and she said that multiple rooms started calling 911 because they heard a woman screaming in the hotel. It is unclear if it was GhostGuest aka Marina being murdered that prompted the calls or her sister finding her dead.

Here’s what I know about the building and what my theory is.

In the news paper articles about this cold case from the time it took place, the room number was published. So when the Holiday Inn Express took the building over, they renumbered the top floor. After visiting The Kinney one night to check out their bar (and their bar is pretty good if you like drinking at Urban Outfitters,) I snuck upstairs to see if they had kept the numbering system. They had.

If you go there, the first two floors are numbered odd to the left, even numbers to the right. Then you go to the third floor and when you get to the back hallway the numbers are in sequence. This is to erase the number published in the news about which room she got stabbed in.

I could tell you which room it is, but I won’t.

Anyway this room is a connecting room. If you’ve ever stayed in a hotel and tried opening a “closet” door with a dead bolt on either side, that’s the door to the room next to you. I hate these rooms but they’re an easy way to make a suite for a traveling family or a large party. A lot of hotels are doing away with them because of safety concerns, etc but this room has connecting doors.

Which leads me to believe that Marina knew who killed her, because the reason there was no forced entry is that the killer came in from their own room next door.

When a lock fails at a hotel now in the digital age and you really can’t get the lock to budge or fix it, if it’s a connecting room and there isn’t anyone staying next door, you can enter the empty room, open the not a closet door and if the guest hasn’t put the deadbolt in on their side of the door, walk right into that connecting room with no signs of forced entry. You, as a hotel worker can then open the door with the failing lock from inside to at least let people into their room while you reprogram, or take their lock apart to try to figure out what’s wrong with it.

Also back in the day we weren’t as concerned with privacy or maybe the clerk on duty fucked up and broke the rule of YOU NEVER TELL ANYONE WHERE ANYONE’S ROOM IS, EVER.

If the killer was a mob person and just wandered in and said he was part of Marina’s family and wanted a room next to one of them and they turned over a key to this guy or woman and the sisters hadn’t checked the bolt on that connecting door…. that’s how they got into the room undetected.

If my stupid ass can get into that room to help a guest, a mob hit person could easily. Or an angry boyfriend. Or a jealous rival…

And that’s the complicated theory.

The worst one is of course, it was someone who worked at the hotel but apparently that didn’t come up, ever.

The even worse one is guest carelessness which is also something that I totally would understand. If you don’t carefully shut your door, bolt it and put the latch on, you might be just sitting in an unlocked room, like if you don’t hear the bolt catch, anyone can walk into your room. I know this from experience.

This case has fascinated me for years just because I worked in the building it happened. The ghost stories were outrageous and I am sort of empath when it comes to ghosts. Marina was always there at night when I was working alone, doing little things to let me know I wasn’t actually alone.

(this one time getting ready for work at the Holiday Inn)

#ghoststories #ghostguests #hotellife