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A True Story That Will Not Die
Ghost by Gaslight
The story you are about to read is true on two counts—as a mystery story, and as a ghost story. The real-life mystery story in 1892 became an instant national sensation, laced with beauty, passion, and hope—but also conspiracy, betrayal, and ultimately violent death. This mystery (murder or suicide?) spawned a famous ghost saga that has endured over a century. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, the story of the 'Beautiful Stranger' is a living piece of Hotel del Coronado lore—and even skeptics may at times get goose bumps.
To capture the atmosphere, it is worth dwelling a moment on how I came upon this story. Being an author, semi-retired from the computer systems development industry, and in search of some fresh experiences, I took a part-time job several years ago as a shuttle van driver with the Hotel del Coronado. The Hotel del Coronado (or the Hotel Del to local residents, sometimes just 'the Del') is an official U.S. National Landmark and a San Diego icon. It is usually portrayed on book covers in all its splendor as a white Victorian lady with her famous brick-red roofs. It sits on the Peninsula of San Diego, in the City of Coronado, facing away from the City of San Diego. The Pacific Ocean laps at sugar-white beaches, a tennis ball's throw from the rear stairs. Visible along the shore toward the southeast is the southwestern corner of the contiguous states—Imperial Beach and Nestor—before you reach Tijuana, Baja California Norte, Mexico. The weather in Coronado is usually balmy and sunny, as tall fan palms rustle in a slight breeze under clear blue skies. Visible to the west (the shore runs east-west at the Hotel Del) is the looming ridge of Point Cabrillo, which overlooks the San Diego Harbor entrance where the first Spanish expedition dropped anchor more than four centuries ago. Millions of visitors come to the area every year. But there is another side to the image—dark, atmospheric, spooky.
My two years at the hotel were fascinating—new things to learn, nice people, great surroundings, interesting history, sunshine, fresh air, rustling palm trees, crashing surf…topped off by the fact that I believe I have solved a great mystery of the Hotel del Coronado: The legend of an unknown woman who died violently and mysteriously on the hotel's back steps during a huge sea storm; and of her ghost, which thousands of visitors and some staff claim to have seen. I personally have met a number of people who claim to have witnessed ghostly manifestations, though I myself can't make that claim. Then again, maybe I missed something. After all, if there is a ghost, it's clear that she would be trying to tell us something, and I unwittingly stepped into the role of oracle to deliver her message: She is not Kate Morgan, as is commonly thought, but a beautiful young woman who was betrayed and abandoned in the midst of a cruel blackmail conspiracy. Her name was Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Wyllie, and she was pregnant when she took her life out of despair—a fallen Victorian angel, in the true sense and sentiment of that age. I will explain it all in this book.
On many an evening when business was slow, we drivers in our black suits would sit in our vans waiting for riders, by turns either in the dark, starlit parking lot below, or under the softly gleaming coach lights around the front entrance of the hotel. A good deal of our traffic was taking guests to or from Lindbergh International Airport, ten miles away including an enjoyable two mile jaunt nearly 300 feet in the air across the Coronado Bay Bridge (another San Diego icon). Another substantial part of our evening traffic was bringing guests to or from eating and entertainment venues in the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego. This is a modern salvage and gentrification of the long-decaying Victorian city and its infamous red light district, through which Kate Morgan and her accomplices moved. Today's Gaslamp Quarter (Fourth to Sixth Avenues east-west, and K Street to Broadway north-south) was the heart of downtown San Diego in the 1890s, with the notorious Stingaree district partially overlapping to the south. The Stingaree, which was one of the most violent and dangerous red light districts on the West Coast, took its name from the stingrays that are common on San Diego area shores, and have a poisonous stinger that causes agonizing pain, and can (rarely) kill. The saying was, "You get stung as badly in the Stingaree as in the Bay."
On many nights during the winter months as I sat waiting in the van, fog would roll in off the Pacific Ocean, and a chill would run up and down my spine in the cold, damp air. Sometimes you could hear the booming of naval guns out at sea (the Navy's Special Warfare Command has its headquarters a block away, housing the Navy SEALs). On a breezy night, you could hear the clasps on the main flag pole banging as if shaken by a crazed spirit desperate for attention. There are always stray sounds of someone laughing, or people talking, and snatches of music, or even the distant night cargo train blaring as it slowly rumbles through downtown San Diego. For the most part, though, the atmosphere is softly lit and quiet.
A strange, almost eerie silence descends around the Hotel Del with dusk, amid those jutting turrets and many-angled white walls that overlook pine trees and luscious lawns. In the winter months, it gets dark as early as 4:30 in the afternoon. Fog creeps up from the sea, and dampness brings with it a chill that crawls up your back and touches skeletal fingers along your spine. The valets and doormen stand about talking when things are slow. Some evenings are incredibly busy, and a constant stream of taxis and vans and cars presses through the narrow circular driveway. Men and women in eveningwear move leisurely up the front stairway and through the wide entrance. On other evenings, the entrance has a ghostly calm about it—when the census is down, or during the interstice of the dinner hour, between the rush of arrivals and the rush of departures. A balmy glow of coach lamps bathes the area. Soft light in rich hues emanates from a large stained glass picture window above, which portrays the Amazon queen Califia or Calafia amid all the splendors of her realm. Calafia was, in a Spanish novel of 1510, a fictional queen ruling a mythical island named California, to be found on the route westward from Europe, which Christopher Columbus took in search of a sea passage to India. From this, our state derived its romantic name. As you stand facing the hotel about 50 feet from the main entry, you see the curving windows of the Crown Room to your right. This contains a number of large chandeliers with light bulbs (high tech over a century ago) allegedly designed by L. Frank Baum, who often stayed at the Del after he published The Wizard of Oz in 1900. The Crown Room, at 23,500 square feet, is one of the largest all-wood halls of its kind in the United States. Its pine-vaulted ceiling is beautiful to behold, and has overarched the dinner table of many a president, king, movie star, and billionaire. The first royalty to dine in this room, in fact—and important to this book—was King David Kalakaua, the last King of Hawai'i, who came as a guest of John Spreckels for Christmas dinner in 1890, and died a few weeks later in San Francisco as a guest of Spreckels' Sugar Baron father, Claus Spreckels. John Spreckels, as we will see, was most likely the object of a blackmail conspiracy that puts the entire mystery of the 'Beautiful Stranger' in perspective. If Lizzie Wyllie is the key to the tragic mystery of the 'Beautiful Stranger,' the hotel's owner, John Spreckels, is the hinge upon which this tale turns.
One night, having gone to our office to warm up, I found a copy of the Heritage Department’s beautifully written, illustrated, and designed book1. I started reading it in the Transportation Department’s small office, upstairs in the same row of brick buildings as the original 1880s power plant. As I sat reading amid the odors of rotting carpets, decaying documents, and stale coffee, I was pretty quickly hooked on this captivating story. As is usually the case with history, it is amazing how much we actually know about the story—and yet, equally frustrating is the loss of information and artifacts that could help us resolve the many loose threads, baffling clues, and chilling dead ends.
The challenge I set myself was to see if I could figure out what really happened, using the copious details in the hotel's book, and my own research at the library and online. Although I regaled thousands of visitors to San Diego with tales of the famous ghost—how the maids won't go in her room alone; how they go in to clean and make up beds in teams and get out as soon as possible; how a security officer I know was one of many people who have seen the outline of a Victorian woman on the bed, and if you smooth the blankets, the outline reappears as if by magic; how books fly off the shelves in the downstairs gallery; a whole set of ghostly doings like that—I was less interested in the haunted aspect of the story as I was in the mystery of her life and violent death. All that follows grows out of my analysis of evidence that has been hidden in plain sight for well over a century. I offer many fine little points of reference and detail, most of which are important to the solution of the mystery, while a few will help visitors to the Hotel Del appreciate the history and local color of this national landmark.
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