|
3.
Some Like It Spooky
Haunted Hotel
The Hotel del Coronado is a U.S. National Landmark, floating like a vast white fairy castle with brick-red turrets over a remarkable vista under clear blue skies. She sits long white beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean’s placid expanse—framed to her west by palm-encrusted cliffs, and toward south by Mexican beaches. The view could be straight out of the South Sea Islands described by Robert Louis Stevenson in his pirate adventures (a topic not as far removed from the conversation of this book as you'd think—more on that when we discuss another beautiful and tragic woman, young Crown Princess Victoria Kai'ulani).
The Hotel del Coronado is a great rambling sugar-white confection, whose design makes up in beauty what she omits in symmetry. She is one of the only surviving Victorian structures of her size and genre in the world. The grounds sprawl over about 31 acres of prime seascape property along the Pacific Ocean in the exclusive City of Coronado (pop. 26,600), which lies across the bay from the City of San Diego (metropolitan pop. 1.3 million). The original hotel contains over 330 rooms. The modern Ocean Towers and Cabanas add yet another 330 or more rooms, for a total of 6792. She holds over 1,000 guests when fully occupied, most of the year. At least one of those guests, it has long been rumored, is a ghost.
Arguably, the most enduring guest and legend in the Hotel Del's history is its famous ghost3. There are at least two ghost stories associated with the Hotel Del, actually. The dead woman stayed in Room 320 (now 3327) overlooking Orange Avenue. As you approach the hotel, heading east on Orange Avenue coming from the Bay side, look toward the hotel approaching on your right at the intersection of Orange Avenue and R. H. Dana Place (which turns into Adella Avenue on the left side of Orange Avenue). Look straight from the street corner over the fence, at the square white tower with the mitre-shaped dark red roof. From there, look down to the right at the curving corner of the building, which at that point is convex pointing toward you. You see two low roofs, atop thin white pillars, and the second floor windows behind those. On the next floor up, the third floor of four stories, is the triple set of windows through which Lottie A. Bernard must have looked over Victorian Coronado.
The list of reported ghostly incidents surrounding that room, and other areas of the hotel, is legion. Some are documented at length in the Heritage Department's book. I will relate a few in this book. If the ghost is real, what would be the purpose of her haunting and her capricious activities? I believe it would be to try and communicate the truth about who she really was (Lizzie Wyllie, not Kate Morgan) and what really happened. One hears that ghosts live in the moment. Usually it is the moment of their sudden and often violent death. Perhaps, in that moment, she is still trying to reach out to her grieving mother, Elizabeth, and her sister, May, in Detroit. Everyone else in her life had betrayed her, especially her lover, John G. Longfield—and Kate Morgan, whom she had trusted, but who probably stole Longfield from her, and used her and the baby growing within her to commit a crime against John Spreckels. Lizzie was, to put it bluntly, a beautiful airhead without much common sense, but she never harmed anyone, and she clearly showed regret and remorse at involving herself in Kate Morgan's conspiracies. She was the only person in the saga with any genuine, admirable emotions. That makes her victimhood and cruel, lonely death all the more tragic. She really was that Victorian ideal of the Pre-Raphaelites and of Dickens' readership—the good angel, brought low by the machinations of evil people in a cruel and senseless world.
Ghosts and ghost stories have been with us since the beginning of the human race. Many primitive peoples burned or crushed their dead out of fear that otherwise they might walk again at night. Ghost stories have been told around campfires since Paleolithic times, as some of the ancient cave paintings around the world suggest. Most cultures believe in the survival of the soul beyond death, and that not all souls wander off into some reward, but a few wayward ones get stuck for one reason or another and stay behind to frighten the living. Ancient Roman and Greek culture was rife with ghost stories. Among the Romans, it was more common for the ghost to be described as wearing a black toga while scaring the daylights out of people. In fact, the Romans were animists who believed in a profusion of spirits living in a parallel shamanistic world. They believed in countless numina (from numen, to nod or gesture) who inhabited every nook and cranny of the world. In the household, it was the ancestor spirits, or lares, and they had their altar in the entrance of the house. The father and sons of the household were the priests of the lares, and tended their shrine or lararium, which occupied a closet-like structure along with the death masks of the ancestors—and these ancestors haunted every house. The mother and daughters were priestesses of the kitchen part of the house, which was haunted by the penates, literally 'cupboard gods.' The custom was to throw a crust into the fire at each meal, and a few drops of wine on the floor, to appease them. These ancient customs are just a few that have survived into modern Italy in the form of stregheria, or witchcraft. Since Rome occupied most of Europe for centuries, much of the Roman culture survives in both northern and southern Europe as well as North Africa, the Middle East, and Britain. Every culture has its wealth of scary stories, and ours is no exception. One only needs to look at the popularity of books and films like William Blatty's 1973 story The Exorcist to realize the power of these ideas in modern society. What's remarkable about that movie is not only that people were badly affected while viewing it, but a whole urban lore sprang up about alleged deaths among those who worked on the film, fire on the set, and so forth. Some of this lore parallels the 'Curse of the Pharaos' legends that followed discovery of the XIII Dynasty Egyptian Pharao Tut-Ankh-Amun's tomb in 1922 by Howard Carter.
In contrast with all the black tales and nightmares since ancient and medieval times, including succubi that torment people in their sleep, and vampires who drink our blood, the ghost at the Hotel del Coronado is a very light touch. That doesn't mean she won't scare you out of your wits.
A friend of mine moved into management at the hotel, and a few weeks later I asked him if we was aware of any ghostly doings. He told me, with a bemused expression, that he had only a few days earlier received notice of a 'dead move' during the night. The expression 'dead move,' from which this book gets its name, is a hotel industry term for moving someone's belongings from one room to another. The case my friend referred to is one that often happens at the Del—in Room 3327 in particular (though 3519 is said to be heavily haunted also). There is little lore attached to Room 3519, except that a maid is said to have hung herself long ago in there. This maid is sometimes associated with the housekeeper mentioned in connection with Lottie A. Bernard, although the maid's name is not known and the story may be entirely urban lore. The hotel's official policy is not to rent out Room 3327 unless it is the only room available or if a guest specifically requests it. The story my friend related is fairly common. Often, a guest will light-heartedly and skeptically ask for Room 3327, and then become so frightened during the night that they call the front desk downstairs in a panic and demand to be moved immediately—a dead move, in the dead of night.
|
