If there’s one thing I’ve learned from walking around the charming town of Mendocino, it’s that the town itself is alive. It breathes. It moves. Mendocino even talks to us. As I take people around town and tell them about the haunted houses, phantom horses, and the hotel guests that refuse to leave after 150 years, I realize that the ghosts also talk to us. They always tell their stories. I share what I’ve been told by the people who live, or lived, here—in old newspaper articles or notes left, or stories related to me in somber tones—but if I miss any little detail, I’m always corrected by the ghosts who are still with us.
That’s a living woman in the lobby of the Mendocino Hotel, but some spirits occupy one of the rooms upstairs.
I met a couple outside the Kelley House Museum one evening arguing about whether or not they should take my Haunted Mendocino tour. The man said that they had dinner reservations, but the woman said that this was why they were here to begin with. Of course, I had to know what she was talking about. Exactly a year before, the couple had stayed in the historic Mendocino Hotel. While they were in their room one night, they heard a woman’s voice, muffled by what they thought was the wall between rooms. Investigating closer, they found that they could actually be on both sides of the noise: there was no wall between them and the eerie muffled voice.
The next day, as they were getting ready to spend time in town, they sat on the bed to apply some sun screen. The woman put some on her arms and returned the bottle to the end table. The man put some on his face, then returned the bottle to the end table. When the woman reached over to the end table to put sun screen on her face, she found the bottle missing. They quibbled about who misplaced the sun screen, but gave up and started to head outside. Before they left, they looked back and spotted the bottle in the bathroom, where neither of them had been for a while.
Their third encounter was on the final night of their stay. The man got out of bed for a glass of water and saw a woman standing in the room. She was tall, wore a pale-colored nightgown, and was facing their bed. He froze in fear and the woman vanished, but the man said he felt a cold energy rush through him and out through the balcony door.
A year later they were here, staying in the Mendocino Hotel and considering taking my haunted tour. She won the debate, and they joined me on the tour. When we got to the front of the hotel, the man walked to his car and pulled out a bag of surveillance equipment. He had motion sensors and infrared cameras and was preparing to monitor his room through an app on his phone. This guy was ready to bust a ghost!
We entered the hotel, and I told my usual stories. The couple loved it. They asked for my contact information, in case anything spooky happened during their stay. The following morning, I bumped into the man at the grocery store. A look on his face said he had something to show me. “What do you think about orbs?” he asked. Ghost hunters believe that orbs are the spirits of people, but not in a shape we would associate with a person. “I’m skeptical,” I said. “On the videos I’ve seen, I mostly think they’re moths or dust particles.” “Then I have something for you,” he said.
He brought up the image of his room in the hotel. All of his high-tech ghost detection gear was in place and working. He told me that at 8:22 pm he and his partner were at dinner. He got a notification that there was movement in their room. He pulled up the app and saw two pale orbs hovering close to each other. They came into camera view, stopped, then went forward again, vanishing at the balcony door.
The orbs weren’t like any dust particles I’d seen on TV, and they didn’t really move like moths. They floated in unison then stopped and were hovering for a moment, after which they whooshed off together. The man nudged me with his elbow and said that his equipment can identify things, through patterns of movement. He showed me that emblazoned on the screen was “PERSON.”
Join me for a special Haunted Halloween Mendocino Walking Tour, October 31st at 7 pm. Also, every Saturday in October, I will lead a Haunted Mendocino Walking Tour at 1:30 pm. Tickets:$25 adults, $15 under 12.