hotel del coronado in s.d. it's absolutely beautiful there. but i wouldn't go stay there alone, though :ph34r: i slept with the lights on every night...
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Considered one of America's most beautiful resorts, The Del is situated along 31 oceanfront acres on the
charming Island of Coronado in San Diego. Marilyn Monroe and other celebrities often stayed there. ...some have even died there.
read on:
The year is 1885. We find ourselves in San Diego, California. A wild, rough city back in those days. Murders, suicides, and death seem to be the mainstream of the city. A battle had already taken place when some of the city leaders decided to move the main portion of the city from Old Town to New Town San Diego. Water supplies are not plentiful. Trains are not in yet, connecting the more northern city of Los Angeles with the far southern city of San Diego. But amidst it all one man has a dream that he is seeing become a reality. The man is E. B. Babcock. His dream is to build the most luxurious hotel in the west. Mr. Babcock sets out to fulfill his dream by purchasing, for $110,000, the island of Coronado and North Island. He intends to build there. To raise money to help pay for the building he will end up selling parcels of land to private citizens on the islands.
The cost to build this 399 room hotel is over one million dollars. He has no real labor force, as a result, he draws upon the immigrants from China who will work for practically nothing. He begins his task. By 1891 the hotel is not only open, as a show place of the west, but visited for the first time by a U.S. president, Benjamin Harrison. Hotel del Coronado is now a part of the entire country's history, not merely California's.
Proudly it sits upon the coast of the clear, beautiful bay of San Diego. A bridge now joining the city to her. A wonderful place for recreation and relaxation. The Hotel is grand, not merely in structure but also in the manner of treatment of its guests. It is known for this. It was also known for being removed from the woes of the city of San Diego. For back in the 1890s there were many woes. Murders, suicides, gambling houses, drunken brawls, and more plagued the city. Hotel del Coronado promised a peaceful time, removed from these afflictions of the city. So when a young woman, aged 24, by the name of Kate Morgan aka Lottie A. Bernard was found dead on the steps leading to the beach, it was ruled suicide immediately. Yet does a suicide victim haunt? If so, why would she? Well we will be traveling down south to the pearl of pacific hotels to visit and try to discover why she haunts and who is actually haunting.
Rumors, soon after Kate Morgan's death, flew about the hotel among its staff that the room she had stayed in was haunted. The year is 1892 and no one is willing to come forth and testify to what they experienced.
Babcock, though he denied any belief in ghosts, would not rent out the room unless the entire hotel was filled. If the room was not haunted, why then did he take this action. Even after Ms. Morgan had died, the room was not rented out for one month. Of course no records indicate as to why.
The story: Kate Morgan traveled with her husband Thomas under the name of Lottie A. Bernard. Thomas used the name Dr. M.C. Anderson. Their design was one of deception. Kate would play Thomas's sister, getting young men interested in her. When they wished to court her she would tell them they had to have her brother's approval, Dr. M.C. Anderson. In order to secure his approval they would soon discover they had to play poker with him, since that was his main past time. Once the young suitor was fleeced good and proper, Lottie (Kate) would drop him and move on to the next young suitor. Thus Kate and husband Thomas managed to make a decent enough living from this scam. They used alias' because of their family names, both coming from wealthy families who did not wish to be marked by their con game.
Kate Morgan was a 'natural beauty,' according to the coroner's report and remained beautiful in death as in life. A small, petite woman of 24 years who soon found herself wanting more than roaming the train ways and stage-coach paths to earn money. She told Thomas she wanted a house and a family to go with it. Thomas was not amenable to such a suggestion but finally gave into her desires and bought a house in Los Angeles. He then would go out on the road, looking for high stake poker games, to earn a living.
When he found no money in this, Kate would work as a housekeeper in Los Angeles, under another alias, to earn the money necessary for them to live. Thomas started traveling more and more and finally Kate joined him back on circuit. But when she discovered she was pregnant she remained behind. Thomas made a tour of the west, from Iowa back to Los Angeles, picking up his wife in route on his way to San Diego. It on the train ride from L.A. to S.D. that he learned of her pregnancy. They quarreled, he left the train in Orange, CA and Kate went on to stay at the Hotel del Coronado.
While she was there, she must have taken a huge amount of quinine, used to abort a child back in those days, for she suffered all the symptoms of quinine poisoning. The large bottle of quinine was found in her room after her death.
Reports state that she went into San Diego, across the bay by the Coronado Ferry, purchased a .44 caliber pistol and some shells. She also went to at least one hotel to inquire about the registration of Dr. M.C. Anderson. The next morning she was found dead on the steps leading to the beach just off the veranda of the Hotel del Coronado. A small bullet wound to her right temple, no exit wound, blood on her hand and the gun, which lay two steps below her hand. Did she kill herself? Is she the one who haunts? If so, why does she do so? We hope to find some answers in the coming week and will report them here in Eeeek-NET for your reading pleasure. We are certainly looking forward to this investigation and hope to communicate with Kate Morgan or who ever it is that haunts Hotel del Coronado.
Snap! Then the grind of the motor pushes the single picture out of the Polaroid camera. Snap! again, and again the motor pushes another picture out of the camera. And then we wait. Hoping above all that these pictures will develop right before our very eyes to reveal something, anything, to confirm the stories told of this room. The room, 3312, at the Hotel del Coronado.
As I told you before, we made a trip down south a week ago to investigate the "haunted" room of the Hotel del Coronado. We were greeted with a smile by the gentlemen of the valet parking as well as the reservation clerk who checked us into our room. We were treated with the utmost courtesy. The front lobby reeks with the history of this grand hotel. The wood is, without mistake, of the finest quality and the original material placed in the hotel when it was built back in 1889 to 1891. The old elevator reminds one of the Gay 90s period. The building creeks and lists slightly, from the wear and tear over the years, but still commands a stately presence on Coronado island. Its high, catwalk like dome, reaches out towards the night sky, lit by the lights that cascade down its roof. Standing clearly as a beacon to all those within several miles of the island. The hotel is magnificent, perhaps not as much as it was back in the 1890s but almost equally as much.
We make a call to the reservations office, asking to speak with Susan. Susan is the only the reason we are here and were guaranteed this room. This room, the most requested room of the hotel, is kept rather busy by guests seeking a paranormal experience. Susan is invited to the room. We are delighted to meet with her. She is friendly, open, quite charming and extremely helpful.
Susan tells us of her experience in this haunted room. It seems, one other time when she was helpful to others checking into this room, she was invited to come and meet the people. When she arrived they chatted briefly about different things, including the ghost in the room. Suddenly the lady Susan was visiting realized her large emerald ring was missing. Susan remembered seeing the ring on the lady's finger when she shook hands with her. The lady, gentleman, and Susan spent several minutes searching the room for the ring; it was not to be found. Susan called security for assistance. They also joined in on the search, still the ring was not to be found. Security filed a report, then left. Susan felt horrible. She was convinced the guests would think she had taken the ring somehow. The lady excused herself and went into the bathroom, coming back out within a couple of seconds. There in her hand was the ring. She had found it on the sink. She had not been in the bathroom since Susan arrived and since Susan had seen the ring on her finger, the only explanation was Kate, the ghost of room 3312, had borrowed the ring for a short time.
Susan, greatly relieved, left, telling the guests to please call her if they needed anything. She told them to just dial 5. She left the room and returned to the reservations office. Shortly after getting back to her office, she remembered the number for reservations had just been changed and 5 was no longer for reservations but for the front desk. Before she had the chance to call the guests to tell them of the new number the phone rang. It was the guests. Susan asked how they reached her, the woman said, why we dialed 5 just as you said to.
This is just one story. There are so many, many more. We have other people we still need to talk with about their experiences in this room. We also have six video tapes, 6 hours each, to examine, 9 cassette tapes, 90 minutes each, to review, and 72 infrared photos to examine. But the Polaroids did show us something. On several of them light or energy spots appeared on the pictures. One that had a form of a woman an another that shows the face of petite, dark haired lady.