Here's What Happens When You Dare to Stay in a Haunted Hotel...

“In
1903 or 1904, the then-owner Frank Case’s first wife died during childbirth,
and that mostly likely would have happened in [The Noel Coward] suite.”

We don’t know the history of the 10th floor
when we are given the keys to room 1010, but as we’re staying overnight for a

ghost hunt, we find mocking irony in our room’s name, The Noel Coward Suite. Once

inside, and after a quick once-over of the rooms, it seems innocuous enough, free

of creepy vibes and hidden ghosts. 

Deciding to get the ball rolling by snapping a few photos of the outside door, I grab my camera. The battery is dead. But that's impossible…I double-checked it before we left and both times it was at full
charge. I shrug it off.

“One time I said, ‘Please do not make yourself visible because I
will die here!'”

Edwin has been working nights at the Algonquin for about
a decade. He’s seen the hotel go through a few renovations, most recently in

2012 when the hotel did a major update that closed the hotel for

the first time in over 100 years. If anyone knows anything about what goes

crack and bump in the night here, it’s him. And lucky for us, he’s happy to

share. He’s even got a story of his own.

“Before the renovation, the location of the bathroom on
the second floor was a little different than it is now," he says. “…I used to

change after my shift in there. Several times, I walked into the bathroom and

the lights turned off, and I could hear the water running from the faucet. And

nobody was there. Some other times, I was in there and the lights were on and

off, on and off, on and off, and [still] nobody was there."  Edwin claims he wasn’t so freaked out in the beginning, but

it began to happen frequently enough that it started to feel creepy. “One time

I said, ‘Please do not make yourself visible because I will die here!’” He

laughs and tells us more tales.

There’s one about a guest a few years back that fled the
hotel in the middle of the night, terrified, “saying that she couldn’t stay in

the room because there was a lot of activity, and she saw a ghost”; one about a

woman dressed in ’20s attire hovering around a spot in the lobby where an old

piano used to be, sometimes trying to play the missing instrument; and one more about numerous staff members reporting the elevator constantly just stopping at the 10th floor even though no one was there

when the doors opened. 

Edwin's in good spirits as he recalls all of
these stories, making me think the ghosts at the Algonquin may be closer to

myth than madness. I don’t have much faith in finding

anything, especially since Edwin insists that the odd feelings of being watched

in the lobby, the flickering lights, the running faucets, the woman and the

piano -- all that stopped after the 2012 renovation. But do ghosts disappear

when remodeling? Do ghosts exist at all?

“The second floor is pretty much the only one we hear [about]…and
the guest that left terrified was staying in room 215.”

The first half of our exploration has been fairly tame, with no
real readings from our phones. (Though

we did find the oft-missing hotel floor, number 13. It wasn’t hidden, but rather

easily visible at the top of a short stairwell. It’s home to housekeeping. Not so scary.) The

night is looking long as we load into the elevator (so far the creepiest part

of the hotel) and head to the second floor.

As soon as we step out of the elevators, the meters on my EVP app rise and fall rapidly, warming from green
to yellow to orange and beeping incessantly. But, as we step into the main room, just as soon as

it all started, it stops. Silence. At first glance, I’m surprised by the second

floor’s residential vibe. This area of the Algonquin doesn’t feel so much like

a hotel, but rather the gallery of an affluent home with its dark carpet,

eggnog-colored walls, high ceilings, decorative columns, and antique, dark wood

furniture. (Later we'll learn this actually was a residential area, with apartments housing several famous folks whose pictures now hang on the far wall.)

After we find the doors immediately to our left and right both locked,
we walk further into the space, and its residential vibe fades as the space

reveals two public restrooms, two small computer stations, and a keycard access-only

gym. I don’t know why, but I beeline for the gym. As I fumble for my

keycard to unlock the door, my phone lights up. The EVP beeps return

full-force, two blobs show up on M’s sonar screen, and the equalizer bars on my

phone, now red, pump high above the threshold line. This is the highest they’ve

stretched and I find myself inhaling sharply. When we open the gym doors,

lights flood the dark room, and our phones go quiet; the equalizer stabilizes, the

blips on M’s radar disappear, and the beeping stops. The trail’s gone cold.

There’s nothing here but a room full of new gym equipment and a large

flat-screen TV blaring the SyFy channel’s Halloween promos for shows about

ghost hunters and other paranormal investigations. Like the name of our suite,

this mocking discovery makes us chuckle, and we decide to leave.

Outside the gym, less than a second after we hear the click of the gym door
closing, our phones start freaking out again. The blobs on M’s radar reappear

while blood-red bars bounce high on my screen, but this time they are accompanied

by a word. It reads: BARRY.

I’ve all but dismissed the reading when, a few sidesteps later, I look
up to find myself standing in front of one of the many black-and-white

portraits hanging on the wall. This one’s of a woman, sitting in a

carved wooden chair, drowning in thick fur, a black dress, and a huge hat. I

check the mounted metal placard below; it's Ethel Barrymore. Barrymore. Ok, that's eerie (and I don't even remember that "Drew" showed up on M's phone earlier). I decide to pay more attention to the words popping up on my phone

screen rather than laughing them off. I’m finding it a creepy coincidence that I’m standing in front of a picture of someone whose last name contains part of the word that just appeared on my phone…


The next word appears on the app: PUSHED.


“Pushed!” I say to M as I look at him with big eyes. I’m also aware that I’ve subconsciously stepped back from the photograph we're facing. I have an idea, and head straight for the nearest computer’s keyboard and immediately do a search for Ethel Barrymore’s cause of death. The results page pops up for a sliver of a second before disappearing. The screen flickers, goes black, and begins shutting down. I look down at my phone to see the word CAUSE, followed a few seconds later by FAN and then MATTRESS. Flashes of someone being murdered by a fan on a mattress race through my head, and I know this is all ridiculous and I’m being ridiculous, but it’s also fun so I just go with it. Besides, ridiculous or real, we can’t deny some of the coincidences so far are a little spooky.

“However, there’s bad activity, very bad energy in the Blue Bar…” 

On our way to Blue Bar, I bring up the odd coincidence of our phones' coinciding reactions again. M says he wants to download the same EVP
app that I have to see if it reacts the same way, at the same time. In the end we

decide against it; I don’t want to spoil the fun, and besides, when I look down

at my phone, the words read, DON’T DON’T DON’T.

We slide into a back booth at Blue Bar, right against the
wall of hanging electric blue LED lights. Edwin had told us that a medium

declared the Blue Bar was full of “bad activity, very bad energy," but it feels

just fine to us. We order some prohibition-style cocktails and munch on

popcorn, discussing the events so far in an attempt to connect dots. A few minutes pass before I look down at

my phone; I see a familiar word: BARRY. 

This time, thanks to something I'd read or heard, I can make the
connection. I tell M how John Barrymore

is the reason the bar is blue. He convinced the owner, Frank Case, that everyone looked better in blue lighting. Case took this to heart and had all the lights covered with blue gels. 

At breakfast the next morning, Nicholas says he "wouldn't be surprised if [John Barrymore] was still around" thanks to his great relationship with the general manager. But for now, as we try to piece together all of our clues of the
night, my phone occasionally communicates words, mostly mocking us -- a running theme for the night. I ask

for a sign, specific to the room and it responds with ROOM. We debate ordering

food and it says, FEED THEM. I can't help wonder if it's the Round Table's witty Vicious Circle messing with us from beyond.

M does an internet search for Algonquion with the word "Kepler" that had appeared on his screen at the start of the night -- and it's here that I make the connection between "Barry" and "Drew," though I'm thinking Drew Barrymore not John Drew Barrymore, who, oddly enough, as we will learn, used to live in an apartment in this area of the hotel. Strangely, there are actually
a few connections, including a woman with the last name Kepler who lives in

Algonquin, Illinois -- and even more bizarre (yet still benign), considering

the hotel’s place in literary history, two connections dealing with books and a

bookstore.   


Maybe it's the Peach Mojito, but I'm fixated on the Barry and Kepler connections. We decide to call it a night, but not before two completely failed after-midnight Ouija board attempts in our room. M passes out, while I fall asleep to some TV show called America's Most Haunted Places. The Algonquin doesn't make the list…


Editor's Note: This story was originally published in 2015 but has since been updated.


Related Links:

• Hundreds of Photos of the Algonquin Hotel
• Hotels Where Literary Greats Have Stayed (and Even Written Classics!)
• The 13 Most Haunted Hotels in the World