Being the Fairytale Traveler often means sleeping in some pretty old places. Naturally, with old places, there comes the possibility of old guests or residents. This means I end up spending the night in a lot of haunted hotels. Since I am always up for a haunted adventure, I love staying in places like these, and the Groveland Hotel’s ghosts must have known it because me oh my, was I up all night!
It was the middle of the night when I woke up to a loud bang in the hallway. It startled me, I could feel my heart climbing out of my chest as I glanced over to the fuzzy red numbers on the clock. 3:03 am. “What the hell was that?” I thought to myself, listening intently for the sound of voices or footsteps, anything to indicate this was a late-night stumbling of someone from the saloon next door and not something you hear about from haunted hotels.
Haunted Hotels, Something I’m Used to
We were at the Groveland Hotel just miles outside of Yosemite National Park and feet away from the oldest saloon in California’s wild west. Earlier that afternoon we had made a walkthrough of the property with the front desk clerk as she shared with us the story of the hotel and its permanent resident, Lyle. When you’re in the business of chasing fairytales, legends, and lore, you tend to find yourself in places like this more often than not; and so I made a mental note of it and carried on without further thought of Lyle, his haunted room, or the ghosts that were living on the floor above me, well until 3:03 am that is.
There was nothing but silence. No footsteps, no door, no voices to ensue the bang that woke me from a dead sleep in the middle of the night. I listened so hard, the only sound I could hear was the ringing in my ears. Was I dreaming? “Bang!” there it was again! I couldn’t believe it, that time I knew I wasn’t dreaming! It came from the hallway just in front of my door. This time I heard footsteps, but they were above me, in the complete opposite direction of the bang.
The footsteps creaked back and forth, back and forth, in the same direction and at the same pace over my bed. What was this person doing at three something in the morning just walking back and forth? “Go to bed!” I thought. Just as I rolled over with a huff my door began to shake -like the kind of shake when someone walks by your room in a really old house, except there was no one in the hallway. “Okay, what the hell is going on here?” I thought. “It’s like a party with no voices!” Then it stopped. Everything just stopped. It was 3:11 am.
Bang!”
“I don’t believe it!” I said out loud as I sprung from my warm cozy bed to put an ear to the door. There is was again, no other sounds to make sense of this noise. Then the footsteps, then the door -this went on until the sun came up.
A very tired morning was upon me as I gathered my things, asking Bugs and the Little if they had heard anything in the night. Naturally, the Little was sound asleep, and Bugs just replied, “I heard something but I was too tired to care.” A likely story when you are on the go as much as we are. We clumsily made our way to the front desk to check out.
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“How was everything? How did you sleep?” asked the bouncing front desk attendant as I handed over my room key. “Actually I loved the bed, the linens were great but I was awake most of the night. Tell me, was there a guest in the room above us?” I asked, dying to know if an insomniac with a disposition to walking back and forth had checked in late last night. “No, that room is empty, no one in there.” She replied. “Funny, I heard footsteps all night long! There was a bang and my door was shaking, this went on until just a couple of hours ago. Have you ever heard of this?” I asked, astonished at her reply as I was certain there was a party going on.
She chuckled and said, “We get that a lot, Groveland Hotel is a special place, it doesn’t surprise me at all.” Just like that, I knew it what kind of guest it was, the kind that doesn’t check out.