Haunted hotel? Stay in a ghostly room at Paso Robles Inn for Halloween

There’s something mysterious in the air at the historic Paso Robles Inn. You see, once upon a time — on Dec. 19, 1940, to be exact — hotel guest J.H. Emsley, who was staying in Room 1007, discovered a fire on the second floor of the hotel. He quickly sounded the fire alarm and then immediately keeled over from a heart attack. Because of his quick-thinking heroism, however, all of the other guests made it safely out of the hotel.

Though the incident occurred almost 70 years ago now, the hotel’s front desk still receives inexplicable calls from Room 1007. A recent release by Historic Hotels of America said: “At first the inn’s management wrote the calls off as a glitch in the system. However, when a member of the maintenance staff inspected the phone line, he witnessed it light up and call the front desk on its own. When he tried calling the front desk himself, the phone, which has two lines, cut him off and called the front desk from the second line. The spirit has even gone so far as to place a call to 911. When police responded to the call, they found the room unoccupied.”

Don’t believe in ghosts? Well then, I double-dog dare you to check out the luxuries of Room 1007. It sounds lovely, being a garden spa room with a mineral-spring-fed spa tub, and, at time of research, it was available on the days leading up to Halloween and on Halloween night itself. The rate is $155 per night (plus taxes) Sunday through Thursday and $255 on weekend nights.

- Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times

[Photo: PasoRoblesInn.com]

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9, 2008 at 11:09 am by Susan Derby and is filed under California, California's Central Coast, Hotels, Paso Robles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.