Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

In 2005 my 16 year old sister introduced me to the Baker Hotel.  I am a practicing Wiccan and have been for several years.  I am sensitive to other on the other side. The Baker is on private property, at the time it was wide open and my sister, my husband and I decided to explore this supposed to be haunted hotel.  The Baker was vacant since 1972.  It was built in the 1920′s.  It was a very popular spa & resort for many many years.

On our adventure we collected three candles, three flashlights and three bottles of water. Once we entered the hotel we found ourselves in this massive ball room.  There was a small stage in the corner.  I set my plastic bag with our items on the stage.  I removed three white candles and placed them inside a circle that the three of us had made sitting on the floor. Ironically enough none of us had the forethought to bring something to light the candles with, so we proceeded forward with just our prayer circle. I prayed for our protection and informed whomever may be there that we were not there to disturb them in any way.

When our prayer was over we released hands and I started to collect the unlit candles on the floor in front of us.  One of the candles was missing.  We grabbed our flashlights and searched a 20 ft radius of where we were sitting. We never did find that candle.

It was late and dark so the only light we had were the flashlights since the building had not had power in years.  If felt like we were in a maze and couldn’t find our way to the stair well to get us to the upper floors.  We searched for over 30 minutes to find this stair case.

My sweet husband began to get impatient and maybe a bit irritated since it was like 110 degrees inside this old abandoned hotel. Finally he blurted out with some aggression that he just wanted to get up the stairs!  With that we heard the distinct sound of elevator doors opening.  We all turned and looked in the direction of the noise together.  We all saw the exact same thing.  Elevator doors that were closed when we entered the building were now OPEN. There was a light on inside the elevator and we could actually hear the motor running in the elevator shaft.  We were petrified.  We walked toward the open doors and undoubtedly we all sensed that someone was standing at the elevator controls. There was a subzero burst of air coming from the inside of the enclosed elevator. So cold you could actually see your breath in a room that was other wise well over 100 degrees.

I have to admit that the first night we visited we never did find the stair case.  It was just to dark and hot.  We decided to check out the outside of the property.  We headed down the now empty large inground swimming pool. We all entered the pool from the shallow end and walked to the deep end and sat in the bottom of the pool waiting to see or hear something.  Then there it was.  There was someone inside the hotel that was glowing white in a night gown.  She was running from one end of the hotel to the other.  She was actually moving through the walls separating the suites.  We watched her move to different floors and across entire floors in seconds.  We talked about how exciting all of this was.

Finally we had had enough for one evening and decided to head for the access to Main St. Once we arrived at the street my little sister realized that somewhere she had lost her cell phone.  I checked my phone and did not have any service.  We had the same service provider so her phone was not accepting calls in this area as well.  We decided to ask the spirits in the hotel if any of them took the phone to please return it.  We decided to go back onto the grounds to look for it.  We spoke outloud the whole time to make sure who ever was listening understood that finding the phone was very important.  Suddenly the phone rang.  We all looked around quickly and saw the light from the ringing phone.  It was placed on the very edge of the pool on the deep end, an area we never were in contact with.  While sitting in the deep end we could not reach the ledge of the pool.  We exited and entered through the shallow end with the steps. My sister picked up the ringing phone but there was nothing indicating a call coming in just the phone ringing and lit up.  My phone of course still had no service.  We collected the phone and headed for Main St. once again.

As we turned the corner of the hotel on Main St. I suddenly felt something tug on my left ear.  It was not painful, just enough to get my attention.  I could feel my ear being gently tugged. I told my husband and my sister and they could actually see my ear moving.  I sensed that the entity did not want us to leave.  I explained outloud that it was just too dark and we would come back when we could see better.  The tugging stopped and we ran for a few seconds.  We rounded the next corner of the hotel and I remembered a red rubber ball I had in my pocket. I felt the entity requesting us to stay was a child.  So I announced out loud that I would be back and that he could play with this until I returned.  I tossed the red bouncing ball over the fence and into the property.  It was merely seconds later that the ball was thrown back, but it hit the fence and fell back onto the property.

We made it back to the car and raced home excited about all of our interesting experiences.  When we arrived home my sister went into the kitchen to cook some soup and my husband and I were sitting on the back porch going over the nights events.  Suddenly we heard a loud crash and screaming from inside the house.  We ran inside to find my sister standing in the middle of the kitchen holding a pan of soup shaking and crying. I looked down and to my surprise an entire butcher block of knives had fallen from their secure location on the counter and all of the steak knives had landed around my sister in a perfect circle.  No blades came in contact with her, but she was really upset.

When we went to bed that night. I started experiencing some scary stuff of my own.  For over 25 minutes I fought off something touching me inappropriately that I could not see. I made my husband literally lay on top of me to try and stop the touching.  I cried most of the night.

The next morning when I got out of bed I headed into the kitchen.  When I entered the kitchen I heard every bedroom door in the hallway I had just left slam shut.  I walked back to the hallway and all of the doors were tightly closed.  They were all open when I walked through the house just a few moments before.

A few hours later my six year old daughter was using the bathroom. She did not have any toilet paper and she called for my mother to bring her some. The bathroom door was open ajar.  When my mother tried to enter the bathroom to hand off the toilet paper she was met with a door slammed forcefully in her face.  So close to her face in fact that if it had been any closer her nose would have been broken for sure.  It took several seconds for the door to allow us to open it. When we did, we found my six year old as white as a ghost (no pun intended)all she could say was “Grandma WHAT WAS THAT?”

Ever since I visited the first time I dream about the hotel regularly and I have visited several more times.  I feel drawn to the place, like maybe I have been there before, or someone needs something from me there. Definitely haunted!

Written by Devon, Copyright 2009 TrueGhostTales.com