If you haven’t already, check out Amy Lane’s post, and my part 1 and part 2.
After Amy and her intrepid family went home, Q and I went to our hotel in Placerville.
The Cary House was built in 1857. It originally had three floors, but then the owner found gold in the basement (how handy!) and used the money to add the fourth floor. The lobby is very pretty.
Several ghosts are supposed to reside in this hotel. One of them is Stan, who was stabbed by a jealous husband on those stairs and now frequents the second floor. We didn’t see him. Personally, I was more scared of the dead-Indian-themed room art and the hotel’s elevator, which is the second-oldest operating elevator west of the Mississippi.
We survived all these hazards and had a lovely stay, actually. I recommend the Cary if you’re in the area.
After breakfast and a bit of shopping, Q and I headed south on Highway 49. We ended up in Columbia, which was a gold rush ghost town and now a state park. We’ve visited many times—including last month when we did a ghost tour—but this was our first overnight.
The City Hotel was also built in 1857. And for me, the big attraction of the Cary House and City Hotel is that they remind me of the Rattlesnake Inn. Which—in my mind, at least—is only a few miles from Columbia. But the City Hotel is also supposed to be haunted. In fact, when we did the ghost tour last month, they specifically mentioned rooms 1 and 4. We ended up in room 4.
It was a really comfortable room. I think the rooms at the Rattlesnake look a lot like this one. Did we see any ghosts? No. But! My iPad twice started playing music by itself, once while nobody (living) was even using it. Really. And it’s never done that before. I guess the ghost likes Rufus Wainwright. Also, right around midnight, Q ended up in my bed, claiming that she’d felt her mattress dip as if someone had sat on it. We’ll chalk that one up to an active imagination.
It probably didn’t help that we’d visited the cemetery earlier, which is one of my favorites. Part of it was locked up, but we snuck into another section.
A nifty thing about spending the night in Columbia was that by evening, we almost had the place to ourselves.
And in the morning, having survived hauntings, we fortified ourselves with breakfast!