'Hotel Paranormal' Episode 4: Staff and guests recall encountering territorial spirits at centuries-old hotels
In tales of hotel hauntings, those cursed to roams the halls on the premises for all eternity develop an attachment to the location. They become 'territorial spirits' and any guest seeking boarding is the intruder in their home. When an infamous hotel goes through renovations, it aggravates the spirits that have resided there for who knows how long. A porter is attacked by the ghost of a murderous pirate, while another woman comes face-to-face with the spirit of a young girl at a historic inn. The latest episode of Travel Channel's 'Hotel Paranormal' compiles the stories of Clint and Helen Rinehart, Glenn Bailey and Kathy Urbin from when they encountered other-worldly entities.
Clint and Helen Rinehart
The Copper Queen Hotel was built at the turn of the 20th century when the mining industry was at its peak and quickly became the lifeblood of the small community of Bisbee. However, some 120 years later, it had fallen on hard times, no longer the hotel it once was. In its years of service, it has also welcomed famous guests seeking shelter for the night including Harry Houdini, Lily Langtree and John Wayne. Newlyweds, Clint and Helen Rinehart decided to purchase the long-abandoned antique hotel and restore it to its former glory.
It wasn't until the couple was getting ready to open the doors of the hotel to the public that they started experiencing eerie activity. Clint received a mysterious phone call and described the caller's voice as something inhuman, while Helen noticed a light anomaly follow Clint around in the hotel, on surveillance cameras. On one occasion a box from the closet inexplicably flew straight across the room. Clint and Helen, ever the skeptics, felt the fear coursing through their body as the incidents started to pile up. But it seemed that the entity was only targeting Clint, who had become restless and fatigued, stressing over these experiences.
One particular night as he was tossing and turning over in bed, he heard the inhuman sounds once more and saw shadowy figures across his room despite there being no light source whatsoever. His shrieks woke Helen up and she saw them too. The hotel's employees also became targets to this paranormal occurring, as one claimed to hear children's laughter and witnessed a desk being thrown to the ground by an intangible force. The malevolent spirit managed to infiltrate Clint's dreams and he feared for his life, which ultimately aided in the couple's decision to move.
Just before they moved, they learned more about the many ghosts haunting the hotel. One among them was a child, Billy, who has been in the hotel since the 1930s. His mother was the housekeeper at the hotel and he is believed to have possibly drowned. They also came to know that someone was murdered in the 1940s, in the rooms beneath the one that they had stayed in,. Clint and Helen continued to operate the hotel, but they don't live there anymore.
Glenn Bailey
Bailey was new to his job as a hotel porter, having never done this sort of thing before. The hotel itself is an old establishment at least centuries old, "quirky" in a sense that has mismatched interiors with rooms built as additions over the last few decades and a veritable maze for corridors. Room 17, in particular, seemed to be the hotbed of activity and Bailey was yet to find out about it. While he was guiding the new guests to the notoriously haunted room and showing them around, he saw the rocking chair in the corner move on its own. Later when he went to deliver some champagne to them, he was shoved and pushed to the floor by an intangible force.
Bailey, crippled by fear, started to wonder how many spirits could possibly be haunting the hotel. The second time he had to return to the room with a guest was when things turned even scarier. He and the guest, both saw a figure appear over the threshold and approach Bailey and then disappear. However, the hotel is home to more than one spirit, Bailey realized later after seeing footage from the lobby camera that a Saxon Conquest (medieval soldier), more than 1,000 years old also haunts the building.
Kathy Urbin
At an inn in Eastern US, Urbin was a guest with her family for a weekend getaway, before her daughter was off to college. The inn, once an estate, has been around since the early 1900s. After checking into her room she noticed an extra door that looked like it led to another room was unlocked. She called the front desk to clarify and the staff said they would lock the door. That night, however, Kathy was startled awake by a sound that seemed like another guest had checked into the room next to hers. She looked around the room in anxiousness and even checked that the door to the other room was still locked, before going back to bed.
As she was laying in bed, she felt a hand grab onto hers and was initially comforted thinking it was her husband's until she realized that he was sleeping on the other side away from her hand. But moments later, it was gone. The next day, she ventured into the room beyond the locked door and saw that it wasn't set up like the other guest rooms. It was in fact a storage room and had been used as such for decades. Furthermore, the employees refused to go in there at night. Later she learned that a young servant, who lived in the hotel decades ago, had been sleeping with the owner. When she became pregnant, he pushed her down the stairwell, where she fell to her death.
'Hotel Paranormal' airs on Saturdays at 10/9c on Travel Channel.