'Hotel Paranormal' Episode 6: A bartender and a hotel owner are spooked out by malevolent ghosts
A common belief is that over the course of time, a hotel with decades of service will gather its fair share of spirits. Just like how hotels have many guests staying there at a certain time, the same can apply to other-worldly entities. Such an encounter where one is constantly haunted by many spirits will not only be terrifying but might also prove dangerous. In the latest episode of Travel Channel's 'Hotel Paranormal', Dawn Kershaw and Jesse Herron recount the stories of when they were thoroughly spooked by not one, but many ghosts.
Dawn Kershaw - Western USA, 1988
Cocktail waitress, Dawn Kershaw manned the bar at a historic hotel in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1980s. Just as always, she was going about her tasks behind the bar, when she felt an extremely cold presence behind her. Moments later she felt it manifest physically in the form of a touch on her waist and then as if something had gently rested its head on her shoulder. There was just no rational explanation of what happened to her.
When she sat down to unwind with the bartender that night, after closing hours, he filled her in on some aspects of the hotel's history, informing her that it was once a scene of murder, kidnapping, prostitution and drugs. He also told her that the second floor of the hotel was the hotspot for the activity and a skeptical Kershaw was handed the keys to the floor. Intrigued, Kershaw headed up to the second floor to a room that was off-limits and always locked.
At the time, it had no electricity and was being used for storage. But suddenly a red light came on somewhere inside the room and she was faced with an apparition of a blonde woman. She described the woman adorned in a white ensemble and with her hair up like someone from the late 1800s. Terrified out of her senses, she fled the room.
On another occasion, the bartender ruthlessly admonished a patron and asked them to leave the premises because they were inebriated beyond control. Moments later he was lifted off his feet by an unseen force and levitated in the area for a few solid seconds before he was dropped on the floor and dragged across the room. Two other frightening experiences she narrated was from when she encountered an apparition in the basement and another malevolent spirit in the bathroom.
Jesse Herron - Southwest USA, 2014
Entrepreneur, Jesse Herron, purchased a notoriously haunted building that was once a brothel and saloon that used to draw in violent outlaws like Billy the Kid. He was excited to revive it and turn it into a hotel, where people would want to stay in the future. His idea was to turn the centuries-old building into a unique kind of bed and breakfast. He was told that it was haunted and Herron, a horror fanatic, was even more spurred on by this knowledge.
Exhausted from his move, he decided to take a nap but shortly awakened by the sound of old-time music being played on a piano, bar-stools being dragged across the floor, and glasses clinking. He felt like the room was bursting with energy and picking up on the frequency of something that happened over. A friend had joined him, to help him unpack and set up. Although it was just the two of them in the house and in broad daylight, they heard a lot of shuffling from outside Herron's bedroom. Seconds later, Herron felt a compression on the mattress right next to him, before the whole bed began to shake.
His friend fled the room and left the house in fear, but he, for the first time in his life, was faced with a ghostly apparition. The hotel needed a lot of renovation work before it could be opened to the public, leading Herron to tackle an area in the hotel that had been boarded up and closed off for over 60 years. He immediately got a foreboding feeling when he ventured into the area and heard shuffling before a shadowy entity in a cowboy hat appeared in front of him. He could sense that the energy in that space was much more sinister to what he had experienced before. In a shocking turn of events, he was also attacked by a demonic female entity in his sleep.
'Hotel Paranormal' airs on Saturdays at 10/9c on Travel Channel.