In Alaska’s capital city of Juneau, one of the oldest buildings in town is also the most haunted. The three-story, 46-guestroom Alaskan Hotel was built in 1913 by James and John McCloskey, and entrepreneur Jules B. Caro. Juneau was a city that needed to grow quickly in order to accommodate the many miners who came to the area in hopes of striking it rich during the Alaskan gold rush. Originally a hotel and bordello, the establishment is Juneau’s longest-running hotel, and in its early days, it was a place for miners to spend some of the gold Alaska they worked so hard to find. It’s with one of these early miners that the ghostly legends of the Alaskan Hotel begin.
According to local lore, in the early days of the inn, a miner and his new bride came to Juneau and stayed at the hotel. The miner told his bride he would be gone for three weeks while he worked some of the mines in the mountains and streams of the area. Three weeks came and went, and when her husband didn’t return, the woman found herself almost out of money. Faced with being forced out into the street, she turned to prostitution in order to survive. The story goes that her husband returned a few weeks later and was so furious at his bride for what she had done that he murdered her in one of the rooms of the hotel.
No matter the lore, the ghostly encounters have been happening for many years. Scott Fry, a local musician, was the manager of the Alaskan Hotel for 12 years. Fry said, “Room 218. I used to get people saying, ‘She’s in my room.’ I’ve had people tell me that she was touching them, or they could see her sitting on the bed. A friend of mine told me if you walk up the top of the stairs, you could see her in the mirror by [room] 308. I’ve also had people tell me she was in the bar coming down the stairs. The bar has a lot of mirrors in it, and it’s easy to see things out of the corner of your eye, especially if you’re tired.”
Dan Ward has worked at the Alaskan Hotel off and on since 1974. Though he’s never personally experienced anything supernatural here, he has heard accounts from some of the staff at the hotel. He said,
“Housekeepers used to always say there’s one particular room where things would get moved around. They’d put towels someplace and come back five minutes later and they’d be somewhere else. I actually had a desk clerk one time who had just started—he was working the graveyard shift. He was sitting at the desk reading a book and you know how you kind of sense somebody walking up to you? He did that, and he looked up and he just got this image of a blond girl in a white dress. But when he actually got his head up there, there was nobody there.”
Written by — Jeff Belanger Founder, Ghostvillage.com
THE ALASKAN HOTEL
167 SOUTH FRANKLIN STREET
JUNEAU, ALASKA 99810
TEL: 1 (800) 327-9347
WEBSITE: www.ptialaska.net/~akhotel/ index.html
SOURCE:
Encyclopedia of Haunted Places -Ghostly Locales from around the World – Compiled & Edited by Jeff Belanger – Copyright 2005 by Jeff Belanger