Paranormal Report: The Haunted Victor Hotel

Background information on the haunting of The Victor Hotel can be found at this link...

PLEASE READ THE INFO AT THIS LINK BEFORE CONTINUING TO READ THE REPORT...

www.hauntedcolorado.net...

Report of recent activity...

August 12 -- 13, 2009

Vacation road trip included myself, two daughters aged 17 and 20, and my elderly mother. We checked in late afternoon on the 12th. Victor, Colorado is a dying town with most buildings vacant and deteriorating. We were there in the late afternoon to mid morning the following day and saw a grand total of exactly 6 people in the entire town. The hotel is still in operation although mostly empty when we were there. We saw only two other guests staying at the hotel and were seen coming in and out of room 309. Apparently they were staying the night. We saw them well after check out time.

Nothing was said about ghosts during check in. The fellow in the office wore a Scottish kilt but did not have a Scottish accent. He seemed congenial and mentioned that after 9 pm, the office would be closed and in the event of an emergency, a phone number listed on the in-room information guide could be called.

My mother and I were assigned Room 304 and my daughters Room 305. We carried our bags into the rooms and began to settle in. We opened the windows to let in fresh, cool air from the outside, as there is no air conditioning (the high elevation of Victor, CO means that it never gets hot in the summer there).

I returned to our car to gather a few more items. Upon entering the antique, cage elevator (same kind of Victorian era elevator as you may remember from the film LAST TANGO IN PARIS), I pressed the button for the third floor. The elevator took me slowly and creakingly to the fourth floor and the doors opened. I looked at the panel and saw the fourth floor button lit and I stepped into the hallway and saw no one there, heard nothing, and verified the doors were labeled as room numbers in the 400 series. I re-entered the elevator and pressed 3 again. The doors closed and the old elevator took me back down to the third floor.

Then, I entered my daughters' room, bringing to them some items from the car, and closed the door to the room after entering. We talked for a few minutes about our road trip and plans for dinner later. Then, I mentioned the incident of the elevator taking me to the wrong floor and just as I said it, their room window slammed shut violently, smashing the lace curtains half in and half out of the window. My youngest daughter gasped. I went to the window and raised it back up and the curtain rods suddenly came apart and fell to the floor. I fixed them and went back to my room where my elderly (age 79) mother was waiting.

Upon entering my room, I related dinner plans (we had noticed that a saloon in town serves pizza) but my mother said she had become ill suddenly. She had been stricken with a sudden onset diarrhea.

Later that night, after dinner with my daughters, we returned from our walk to the saloon and I noticed a light coming on in a room on the fourth floor. I thought someone must be staying up there. We went to our rooms and all settled in for the night. My mother was in bed and still not feeling well.

Sometime after midnight, my sleep was disturbed by what sounded like a commotion on the fourth floor. I could hear what sounded like furniture being moved and doors shutting. There were also sounds of heavy footsteps on both the third and fourth floors along with unintelligible voices. I managed to get back to sleep.

About 3 am, I awoke from a nightmare but I cannot remember the dream. My awakening was sudden, startling and I was immediately frightened but I didn't know why or the exact cause of my fear. Then I heard loud tromping on the fourth floor. This was some kind of seemingly violent disturbance. Voices were heard that sounded like a heated argument. Doors were slammed shut up above. I then heard people walking in the corridor of the third floor. Then more disturbances up above on the fourth floor. Sounded like some heavy things were dropped on the fourth floor (up on my room's ceiling). There was a feeling of stress, tension, something wrong.

Eventually, the noises subsided and I fell back into sleep, awakening in the morning.

All of my family members reported hearing strange noises during the night. My oldest daughter said that she was awakened at precisely 3 am (she looked at the clock next to her bed) with the sound of the wrought iron elevator doors opening on the third floor and "a man huffing, puffing and wheezing, running from one end of the hallway to the other and back again, sounding like there was some emergency or some serious trouble". She said she became very frightened but after awhile was able to fall asleep again. Other family reported very disturbed sleep and "strange noises all night long".

Well, that's it. I know that all of this can be explained away by skeptics.

Here is my question to all ATS members...

HAVE ANY OF YOU EVER STAYED IN THIS HOTEL AND HAVE YOU HAD SIMILAR EXPERIENCES?

Thanks for sharing. My family all believe that something paranormal does exist in The Victor Hotel. We were not amused by our experiences there, however we who stayed there that night all feel disturbed by the experience.

I've never heard of the Victor Hotel, but that was one spooky story. Thanks for sharing it.

S & F for you.

Thanks! Here is a bit more...

The two guests we saw staying on the third floor looked like miners with typical mining clothes and one even carried a helmet. They were very dusty and dirty. They didn't say anything or even acknowledge my presence with a smile or grin when I nodded my head at them and said hi. They just had expressionless faces. Other than the manager, these two miners were the only other people we ever saw in the building. We did not see them in the morning when we checked out.

When we checked out, the manager was not in the office. He had a hand written sign at the desk that said "Manager is on the 4th floor doing maintenance. If you need to check in or speak with the manager, please come to the 4th floor. We have vacancies."

I had already prepaid for the rooms when we checked in, so I just laid the keys down on the desk and we drove off to go to Cripple Creek for lunch.

Another tidbit...

The in-room info guide had the following disclaimer typed in it...

"Our hotel dates back to 1899. It is common for old buildings to make noises due to the age of the structure and normal conditions such as temperature changes and settling."

Okay, fair enough, but the sounds we heard were much more troubling and disturbing.

By the way, as we were leaving the hotel, my mother said she felt 100% better and had no lingering illness whatsoever.

Out of all the places we visited on our trip (Royal Gorge, Rocky Mountain National Park, and many other tourist sites), when asked about the highlight of their trip, both daughters remarked "the night in The Victor Hotel". To which I replied, "Oh, well I thought you hated it because of the disturbances," They both countered with something like (I'm paraphrasing here...) "we just liked it... don't know why exactly."

If you are wondering why we booked there in the first place, it was all on the recommendation of the current Fodor's travel guide for Colorado, which does not mention anything about it being haunted. We just thought we were getting rooms less expensively than in Cripple Creek but we got more than we bargained for.

FYI --- there is absolutely no mention in the hotel in any form about ghosts or haunting. The manager said nothing about it and we found nothing in writing in the info guide or in any form in the hotel. There are framed, photocopied old pictures on the walls throughout the hotel depicting people around the town and the nearby mines taken in bygone times. Kind of reminiscent of the photo of Jack Nicholson in a group photo taken in the 1920s that appears at the end of THE SHINING. Very much like that. Creepy.

By the way, none of the other members of my family there that night saw the miners. I was the only one that saw them and I saw them just after the elevator took me to the wrong floor and I came back down to the third floor. As I exited the elevator on the third floor, I looked down the hall and the room door was open where these guys were and one of them came out and got in the elevator as I was exiting it. These two were expressionless and very dirty... looked like they had just ridden in the bed of a pickup truck splashing through deep mud... that kind of dirty. No one else saw them.

When we were leaving the next morning, we saw no one at all in or around the hotel and there were no cars there except ours. As I was loading the trunk of the car, a construction truck drove up and stopped in the street where I was and there was one occupant, a clean cut (and clean clothes) guy driving. He had stopped and was just looking at us (why, I don't know) and I turned to him and asked "Are you a miner?" and he replied, "No, I'm installing solar panels on another building down the srteet." He then drove off and we soon drove away, too. He was definitely not one of the guys I saw in the hotel the day before.

@switching yard

Wow that sounds like a pretty crazy experience. My ghost hunting team and I are trying to go there to investigate on the 28th. We started in 2008 2009 ghost hunting too bad we didn't hear about this place then damn lol. To be honest I'm kinda nervous about investigating this place but I hope we can validate what you went through.

A fun and spooky read. Thanks for sharing it with us!

But... I want to ask - since the managers note said they were doing work on the fourth floor,

was there never a moment you considered it could have actually been the manager and others up there, doing stuff? Maybe having a few drinks (after a long day of working), playing cards, even getting in a few heated arguments?

-Or that the men you saw weren't miners, but doing some sort of work on the fourth floor... and feeling like they shouldn't be chatting with the guests?

a reply to: Bluesma

Yeah but even if you're working I can't see someone not at least acknowledge your presence. Also most work like that stops before the sun goes down. I highly doubt that they would still be in the building.