Haunted Theaters of the Carolinas by Cheralyn Lambeth

I met Cheralyn Lambeth when I attended a Ghost Huntiing Tech panel at Atomacon (in North Charleston, SC) last November and was happy to learn that she was the author of a book that had been in my Amazon wish list for a few weeks.  The book is called Haunted Theaters of the Carolinas, and since I'm a playwright/paranormal blogger who majored in theatre in college, it should come as no surprise that I enjoyed this book.  Haunted Theaters of the Carolinas was published  in 2009 and focuses on 21 theaters (16 in North Carolina and 5 in South Carolina).  The book is very informative, as Lambeth includes some history about each of the theaters, and I really liked when she talked about her own paranormal experiences at some of the theaters, such as Roanoke Island's Waterside Theatre, where she heard footsteps pass her, then saw a door open and close when there was no one there.  I enjoyed reading about all of the theaters, but especially Charleston's Dock Street Theatre since I have been there many times and Charlotte's Loonis McGlohon Theatre/Spirit Square because it is part of the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, and I saw Shatner's World and The Book of Mormon in their Belk Theater.  I have never seen a ghost at the Dock Street Theatre, but I had heard that it is haunted by a prostitute named Nettie Dickerson, who died when lightning struck the railing on the balcony she was standing on.  Though I already knew that story, I appreciated that Lambeth gave more details about Dickerson's background that what I had heard before.  I also found out that the Dock Street is said to be haunted by Junius Brutus Booth (John Wilkes Booth's father), who stayed there in 1838 when it was the Planter's Hotel.

If you're interested in books about haunted places, check out this book...and if you happen to be an actor, playwright, director, stage manager, etc. or just enjoy going to plays, I bet you'll find it really interesting. Now I know what to look out for if I see a play at any of the places discussed in the book. ; )

My rating: 8.5/10

http://cheralynlambethmedia.webs.com/

Coolest socks ever

I got these alien socks at the International UFO Museum and Research Center gift shop in Roswell last year...they're my favorite socks, and they match the neon green Roswell t-shirt I bought on the trip. : )

They sell them on their website, so if you want your own pair, you can buy them here:

http://www.goestores.com/catalog.aspx?storename=ufogifts&DeptID=226596&ItemID=11225320&detail=1

Mark your calendars...

The Roswell UFO Festival is scheduled for July 5th and 6th.  I went last year, and it was so much fun that I wish I could go every year...and it inspired me to start this blog!  The schedule won't be up until closer to the festival, but you can look at pictures from last year on their website.  I don't think I'll be able to go this year, so if any of you guys go and would like to write a guest post about your experience, let me know!

http://www.ufofestivalroswell.com/

Guest blogger: Patricia Lane, Paranormal Investigator

Today the blog has its second guest post...this time from Patricia Lane.  She's a paranormal investigator (a job that I'm fascinated by, but scared to do), and she's going to tell us about the most memorable experience she's had during an investigation.  

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When I tell people I’m a paranormal investigator, folks always ask why and if I have ever seen anything.

            Now, I have been professionally investigating for almost 3 years, but I have had so many experiences growing up that I looked for answers as to what could cause voices and taps. When I was fourteen, I had a near death experience and I began a search for answers. Which led me to the field of paranormal research.

            When I was dating my now husband, I discovered that he too also was interested in the field. After we got married, we started ghost hunting as partners.

            We joined a professional Arkansas group 2 years later. Now in the almost five years I’ve been doing this, I’ve had a ton of various experiences and have seen and heard some pretty weird stuff.

            One of the most frequently questions I am asked is what is my most memorable experience. Now truthfully, I have had quite a few but the following is the one that has stuck with me the most, both with the emotions attached to it and the fact it was the first time I’d had this particular type of experience.

            The group I was with at the time was investigating a spa that had once been a brothel in the 1920s. (I will name no names or locations as the owners of this spa requested to remain anonymous so not to hurt their business) It proved to be an interesting investigation as there was a motorcycle rally going on at the same time. I’m not sure exactly how old this building was, but it had the classic creaky floor of an old building. We went through the building in a walkthrough to see where all the “hot spots”, places where the most paranormal activity is reported. The night was fairly quiet, paranormal wise. Until I went into one of the massage rooms with two other investigators. We were doing an EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) in the room. I will admit I was starting to get bored as we had debunked everything we came across. So we invited any spirits there to touch us. When we had no reaction, we started making jokes that we promised not to run out of the room screaming “Dude, run!” (A nod to the first season of Ghost Hunters when one of their investigators freaked out and screamed the same phrase before running full speed down a hall. It’s a joke among us) A few moments later, I feel something cold on my arms as if someone had placed their hands on my arms. Naturally, as an open-minded debunking investigator, I immediately look around for something that would cause cold air to blow on me. I see the vent above me and asked if the air was on. The two investigators informed me that the owner turned the air off so we wouldn’t have any false cold spots. (It is generally believed that spirits take energy from the air around them in order to manifest, causing cold spots) I tell them my arms are freezing. My fellow investigators immediately started measuring the temperature around me and taking pictures. There was no change in temperature and the pictures resulted in nothing. The two investigators with me were husband and wife sensitives. The wife did what we normally never did, used nonscientific means to contact this particular spirit. The spirit was a woman that was my age at the time that was murdered when the building was a brothel (Which is what I was told by my fellow investigator) She said the woman was terrified and felt safe with me, thus attached herself to me. Even with me telling the woman, I want to say her name was Susanne, that she couldn’t come home with me and that she had to stay there, she refused to let go. Another sensitive on the team came into the room and she ended up having to help her cross over.

Later, when the evidence review team (which consisted of myself, husband and our one of our best friends) were going over the recording we made, we caught one good EVP. One that was caught during the walkthrough in the room where I had my experience with Susanne. As we were leaving the room, I made a comment that the back of my head was tingling. A moment later, a woman’s voice whispers “Don’t go. Come back,” The only EVP we caught the entire night.

I was told, a few years later, that the same night I woke up screaming “Get him off of me!” My husband didn’t tell me this at the time because he hadn’t wanted to freak me out. It slipped one night when we were talking about it.

I am no longer with the other group for personal reasons, but I have cofounded another group. With the old teams evidence review team.

For more information on my team or read about my other investigations, visit me at truestoriesofaparanormalinvestigator.blogspot.com.

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Patricia Lane is an author and Paranormal Investigator who works out of central Arkansas.  She is the co-founder of a paranormal investigation group that is still in the works.  She currently lives with her husband and cat in the same area.

When Ghosts Attack: Ghost Stalker

I watched my first episode of Destination America’s When Ghosts Attack a few weeks ago, and even though it scared the crap out of me, it was the best of all the paranormal shows I’ve watched lately, so I decided to watch another episode.  This episode is called “Ghost Stalker” and aired in November 2013.

The episode begins with Crystal Sipe saying, “I never thought that I’d have to fight with a spirit over my husband, but I did, and I almost lost my life.”  (Ooh, I’m interested…tell me more!)  In Weston, West Virginia, Robert Sipe proposed two weeks after he met Crystal, and Crystal and her 6-year-old son Tucker moved in with Robert and his 9-year-old daughter Whitney in April 2006.  Crystal thought the house seemed “off-kilter,” and her things would often go missing; she also noticed lights flickering and the TV turning on and off by itself.  One morning, Crystal went into the kitchen to make Robert’s lunch, then went back to bed; she awoke when the blankets were pulled off of her.  She thought her son had done it, but when she went to check on him, he was fast asleep, and no one else was there with them.  Crystal got back into bed and held onto the blankets, but they were pulled off of her again.  She told Robert what happened, and he confessed that there was a spirit in the house.  (Shouldn’t he have mentioned that before she moved in?!)  He said he was shocked by the encounter because the spirit had always been nice to him.  (Of course she was, she wants you to let your guard down, so she can have her way with you while you’re sleeping.)  One night, Crystal woke up when a female voice whispered “You need to leave” in her ear.  She thought/hoped she had imagined it, but when she walked out of the room, she saw the spirit down the hall, staring at her.  Crystal realized that the ghost felt threatened by her and wanted her out of the house.

A few months later, Crystal was home alone when she heard voices, the radio started changing stations by itself, and the TV came on.  Something pushed Crystal on the floor and began attacking her; a neighbor heard Crystal’s screams and rushed into the house, and the attack ended.  When Robert got home, he put bandages on Crystal’s wounds and told her everything would be okay, then they heard the crash of something hitting the floor; it was a picture frame displaying a photo of Robert, Crystal, Whitney, and Tucker, and it was now shattered.  (This ghost is such a jealous bitch!)  Crystal and Robert got married a few weeks later (yeah, that won’t make things worse…), and one day Crystal entered Tucker’s room to find him talking to nothing and drawing frowny faces on the carpet with permanent marker.  He said he didn’t do it, and Crystal told him that he shouldn’t lie because “God doesn’t like it because it’s against his rules,” to which Tucker replied, “But God’s a woman” and said that she visits him.  Two months later, Crystal and Robert, who had rarely argued before, began arguing about everything; Crystal thought it was the spirit trying to get between them.  One night, the alarm went off at midnight for no reason, and Crystal turned to Robert with a strange look on her face and asked, “Do you really love her?”  Robert knew that it was not Crystal saying this, and Crystal did not remember the incident at all.  Three months later, Crystal was in front of the mirror getting ready for work when she felt like she was being watched, then something shoved her into the bathtub.  Robert finally decided that it was time to move, and people who have rented the house have reported that paranormal activity still goes on there.

In Glenn Burnie, Maryland in September 2002, Terri Torrence was going through a divorce and had just found a new house to live in with her four daughters: Victoria (11), Christine (8), Charlene (6), and Jennifer (4).   Terri, who has been in a wheelchair since childhood as a result of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, was looking for a house that was wheelchair-accessible, and this house was perfect…or so she thought.  Terri found out from some neighbors that her property used to be a Confederate soldier camp, and a lot of people died there; one neighbor said to stay out of the woods because they were haunted.  Things were great at first, but soon doors would open and close by themselves, it would get really cold inside, and they would hear knocking sounds on the windows.  One night, Terri heard Christine talking in her room after all of her sisters had gone to bed; Terri asked her daughter who she was talking to, and Christine said that she was talking to her friends.  When Terri pointed out that there was no one else in the room, Christine said, “They’re sitting right there.”  Christine thought her new friends were girls who lived in the neighborhood, but realized they weren’t real when her mother couldn’t see them.  The girls were there to protect Christine from “the Man in Black…who had killed them in the woods.”

A few months later, Christine saw a black figure in her room; when Terri heard her scream, she went to see what was wrong, but the door would not open.  When she finally got in, a terrified Christine said that the Man in Black wanted to hurt her sisters.  Terri switched rooms with Christine, so Christine would feel safer, and after a week in there, Terri noticed a horrible smell and heard a male voice say, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”  The room started turning black, and Terri realized that they were not safe in the house.  Terri knew she couldn’t fight whatever was in the house, so her mother (Sarah) moved in to help them out.  The Man in Black kept returning and telling Christine to be mean to her mom and sisters and to hurt herself, and she would do whatever he said because she was afraid of what he would do if she didn’t.  Sarah decided she’d had enough and called the Man in Black a coward and challenged him to show her what he was capable of; suddenly she felt hands squeezing her chest until she could hardly breathe.  She managed to run out of the room, and when she turned around and saw the Man in Black, it was the most terrifying she’d ever seen and is sure he would’ve killed her if she had not gotten out of the house.  The Man in Black later started focusing on Jennifer, dragging her out of her chair at the dining room table one day.  Sarah says, “You could see her being dragged, but you couldn’t see what was dragging her.”  (If that happened to me, I have a feeling I’d need therapy for the rest of my life.)  Even though it wouldn’t be easy to find another wheelchair-accessible house, Terri decided that it was time to leave.  Everything returned to normal for the family after they moved, and the home’s new residents have not experienced any paranormal activity.

This episode of When Ghosts Attack was just as terrifying as the last episode I watched…that’s why I don’t watch this show at night.  The stories of the Sipes and the Torrences had me looking over my shoulder every few minutes, and I also learned a valuable lesson: Always be suspicious of a guy who proposes two weeks after he meets you…he’s probably just afraid to sleep by himself in his haunted house.  ; )

My rating: 9/10

TV Show Spotlight: Resurrection

A new show called Resurrection began airing on ABC on Sunday, March 9^th, and I’ve really been looking forward to it since I enjoyed the book it was based on (The Returned by Jason Mott).  The show takes place in the town of Arcadia, Missouri and is about deceased people coming back to life and returning to their loved ones.  Here’s a little about the characters:

J. Martin Bellamy (Omar Epps): An agent with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency

Jacob Langston (Landon Gimenez): Drowned when he was 8 years old, reappeared in China

Henry Langston (Kurtwood Smith): Jacob’s father

Lucille Langston (Frances Fisher): Jacob’s mother

Fred Langston (Matt Craven): The town sheriff and Henry’s brother; his wife died trying to save Jacob

Maggie Langston (Devin Kelley): A doctor and Fred’s daughter, Henry and Lucille’s niece

Tom Hale (Mark Hildreth): A local pastor, Jacob’s best friend from childhood

Elaine Richards (Samaire Armstrong): Maggie’s best friend

Caleb Richards (Sam Hazeldine): Elaine’s deceased father

I thought the first episode of Resurrection was great, and I’m looking to forward to watching the rest of the season.

http://abc.go.com/shows/resurrection

Ghost Hunters: Due Date With Death

I worked at a library for eight years, so when I saw an episode of Ghost Hunters called “Due Date With Death” listed on my Direct TV guide, I had to watch it.  The episode first aired in November 2012 on the Syfy network and is from the show’s eighth season.  This episode features TAPS founder Jason Hawes, tech manager Steve Gonsalves, investigators Dave Tango, Britt Griffith, K.J. McCormick, Adam Berry, and Ashley Troub.

The TAPS team goes to Rochester, New York to investigate the Rochester Public Library.  At the library, Christine Ridarsky tells them that there have been reports of paranormal activity in the library for fifteen years, after the library was remodeled.  She says that employees have seen shadows and heard footsteps, voices, and moaning.  Motion alarms have been triggered after hours, but when the police showed up, the building was locked and no one was inside.  The team thinks the paranormal activity may be connected to the death of a librarian (Frank), who had a heart attack there and later died, and a woman who drowned and was found in the aqueduct underneath the library in 1902.  Christine shows them video evidence of a heavy door opening and closing by itself, which they have caught on tape three times; the team sets up some cameras pointing at that door.  Security guard Karen Yacono saw someone’s head peeking out from the stacks one night, so Britt Griffith and K.J. McCormick set up a thermal imaging camera in that area.

In the third floor office area, Jason and Steve see a shadow when they are checking out the door (I’d like to point out that the door says 333 on the outside…which is half of 666!).  Steve asks Frank if he’s there, and they hear an “echoey voice” moaning and footsteps behind them.  While they are trying to find where the voice came from, they hear a noise, and after testing some chairs, Steve figures out that the sound they heard was someone (or something) sitting in one of the chairs.  Britt and K.J. go to the Director’s office on the third floor and notice that the door is held open with a doorstop, so it shouldn’t be able to close without someone undoing the doorstop; when they enter the office, their equipment sounds, and the door closes all by itself.  They review the tape to make sure that Britt didn’t accidentally nudge the door and see that he was not close enough to have caused the door to close, and their equipment is now dead.  Steve and Dave go to the main floor to try to see what could be causing the shadows the employees have seen.  They notice that there’s a restaurant across the street that stays open late, and they wonder if cars could be causing the shadows, so Steve gets his car and tests it out.  Dave tells him that when Steve pulled out of the parking lot across the street, he could see his shadow as the headlights illuminated the window.

Adam and Ashley check out the upper stacks and set up devices that will go off if a shadow passes in front of them.  One of them sounds, and Adam asks if it’s Frank; they hear a voice in response and contact the rest of the team to make sure none of them are also in the stacks.  They listen to the recording and think the voice is saying something about finding books, but can’t hear it well enough to be sure.  In the lower stacks, Steve and Dave conduct an EMF reading row by row.  Steve hears a noise that sounds like something crawling or traveling, and Dave finds a block of Styrofoam on the ground; he tosses it back on the ground to see what sound it makes, and Steve says it sounds like the sound he heard.  Britt and K.J. head to the main floor and soon hear footsteps and voices; they check with the other team members to make sure none of them are on that floor.  Britt sees something go into a nearby room, so he goes into the room, and no one is there.  They hear noises that K.J. describes as sounding like “somebody taking and putting books up onto the shelf.”  Dave and Ashley go to the third floor office area to check out the door.  Dave opens the windows to see if the breeze can cause the door to open, and Ashley notices that the door she closed is now open, so they deduce that if both windows are open, the breeze is strong enough to cause the door to open.

Jason joins Steve in the lower stacks, and Jason jumps out at Steve and startles him.  They hear a noise and ask Britt and K.J. to see if they can get into the aqueduct to investigate.  Britt goes down there and is not happy about all the spiders that are down there with him.  K.J. sends some cables down, so they can film in the aqueduct, and they attempt to contact Mrs. Young, the woman who drowned down there.  They tell her that they believe she may have been pushed and ask if she’s met Frank, but she does not respond.  Jason and Steve ask Ashley to meet them upstairs and tell her that there’s a TAPS group in California, where she’s from, and say that they think it would be good for her to go train with that group.  The team reviews all of the footage and sees something interesting on the DVR Britt and K.J. had set up in the upper stacks: a shadow peeking around the stacks!  Jason tells Christine that since this figure didn’t show up on the thermal imaging camera, but did show up on the DVR, it could mean that some of the spirit’s energy may have dissipated if it has been there for a long time.

I really liked this episode of Ghost Hunters, and I’m glad that none of this stuff ever happened at my library. 

: )

My rating: 8/10

Monsters and Mysteries in America: Appalachia

I was watching Destination America a few nights ago and discovered a paranormal show I hadn't watched before: Monsters and Mysteries in America.  I watched a 2013 episode called "Appalachia," which focused on Sheepsquatch (I did not know that was a thing...how has there not been a Syfy Original movie about it?), UFOs/Little Green Men, and Mothman.

A creature named Sheepsquatch, “a giant sheep that’s gone savage,” has been spotted in Breckenridge, Kentucky.  Paranormal researcher Rosemary Ellen Guiley describes Sheepsquatch as having “wooly hair, it’s usually white or dirty white, huge jaws and fangs, and a tail that usually has no fur on it.”  In July 2004, locals Ricky Joyce and Dakota Cheeks went hunting, and their first morning there, they found one of Ricky’s dogs in a ditch with its head twisted almost all the way around (thanks for scarring me for life, Destination America!).  They’d been hearing strange noises coming from the top of the hill for months, so they decided to stake it out; when they were in their camper that night, all of the dogs got scared and ran off, then something started banging into the camper until it fell over.  The following night, they got their guns and went in search of Sheepsquatch; they saw something big (9 feet tall) and white standing in the dark, and it went after them, so they shot at it and ran back to the house.  They are convinced it was Sheepsquatch.

For more information about Sheepsquatch and pictures of what it supposedly looks like, check out this link:
http://www.americanmonsters.com/site/2011/07/sheep-squatch-virginia-west-virgina-usa/

When Geraldine Sutton Stith was 8 years old, she learned that her family had an encounter with the “Kentucky Green Men” at their farmhouse in 1955.  One member of the family saw a UFO when he went outside to get water, so he ran inside to tell everyone; when some more family members went outside with him, the UFO was gone, but they saw floating 3-foot tall creatures coming out of the woods.  They ran inside to get some guns; one of the extraterrestrials looked in the window, so the men started shooting.  The creatures eventually left, and the police were called, but they could find no evidence of bodies; they only found “a glowing substance on the ground.”

Residents of Point Pleasant, West Virginia have been spotting Mothman since the late 1960s.  Mothman has been described as “a cross between a man and an alien-with wings and red eyes," and there was a 2002 movie made about the creature called The Mothman Prophecies (starring Richard Gere, Debra Messing, and Laura Linney).  Faye Laport Dewitt encountered the monster when she was 13 or 14, and it changed her forever.  After a day at the movies, Faye’s brother decided that he wanted to go find Mothman and prove that it was just a man in a costume, so he started driving with all of their siblings in the car.  Faye noticed that he kept looking in her direction as he drove, and when she asked why, he told her not to look; she looked anyway and saw Mothman flying right outside the window.  The car suddenly came to a halt, and Mothman landed on the hood of the car, staring at them with his glowing red eyes.  Luckily for the Laports, Mothman soon flew away.  A few months later, Mothman was spotted on the Silver Bridge; a few days after that, a stop light malfunctioned and caused cars to pile onto the bridge, which then collapsed.  The cars fell into the water, then the bridge fell on top of them, killing 46 people.  Many people believe that Mothman appeared on the bridge as an omen that something bad was going to happen.

Monsters and Mysteries in America was an interesting show, and I'm definitely going to watch more episodes...I looked at the schedule and saw that there's an episode about a creature called Batsquatch, and you know I am watching that!  I had heard of Mothman because I've seen The Mothman Prophecies, but I had never heard of Sheepsquatch until I watched this show, and Sheepsquatch sounds both hilarious and terrifying. ; )

My rating: 8/10

http://www.destinationamerica.com/tv-shows/monsters-and-mysteries-in-america

A Haunting: Demon Child

I recently watched a 2006 episode of Destination America's A Haunting called "Demon Child," and since I'm freaked out enough by regular kids, I should've known better to watch this while I was home alone at night. Jan and Dale Foster live in western Kentucky with their two children: Cody, 5, and Pamela, 16.  One day Cody's nanny tells Jan that Cody has started using bad language, threatening her, and talking to someone who isn't there.  Could Cody's imaginary friend be...SATAN?!  Jan asks Cody the name of his new friend, and Cody tells her it is Man; when she walks in on Cody having a conversation with no one, she asks who he is talking to, and he responds, "I'm playing with Man." (That's something no parent ever wants to hear.) While fixing breakfast, Jan tells Dale about Cody's imaginary friend, and they turn around to see Cody staring at them like a creep, and when they tell him to eat his breakfast, he starts screaming at them and acting like a little shit.  Later, Cody tells them that Man is 6 years old and "has brown hair, brown eyes, and pale skin."  When Dale asks where Man came from, Cody says, "from behind the park where the lake is, deep in the ground."  Jan asks if something happened to Man, and Cody tells her that Man was taken away from his mother by a man who did awful things to him.  That's when Jan and Dale realize that Man is the ghost of a murdered child.

Jan asks her friend, a Native American shaman, for help, and he tells her that he thinks Cody invited the spirit into the house, and they must revoke the invitation to get rid of it.  He tells Jan and Dale to burn sage and sweetgrass, put olive oil at each of the home's entryways, and pray.  For three months, everything goes back to normal, then Jan hears Cody talking to Man again.  He then gets really quiet, and when Jan goes to check on him, Cody is holding a Polaroid picture of an old woman and a little boy.  When she takes the picture from Cody, he starts screaming at her, and when Jan asks about it, Cody says that Man is the boy in the picture and that Man gave it to him.  And then things get really weird: when Jan drops Cody off to play at her cousin's house, the woman soon calls Jan at work, crying and saying that Jan needs to come get Cody immediately.  When Jan shows up, her cousin tells her that when Cody was playing with her daughter Kaylee, she heard a deep voice, and then Kaylee started screaming.  She ran into the room to find  toys floating in the air around Cody.

One night, Dale catches Cody cutting up his teddy bear, and Cody tells him that "Man said it would be fun."  Cody uses the same excuse when Pamela is searching for her cat and finds it underneath the couch cushion that Cody is sitting on.  Jan is cleaning one day and realizes that Cody has been peeing on everything in his closet; he says that Man said it would be okay and that he doesn't have to listen to his mother.

Cody finally gets fed up with Man when he starts making his bed shake.  After Cody falls asleep in his parents' room, Jan goes into his room and soon awakes to see Cody standing in the doorway.  He hugs her, and Jan sees his body grow into a full-grown demonically-laughing entity, but he looks normal again when Dale and Pamela come in to see why Jan is screaming.  Jan calls the shaman again and tells him that Man is a demon; he tells her to bless the house again and pray specifically for the demon to leave.  She does, and when she comes back inside, she feels a presence.  Jan continues the blessing inside the house and tells the demon to leave and never come back.  The family sometimes hears strange noises and feels like someone is watching them, and they worry that it's Man trying to reappear in their lives.

This episode of A Haunting was pretty creepy...I'm definitely going to watch some more episodes.

My rating: 9/10

http://www.destinationamerica.com/tv-shows/a-haunting

Is the Hollywood Historic Hotel haunted?

I'm taking a trip to Los Angeles in April to see a performance of one of my plays, and my husband and I will be staying at the Hollywood Historic Hotel.  The hotel, built in 1927, was formerly the Hollywood Melrose Hotel, and according to some of the reviews I read, it's haunted (a fact I didn't know until after I booked it).  Trip Advisor reviewer Aliceinhaw says that when she stayed at the Hollywood Historic Hotel, she saw "weird shadows" and "felt like something was watching [her]."  On Yelp, Jason B. wrote that "there is no doubt in [his] mind that this hotel is haunted" because he heard a lot of banging around and screaming in the room above him and heard a woman being thrown out of the window...but when he looked outside, there was no one on the ground.  A few other Yelp reviewers mentioned that they got a creepy feeling when they walked in the building.  Compared to some other hauntings I've heard about, this doesn't sound too bad...if I experience any paranormal activity while I'm there, I'll tell you guys all about it!

http://www.hollywoodhistorichotel.com/