Vulture City Ghost Town

Once the room was set up, we moved into an adjacent room to watch all the action on our security monitors. Since we would only be separated by a wall, we had to be extra careful not to get too loud during the surveillance portion; guests often have funny reactions to strange things happening in their rooms, so we are often apt to break out in laughter.

Historic Anchorage Hotel

Once the guest had settled into the room and gone to bed, we began to hear some rather odd sounds. At first it sounded like something was dragging across the floor in the guest room. Then it turned into a series of rapping sounds that actually woke up the guest. He sat up in the bed and was peering into the dark for whatever was making the noise.

We were both excited and amused by all of this until we heard a series of strange bangs coming right from the wall that separated the two rooms. On this particular trip, we had a pair of production assistants who were quite superstitious; when they heard these sounds, they immediately left the room and went to the hotel lobby!

These odd sounds continued for almost an hour. The strange thing to me, though, was that the noises sounded familiar. Like something I had heard before, but I couldn’t put my finger on what the sound was. Then I remembered a story that the manager had told to me and the team earlier that day—a story involving a customer who had stayed on the same floor we were on.

While she was checking out from her room at the hotel, this customer told the manager that she had been visited by a ghost. She said that she was

packing up her bags and going back and forth to the bathroom for her items when she noticed that her closet door had opened. When she approached the closet to investigate, all the hangars suddenly banged around, like someone had swept their hand across them violently.

This was exactly the sound that we were hearing in the monitoring room! Only it was coming through the wall, from the closet of the room that our guest was staying in. It was no wonder he was sitting up in his bed, terrified! When I relayed the manager’s story to the episode’s director, I saw the recognition in his wide eyes. He also knew that that was the sound we were hearing.

The next morning, after we informed the guest that he had just slept in a haunted room, he wasn’t surprised at all. He told us that he had seen a shadowy figure and heard the noises from the closet all night long. We all had a good laugh, but I’m betting that nobody will forget that night in the Anchorage Hotel.

Red Onion Saloon

Skagway, Alaska https://www.redonion1898.com/

When the Klondike Gold Rush descended on Alaska, the small town of Skagway exploded with activity. Local miners discovered gold in 1896 and word traveled fast, causing approximately one hundred thousand people to stream into the state to make their fortune. Most of these adventurers came from Seattle, and they arrived via the ports of Skagway and nearby Dyea.

To accommodate the sudden influx of people, businesses began opening all over town. And so it was that in 1898, when the gold rush was at its peak, the Red Onion Saloon opened to the public. In addition to food and drinks, the saloon was also a brothel that used a unique system of dolls to track customers. A doll representing each of the working girls was kept standing behind the main bar, and when a girl was busy with a customer, her doll would be placed on its back. This allowed patrons to know what girls were available.

Not long after the gold rush ended, life returned slowly back to normal in Skagway, and many of the businesses that were thriving were now closing