I rolled into Port Costa around quarter to six on a Sunday evening. I had come to shoot some promo pictures for a friend’s band, Ready!Ricochet and spend the night at The Burlington Hotel, a rundown flophouse of a place rumored to have once been a brothel and now haunted. I had read too many reviews of the place on Yelp and already had the heebie-jeebies, but I hoped a couple of drinks at The Warehouse, the only bar in town, would calm my nerves. The Ready!Ricochet crew was 45 minutes behind me, still in Berkeley, so I made my way past the horses and Harleys parked out front of The Warehouse and ordered a gin and tonic.
He died with a smile on his face. Decor at The Warehouse
My friend, Gina Montel (drums), and fellow band mates Erica Liss (bass) and Jeff Woodruff (keys) arrived a little while later and we checked in to The Burlington. The Burlington has no lobby, so you check in at the bar. Knowing I was already a little creeped out, Erica asked the barkeep if we had the haunted rooms.
“You don’t,” she replied. “A while back a man and his wife checked in and the next day they didn’t return the key. So I called him to find out about the key and he told me they went to the room and he walked into the bathroom and there was a woman’s torso in the tub so they just left. They were in Ethyl.” All the rooms at The Burlington have girls’ names rather than numbers.
Luckily, none of us got to room in Ethyl, although later Erica told us she had spent the night in Ethyl on her last visit and it was creepy. We let ourselves into the hotel, found our rooms and got ready for the photo shoot. Gina had offered a trade of services, so they would take photos for me as well.
Ready!Ricochet’s music is a work in progress, as is the band at the moment, but they are shaping up to be a cocktail of richly textured post-rock, blended with new wave, industrial, and pop flavors. They decided to go with a Steampunk motif for the photos and our location served them well.
Ready!Ricochet
My music, on the other hand, leans more towards the straight up new wave/electro-pop genre, so I wasn’t sure how to make the kitschy velvet wall paper and faux antique furniture work for me. I decided to play it like I was a character from The Shining. That seemed to do the trick.
"Come and play with . . . well, just me I guess, forever and ever . . ."
We took photos until we lost the light and then headed back over to The Warehouse, still in Steampunk garb, for some drinks and food. At dusk we headed out to the street to watch the bats fly out of The Burlington. Yep, no haunted hotel is complete without a colony of bats living within its walls.
We stayed at The Warehouse, playing pool and listening to the juke box until the barkeep kicked us out around 11:00 pm. Then it was time for another session of photos.
We were out on the landing of the second floor when a man and woman came up the stairs. The woman gave us the once-over before asking what we were doing. Erica and Gina explained about the photo shoot and then they told us they were ghost hunters doing an investigation at the hotel.
Since we had experts at our disposal, I tried to verify with them that it was just Ethyl that was haunted at which time the woman told us no, the whole place is haunted. In fact, according to their last investigation, Nell, was one of the most active rooms. Of course I was staying in Nell. They went on to tell us that the psychic they had brought with them made contact with a young woman who had hung herself in the Nell room after her baby had been killed. Apparently she had been working at the brothel and they killed all the working girls’ babies.
My room at The Burlington Hotel
Erica pressed the investigators to show us their set up and they took us to their room where another woman was seated at a computer. They identified themselves as http://www.xstreampara.com/, a ghost hunting group which broadcasts their investigations live over the internet. Despite getting an “A” in Journalism in college, I failed to get anyone’s name, so I can only say “the guy” investigator was kind enough to show us the equipment they use and I managed to get a video.
We chatted with the investigators for a bit, having become part of the live webcast, until their viewers protested and we graciously excused ourselves. Then it was bedtime.
I went back to my room which was a fairly small space, and I tried to picture where a woman might have hung herself. This of course is the best possible thing to do before going to bed in a room that is supposedly haunted. I drifted into a fitful sleep and woke up at 2 am to the sound of footsteps, a door closing, and a man saying “No, Glory”. I immediately figured “Glory” was short for Gloria and I don’t know why . . . I tried to get back to sleep, but it sounded like someone was walking around out in the hallway, so finally I got up and thought maybe whoever was out there could keep me company. Of course the hall was empty and very quiet. I went back to my room and tried to sleep, but kept hearing shuffling and something rolling – not constantly, but enough to keep me awake. I finally gave up and decided it was time to go home.
Packed & ready to roll at 2:30 AM
I drove out of town around 2:30 am, half hoping I would catch sight of the Port Costa ghost who is said to haunt McEwan Road, but nada. Probably would have helped if I had driven on McEwan Road. I’m sure after reading my account here you might think that I’m a scaredy cat who couldn’t handle my own fear of the unknown, but let me just put it in perspective: when all was said I done I got my photos, partied a bit, mingled with ghost busters and perhaps even communed with the spirits, all without getting stuck in Bay Area morning commute traffic. It doesn’t get much better than that, folks!
