Things that go bump in the night. We’ve all heard them at one time or another. Or have seen them. That “something” that happened, and there was no explaining it.
Here is something to consider. In a recent survey printed by Stanford University, a majority of Americans – around 62% and increasing – say they have a paranormal belief or have experienced such an incident. I’ve seen different numbers on this, but you get the picture. People believe in the paranormal, and in many cases, for good reason.
One of those examples may come to us from a place called the Knickerbocker Hotel. The place was grand. Shear elegance. A home for the stars of New York. It originally opened in the late 1920s. And then, things started to happen. The Knickerbocker Hotel experienced its first brush with the occult during a 1936 Halloween seance held by Harry Houdini’s widow on its rooftop.
And from that point on, an alarming number of famous people met their untimely demise there. Or perhaps, they had some other life-altering events occur while they stayed under its roof.
First, let’s talk about Harry Houdini. Dead Harry Houdini. You see, he didn’t believe in the paranormal, and while he was alive, he kept trying to debunk it. So he made a pact with his wife, Bess. They said that they would find a way to continue his debunking the paranormal after one of them died. Their plan was that the surviving spouse would spend ten years – no more, no less – trying to get in touch with the departed half of their duo. Through seances. This would, once and for all, prove or disprove the nether world.
He died first, and with that, Bess held seances at the Knickerbocker Hotel every year. Her tenth and final try to contact hubby Harry — on Halloween night, October 31, 1936 — ended up being quite bizarre.
Tons of Houdini fans waited in the lobby. Up on the roof, Bess and a few other observers watched the proceedings. A spiritualist named Edward Saint called out to the spirit of her dead husband. And right then, the skies opened up, and a thunderstorm (purportedly) soaked only the Knickerbocker hotel during the seance. I’m not sure if Bess got a personal message or not. But I hope she had an umbrella.
Over the years, many other famed personalities perished at the Knickerbocker.
Irene Lentz – known professionally as just ‘Irene’ – was a stylist for the stars during the 1930s and 40s. On November 15, 1962, she checked into a room at the Knickerbocker using a fake name. Then she got very drunk. And a little later, she slit both of her wrists. To seal the deal, she then jumped out of the room’s window. Her suicide note said only: “Sorry I had to drink so much to get the courage to do this.”
Another fatality was D.W. Griffith, known as the “creator of the art of modern cinema.” He directed the controversial and now-infamous 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. On July 23, 1948, Griffith tragically suffered a stroke while staying in the hotel and died immediately after.
Actor William Frawley died there, too, on March 3, 1966. There are several accounts of his death, and the circumstances remain disputed. But all of the stories agree on his collapsing and dying there. Mostly, they say, he walked out of the hotel, crumpled up on the sidewalk, and was pulled back into the hotel lobby, where he died.
Finally, Frances Farmer didn’t die there, but she went a little crazy. Farmer was a popular actress in the late 1930s and early 40s. But just after that, she began suffering from mental health issues. And from there, she started abusing alcohol and other things. She was in a rough place. In 1943, police arrived outside Farmer’s door at the Knickerbocker Hotel to arrest her for several DUI citations. She wouldn’t answer the door, so they broke it down. Fanny attacked the police officers while half-naked, prompting them to wrap her in a shower curtain and drag her out through the hotel lobby. She then spent several years of her life in mental institutions, receiving electroshock therapy, insulin shock treatments, ice baths, and hydrotherapy.
Many other stars visited the place over the years. But the hotel eventually faded away into obscurity, falling with the neighborhood as it deteriorated. It was turned into senior living housing in 1972 and continues as apartments today.
Lots of people have reported “ghost” sightings over the years. Entities moving through the halls and the lobby — the spirits of everyone from the people mentioned above to Marilyn Monroe (who used to meet Joe DiMaggio there secretly) to Laurel and Hardy.
So. Again, we have 62% of Americans believe in the other places we cannot see. And the other 38% do not. All about those things that go bump in the night.
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“I’ve seen some pretty strange things in my life, and more of them make me think magic is possible than not.”
― Bailey Cates
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“There is nothing strange when you come to know it.”
― Debasish Mridha
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“Maybe we’re just seeing a tiny corner of reality—the corner we want to see. But if somehow we could “turn” and look at what’s behind us—we might see something so strange, we wouldn’t understand it in a million years.”
― Richard Sala, Delphine
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Some of us see it. Other do not. Bump, bump.
