HAUNTED LAWRENCE

..hatred from the proslavery factions in the area. To further increase the
tension, the hotel soon came under the proprietorship of the decidedly
antislavery Colonel Shalor Eldridge. Eldridge was born on August 29,1816,
in Springfield, Massachusetts. As a young man, he gained a
reputation for being an individual of honor and integrity, whose actions
indexed his progressive beliefs that all humans are equal and that the
institution of slavery is inherently immoral. When he was twenty years
old, Eldridge began working as a contractor on the Connecticut River
Railroad, and it was during this time that he met the aforementioned
Eli Thayer. Eventually, Thayer convinced Eldridge to move to Kansas City,
Kansas, and run the American House (which, much like the Free State Hotel,
functioned as a temporary abode for antislavery settlers). Eldridge managed
the American House from January 1855 until the spring of 1856, but after
earning the fury of many proslavery individuals in the vicinity, Eldridge was
forced to relocate to Lawrence. In this new city, Shalor and his brother Thomas
leased the Free State Hotel, which was still in the process of being constructed.
In April 1856, the Free State Hotel was finally completed and opened for
business, but only a month later, the Douglas County grand jury advised
Sheriff Sam Jones to destroy the building so as to rid the county of the
pesky antislavery settlers who used it as their de facto base of operation.
On May 21, 1856, Jones and his henchmen placed a cannon in front of
the building and ordered everyone to leave. The weapon was fired into
the hotel a number of times, but after each blast, the defiant structure
refused to topple over. Eventually, the frustrated sheriff and his degenerate
posse resorted to using paper looted from the recently destroyed Free State
newspapers (i.e., the Herald of Freedom and the Kansas Free-State) as tinder to
burn the building down. Eldridge and his brother subsequently purchased the
plot on which the Free State Hotel once stood, and they constructed a new structure, the
Eldridge House, to the tune of $80,000. This incarnation was larger than
its predecessor (boasting an added story), and when it opened for business,
Colonel Eldridge resolved to never let any bushwhacker or border ruffian
prevent him from running his hotel. But disaster would once again strike.
On August 21, 1863, William Quantrill stormed into Lawrence and—in one
of the most infamous acts of Civil War–inspired terrorism—burned the town
to the ground. However, because the people in the Eldridge House had
surrendered, Quantrill allowed them safe passage to the nearby City Hotel.
The Eldridge House was not so lucky, and it was once again set alight and
razed. Colonel Eldridge refused to see his building remain a charred ruin. In
1864, he began construction anew, using the original cornerstone from the
previous structure in remembrance of those who died. After completing the
first floor, Eldridge ran out of money, and the project was finished by George
W. Deitzler in 1866. For the next thirty years, Colonel Eldridge lived in the
Lawrence area, and in 1899, he died at the age of eighty-two.
But Eldridge’s legacy—his hotel—lived on. During the late 1800s and the
early 1900s, the hotel was heavily trafficked and was praised as “one of the
finest hotels west of the Mississippi River.” However, by the early twentieth
century, it was falling into disrepair. In 1925, the Lawrence Chamber
of Commerce and a group of investors gathered up enough money to
completely rebuild the structure; renovations lasted from 1925 to 1929. For
the following thirty years, the hotel was once again successful, but by the
1960s, the popularity of motels meant that expensive hotels like the Eldridge
were not able to remain solvent. In the early 1970s, the hotel closed down.
The building was then converted into a series of apartments, which were
occupied by tenants until 1985. In this year, a passionate group of Lawrence
residents raised over $3 million to once again rebuild and remodel the
building. In 1987, after months of constant construction work, the reborn
Eldridge Hotel opened its doors once again to patrons. It has remained in
operation ever since.
Due to the amount of chaos, destruction and death that the hotel has
experienced over the years, it makes sense that stories have cropped
up claiming that the building is a hot spot for paranormal happenings.
Reportedly, most of the activity is confined to the fifth floor. Many regard
room 506 as the epicenter of these hauntings because the room is the resting
place of the building’s original cornerstone. It has been argued that this
stone functions as some sort of portal, allowing contact with the other side.
According to eyewitness accounts, doors open and close on their own, lights
flicker and foggy breath marks and handprints appear on freshly cleaned
mirrors. Once, a hotel valet heard voices emanating from the unoccupied
room. Another time, Marge O’Neal, the former director of housekeeping,
was working in 506. She left briefly, and when she returned, she was startled
to find that all of the draws of the room’s armoire had been opened.
According to David Longhurst, the hotel’s assistant general manager:
When a guest checks into Room 506, we don’t say, “Oh by the way, that’s
the haunted room.” So we had a guest here just five or six months ago, and
he was in 506 for two nights. He checked in the first night, and he came
down the next morning and said, “Can I get a different room?” We said,
“Certainly. What’s the problem with your room?” And he said, “Well, last
night, I went to bed and just before I fell asleep, the door to the bathroom
slammed shut. So I got out of bed, and I went over and I opened the door.
Everything seemed normal, so I pushed the door open all the way. I went
and I got back in bed, but when I was almost asleep, the door slammed
shut again. I got out of bed and pushed the door open all the way. Then
I took the towel off the towel bar, and I put it on the floor in between the
door and the door jamb. I went and got back in bed, and I had just fallen
asleep when the door shut again. I got up, I opened the door: the towel was
in the bathtub!”
Others have seen full-body apparitions in the room. During one Christmas
season, Longhurst said:
A couple had spent the night up in 506, and they had a little girl who
was maybe four years old. The next day, they were checking out at the
front desk—they didn’t know anything about the room—when the little
girl comes walking up to them and says, “Mommy, daddy, did you see the
ghost in our room last night?” They said, “Honey, there was no ghost in
the room!” She said, “Yeah there was! I saw it! Didn’t you see the ghost?”
We told them, “Well, actually folks, you were in 506 and…people say it’s
haunted.” They were just blown away!
While he enjoys relating the various tales, Longhurst is a skeptic when it
comes to the existence of ghosts. However, he experienced something several
years ago that to this day he cannot quite rationally explain:
All of our guest rooms have a box where you slide your key card in, and the
lock opens. Well, the housekeepers came down one day and said, “David,
we can’t get into 506. Our key cards aren’t working.” I said, “Oh, OK,
let me take my master key, and I’ll go open it for you.” So I went up, and I
slid it in the key card reader, and the door wouldn’t open. I put it in again,
and the door wouldn’t open. And the lights were flashing on the lock, which
meant that the batteries were good. So we came back downstairs and made
a new master key. We also made a key specifically for that room. Went
back up and tried them both—neither one would work. We replaced the
batteries, even though the lights were flashing. The key cards would not
open the door. So finally, we had to take the trim off the wall, all the way
around the door, and we had to take the door off the hinges. And we found
that the deadbolt was locked from the inside. The only way that you can
lock the deadbolt is manually from the inside of the room. You can’t turn it,
lean it against the door and pull it shut really fast. You have to apply a bit
of pressure and turn the bolt by hand. That room is on the fifth floor. The
windows are sealed. There is no adjacent room. There is no way you can
lock it from the inside.
Due to these uncanny happenings, Longhurst revealed that hotel patrons
will either specifically request room 506 or specifically request to not be
placed anywhere near the fifth floor.
The hotel’s elevator is also reputed to house an entity, which many
guests claim is the spirit of a former Eldridge bellhop, still performing
its duties from beyond the grave. This ghost, according to the stories that
are told at the hotel, often makes the elevator doors move on their own;
at other times, it causes the lift to go to the fifth floor. But, as Richard
Southall relates in his book Haunted Route 66, arguably the most famous
elevator-related story concerns a photograph taken in the lobby during the
Christmas season of 1989. On the left-hand side of the image, the elevator
can be seen with its doors wide open. There, in the middle of the lift, is the
misty outline of a phantasm. The hotel displays this spooky picture at their
front desk and will gladly discuss it with anyone who asks.
In its basement level, the Eldridge has a large parlor named the Big 6
Room. This area is most often used by the living as a reception hall or venue,
but it also seems to have had a few supernatural guests in the past. According
to Ghosts of Kansas tour guide Beth Kornegay:
[Once] our tour was…playing host to a teenage birthday party of about
half a dozen girls. They were full of giggles and laughter…until one
of them captured a frightening picture. Standing in the stairway going
downstairs to the Big 6 Room was a tall, dark figure. No features were
distinguishable because the figure itself was completely solid and black,
almost as if it was drawn on the screen with a Sharpie pen. The girl
shared the picture with my husband, and he encouraged her to show it to me
later during the tour. When I asked if anyone had captured any interesting
pictures during the night—because my husband already let me know this
young girl had captured something—I looked right at her. Her eyes got
incredibly wide, and she just shook her head. What she saw had frightened
her so badly that she had already deleted the picture. The paranormal is
not something to take lightly, but I wish we would have been able to have
the photo analyzed.
And finally, within the deepest bowels of the hotel, in an out-of-the-way
storage alcove, sits the chair of the colonel. Made in the nineteenth century,
this chair—so the story goes—never collects dust. The chair seems to be a
nexus for spiritual energy, as many ghostly sightings are connected to it. During
an interview, Longhurst recalled one of the more memorable chair stories:
We had a new bellman quite a few years ago, and he said, “I’ve heard that
story. I don’t believe it.” So he took the key and went downstairs, went down
the long hallway, unlocked the door, went in the basement and started up the
concrete steps. He said he got a chill, and when he went around the bend and
looked up, someone was sitting in Colonel Eldridge’s chair. It was an older
gentleman with a pipe. He looked up, and he went, “Hm.” That bellman
screamed and came running down and never went in there again.
This bellman is not alone: many claim to have seen the colonel’s ghost
in his namesake hotel (even though he did not die here), often with pipe in
hand. Some say you can even catch a whiff of his tobacco smoke.
But if there is a ghost that haunts the Eldridge Hotel, it is almost certainly
benign. Longhurst said, “There’s never anything evil or bad that’s happened.
Just a door will slam or Colonel Eldridge will be sitting up in his chair,
smoking a pipe!”
The Eldridge Hotel is located on the intersection of Massachusetts and
Seventh Streets, on the southwest corner. While the hotel administration is
open to paranormal investigations and the like, it is highly recommended
that one call or e-mail first. Room 506 can be reserved by those hoping
to experience the supernatural, but around Halloween, it is almost always
booked. If you are hoping to reserve the room, it is advised that you call well
in advance.