Ghost of Hotel Del

Built around a central courtyard garden of tropical palms, shrubs, and flowers, west of San Diego Bay on Coronado Island, the Hotel Del Coronado is one of the few remaining wooden, Victorian style hotels to be found in North America.  The hotel is the second largest built in this style still in existence today.

When construction began in March, 1887, all of the essential building elements and utilities had to be imported, or were constructed on the strand.  Prior to this point in time, the strand had been occupied solely by coyotes and rabbits.  Fresh water was piped in from San Diego, lumber was imported from Eureka, California while an electrical plant was constructed on-site.  The electrical plant would eventually supply all of Coronado Island.  People and supplies were ferried across San Diego Bay once a wharf and dock were completed.

I stand at the western side of the huge complex.  The hotel is situated directly on the beach with unobstructed views across the Pacific.  Crashing waves creep up the hotel’s sandy beach, as a breathtaking, crimson sunset favors the hotel’s west facing windows.  Through windows along circular shaped walls, a grand ballroom gazes out to the sea above me.  A veranda before me, furnished with intimate clusters of seating around cocktail tables positioned beneath propane heaters  to ward off the chill, beckons to those returning from the water’s edge.  Laughter rises from the lounge behind me with the scent of a cigar drifting on the evening air.  I see patrons sipping a cocktail and overhear discussions of dinner plans or accounts of adventures of the day.  Hotel Del Coronado is preparing for evening.

“Have you heard the ghost?” asks one of my companions.

“No,” I respond skeptically.

“Oh it is true.  I heard her last night.  First a thumping, then a sound like shuffling cards.  Absolutely startling!  And I guarantee no one else was in the room with me!”

I smile.  The ghost supposedly lives on the third floor.  A jilted woman who came to the Del to meet a lover who never arrived.  She committed suicide over being abandoned and proponents claim she haunts the hotel to this day, waiting for him to return.

The elevator operator who has worked in the hotel for thirty-five years swears the story is true.  I never hear her during our stay.  But the floors creak and doors slam sometimes in the middle of the night.

Might we imagine this tale could be true?