Mission Inn Hotel
What place could even come close to comparing to the insanity of Winchester Mansion? Mission Inn Hotel. This building began as a 12-room adobe boarding house called the Glenwood Cottage, built by civil engineer Christopher Columbus Miller in 1876. After his death, Miller's son Frank took over the business. He gave it a new name, Mission Inn, and gradually expanded the hotel until the day he died in 1935. The 12-room structure grew to 239 rooms extended over an entire city block.
His vision for the building extended many styles including Moroccan, Mediterranean, Chinese, Turkish, Babylonian, Spanish, Oriental, Italian Renaissance, and Gothic-Hawaiian. The building contains narrow passageways, exterior arcades, a medieval-style clock, a five-story rotunda, innumerable patios and windows, castle towers, minarets, a Cloister Wing (with Catacombs), flying buttresses, Mediterranean domes and a pedestrian sky bridge. The reason for some of the complexity was tailored to Frank's height challenged sister. Miller also traveled the world bringing treasures back to display in his hotel. This includes his bell collection containing over 800 bells, one dating back to the year 1274. The value of some of the artifacts is estimated well over $5 million.
Pat and Richard Nixon were married in one of the two wedding chapels. Ronald and Nancy Reagan honeymooned there as well. The Presidential Lounge pays homage to 10 U.S. presidents who have visited the hotel.The bar stands where President Theodore Roosevelt once slept during his visit in 1903. Other presidents who have visited include Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. A chair stands in the lobby specially made for President William Howard Taft. Miller heard about the incident when Taft was stuck in the White House bathtub and had the chair made for the banquet held in his honor.
Numerous entertainers have also passed through the doors including Clark Gable, Harry Houdini, Bette Davis (married at the inn in 1945), Cary Grant, the Osbournes, Ethel and Drew Barrymore, Governor Schwarzenegger James Brolin and Barbara Streisand. Social leaders such as Susan B. Anthony, Henry Ford, Booker T. Washington, Joseph Pulitzer, and Helen Keller. Carrie Jacobs-Bond wrote the lyrics of her famous song "A Perfect Day" during her stay at the Mission Inn in 1909.
After Miller died in 1935, his daughter and son-in-law Allis and DeWitt Hutchings managed the inn until their deaths in 1952 and 1953. Then ownership shifted hands a multitude of times. Some of the older rooms were even converted in to apartments. The building was at one point on the brink of being demolished. In December 1992, the Inn was sold to Duane R. Roberts, a Riverside businessman, and lover of the Inn and was reopened to the public shortly after.
With someone who puts so much love and history in to a place, why would they want to leave? The Miller family is believed to haunt the location. Guests have reported hearing beautify singing coming from empty rooms, large blue lights floating in the air, touched and pushed by unseen hands, and equipment malfunctioning. Apparitions have been seen walking hallways, floating near the ceiling in the Dining Room, and the storage building behind the hotel.
Comments
Help, the ghosts of the Mission Inn are haunting me, even though I've checked out!
Said in jest, but seriously, it's freaking me out. Sincerely.
After having pizza in the mall across the street from the Mission Inn, my wife and two daughters and I decided to walk over and visit the Inn. We came in from the side off of main street and entered the building. Checked out the lobby and spanish patio where we were approached by a strange woman I took to be some sort of docent who encouraged us to explore the chapel, take the elevator to the first floor and go around to the right. Before we went my wife wanted to look at some old pictures on the wall she remembered from an earlier visit and wanted to share with us. We never found them but did enter a room across from the presidential bar area I took to be the music room. No one was in there and I think we should not have been either. It was dark and deserted but with daylight coming in from the side window we wanted to check it out as both girls are musicians. I encouraged one of the girls to play an old piano on the stage which is on the north side of the room, it was real pretty beneath some old stained glass windows. The sound was haunting and I think now that was what woke up whatever spirits are in there. After a few minutes the hair on my neck and arms were standing and we all felt like we should get out of that room though no workers came and asked us to leave. We proceeded to the elevator and rode to the first floor. That elevator was really small and creepy in its own right. At the first floor we were happy to find we had access to a walkway overlooking the spanish patio and had found the way to the chapel. The chapel doors were locked and my daughters ran up a small staircase to the right and we we waited for their return. They popped out a couple floors above us and said they found a spiral staircase which turned out to be the rotunda, as my wife and I ascended to meet them they apparantly found another much narrower spiral stairway and my daughter felt a small hand tug at her top as she descended. It scared the heck out of her and was evident to me she was not playing. She also heard something while in the restroom on the third floor behind the chapel and said she screamed though her sister nor my wife or me heard it even though we were right outside, it was as if her scream had been muted. We all began to get this feeling of something in our presence and it was totally freaking us out. Mind you this is about 4o'clock in the afternoon. I can only imagine what this place is like at 3am on a foggy night. So my wife goes to use the same restroom and hears something making a strange sound also and I say it is time to leave, It was like slow motion finding our way back to the right stairs to leave, we wern't going to take a chance on that elevator again. As we were exiting the front doors there is a huge bird cage and the birds were sleeping when we came in but now one of them was laughing in this horribly vincent price sort of way like it knew what had just happened to us and it looked right at me and laughed. I have never,ever had anything freak me out so much as this. There is a real presence at this place!!
PS.I can sorda see gost and talk to them so please take my advise beacuse I don't want you dieing