September 10, 2008

Haunting at the Silver Queen Hotel

Rate this encounter:[an error occurred while processing this directive] Lisa Branum, Virginia City, Nevada, August 2007

Last August my husband and I drove to Nevada from Beaverton, Oregon, for my son's wedding. They live outside Reno in a town just below Virginia City called Dayton. We rented two rooms at the Silver Queen in Virginia City for eight nights. Keep in mind we knew of it being haunted, which is why we chose that particular hotel. We had experiences every night while there.

The very first night around midnight my younger son and his girlfriend came through the adjoining door to our room terrified to death. They said they kept hearing a tapping on their door and each time they would open the door, there was no one there. We got them calmed down by allowing the adjoining door to be left open. Again at 2 AM I was awoken by a tapping, and when I looked up, I saw a floating mist of sorts over our bed. It was hovering over us and as I watched it, it floated into my son's room, hovered over them for a bit, then shot through the window. I saw the curtains flutter like the window was open and it wasn't.

Another night we were walking around the hotel taking pictures and suddenly my cell phone put out a message alert tone, but only once, rather than the normal two tones. There was a voice message on my phone but I couldn't make it out. The phone never rang either. It was a woman's voice but very disembodied so I went to the call log to see who it was. There was no record of the call even coming in. It may be a fluke with the phone, but we couldn't figure it out. When the message was accidentally deleted I called to retrieve it from Verizon and they said there was no record of any call being deleted. Just weird.

As we were coming back to our room one night I heard a shuffle on the balcony that no one is allowed to go on. I stepped back and saw nothing but took a picture anyway. I captured a blurry image in the corner of the balcony. It appears to be wearing a hat, too. On our last night there my husband kept getting woken up by a tapping at the door, and again each time he went to the door there was no one there. We had talked to the bartender downstairs and she told us the ghost is named Rosie, so when my husband got up for the third time he said, "Rosie, leave us alone, we are trying to get some sleep." We both heard a shuffling noise and stomping down the hall. I asked my husband who was out there, and he said no one, and he had a funny look on his face. My son's girlfriend felt someone sitting on the edge of her bed one night as well, but only felt comforted. After this experience I came back to Oregon and started a paranormal research group. There is a group of people with the same interests and we call ourselves The Paranormal Researchers of Oregon Society.