A former gift shop employee vividly remembers a late night “customer” she encountered, “One slow evening, I was leaning gently against the display case, kind of looking downward, but not really at anything when I looked up. There in the store’s doorway into the hotel lobby stood a man, looking out of place in time. He was dressed in a long, black cutaway coat with a tall shirt collar and ascot-like cravat, top hat and his face was adorned with mutton-chop sideburns. His trousers were gray striped but as I continued to gaze down his image ended around the middle of the lower leg. It didn’t go all the way to the floor. His image was there. It was very complete and lifelike, not at all wavy or wispy.
I blinked and said, “Whoa!?!” and in that instance he disappeared. I sped into the lobby toward the Crystal Dining Room then back toward the Governor’s Suite but he was absolutely gone. I never saw him again.”
It is stories like these that adequately intrigued the producers of the Sci-Fi Channel’s “Ghost Hunters” program to spend nearly a week in the hotel this summer to investigate, film, and discover stories of their own. Although those individuals involved in the production of the Crescent Hotel episode have taken a pledge of secrecy until the show airs sometimes this fall, all indications are that the show will reveal even more titillating tales of the plethora of precocious poltergeists that have been checking in but never leaving this Historic Hotel of America since 1886.