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The Ghosts of San Francisco
by Raj Kaushal

There are some men who would find it an affront to their manhood to admit fear of anything. However, I am an evolved spiritual being so I'll admit that I am scared of ghosts and I generally avoid them as far as possible. I don't watch horror movies, I don't go on ghost hunts and I most certainly don't stay in haunted places. Having left ghosts well enough alone, they have, kindly, left me alone too. This happy state of affairs changed when I was booked into the Hotel Union Square on a recent visit to San Francisco.

Bump in the night

Booking me into a haunted hotel was nowhere near enough for the editor of Prediction, who had also asked for me to stay in room 207 - a room that' had reports of some fairly startling ghostly activity. I had purposely avoided reading up on the room for the first couple of nights so that I,didn't fill my head with any preconceptions. Instead I looked forward to a stay in one of San Francisco's most historic and pleasing boutique hotels.

That first night, as I tucked myself into the twin bed to the right of the room, I was feeling rather brave and thinking about my planned excursions for the week. However, later that night, I awoke and felt the sensation of my blanket being pulled off. I assumed gravity was causing it to fall off the bed and so I pulled it back up again. Most of the night was spent in this bizarre pulling back and forth until I eventually tucked the whole lot around me in a cocoon. When I still felt a pull, I decided it was definitely something unusual. Phoning to tell the editor the next day, I was very smug and excited; I had only been there one night and I had already had an encounter! Ghosthunting, difficult? Pah!

The strangest thing of all was that I did not feel scared. The next two nights were uneventful and on the fourth day I went to have a word with the concierge Tom Steele to discover a little more about the story of the room that I was staying in. He explained that it is believed to be the ghost of Lillian Hellman that haunts that room. The famous and raucous playwright was such a party animal that she is said to have propositioned a young man the night before she died at the age of 79. A lady after my own heart. Or blanket.

Closing doors

The last young man she had manifested herself to was a Scotsman staying in the room with his grandmother. The room has a door that leads to a walkin wardrobe and on to the bathroom. This connecting door had to be closed again and again by the man as she kept opening it and wanting to come in to wake his grandmother! He described her as "friendly - too friendly."

Talking later to the owner of the hotel Yvonne Lembi-Detert, I discovered that she too had had an experience in 207. She had gone into the room with her sister to have a look around. "The first thing I do when I'm checking a room is see if the beds are made properly and that they are all perfect. I came in with my sister and I had checked the beds. I was talking to her and when I turned back, there was a Kleenex on the bed! I was about to tell my sister not to leave things like that in the room when I realised that she had been in the bathroom the whole time and so it couldn't have been her!" This is not the only time that things have magically appeared in the room the moment Yvonne's back is turned.

This haunting though appears to be entirely benign and some visitors even request the room especially. I am sorry to report though that no more blanket pulling happened during my stay and I had to resume my hunt for the paranormal elsewhere.

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