Korakia Pensione - Palm Springs11/1/2007 Cindy's Website Cindy's Blog
The Haunted Whaley House CLICK HERE Other Haunted Stuff CLICK HERE
We arrived in Palm Springs at about 10 p.m. on a Friday night, but this wasdefinitely our weirdest adventure yet. My dad and I decided to go “GhostHunting” and mom stayed at home.
We found a hotel with a “haunted” reputation and even a“haunted room.” It was the hotel KorakiaPensione http://korakiapensione.com and the room was the “Jasmine Room.”
Now the Korakia is a Morrocan Style Bed and Breakfast builtas a house around 1924. Some years ago they annexed some apartments that werenearby.
Allegedly the hotel is haunted by the wife of a former ownerwho has been seen walking along the road on the anniversary of her death. Otherstrange occurrences include reported cold chills on extremely hot days andclothes that have been rearranged while guests are gone from their room.
Reportedly the annexed apartments are even more haunted.Certain rooms (including the Jasmine Room we stayed in) have reportedly hadnumerous sightings, unexplained sounds, cases of items moving in the room, andother pranks by a couple of ghosts who lived there in the 1940’s.
Information on the exact nature of the hauntings is sketchybecause the current owners (unlike many hotels with ghost legends) are not veryco-operative. When my dad called and asked them about the legends they claimedthat they knew nothing about it.
So when we arrived it was all a little spooky. It wasn’tlike a big hotel or anything. It was this house and apartments in a residentialneighborhood.
When we walked into our room, it was small and creepy. Therewas a heavy feeling in the air or something. I was a little scared and wouldn’tlet go of my dad’s arm for some time. I also kept my back pack on for aboutfifteen minutes because I felt like it was protecting my back….funny, but I wasscared. This was much scarier than the Whaley House because we were going tosleep here overnight….
My dad went to the bathroom and I was petrified the wholetime he was in there. I was so scared I didn’t even move. I didn’t even turn myhead…. It seemed like he was in the bathroom forever, but it was only probablya minute…. Anyway, we put our stuff in the room, got settled, and after aboutfifteen minutes decided to take a walk to see if we could bump into the ghostwho sometimes walks up and down the street.
As soon as we walked out of the room, we both noticed thatit felt better. So we walked around for a while up and down the street, sawnothing, then decided to go back to the room and put in our time ghostwatching.
When we got back to the room, we explored for a while,looked into all the nooks and crannies, and discovered there was no TV and nophone. So then we decided to turn off the lights and just lay there for a whileand see what happened. There was this really creepy feeling in the bathroom. Ididn’t like going in there at all. And after we turned the lights off, I could still sense that part of the room asbeing the creepiest of all.
We lay there for about an hour waiting to see some ghostlyvision or something weird, but nothing too weird happened. There were someunexplained lights every now and again, and my dad thought he saw this blackmass kind of at the end of the bed – I could kind of see it too, and I was100%sure there was something in the bathroom….But other than that there was nothingreally weird.
I actually started getting a little bored with it all andwas tired and ready to go to sleep. I put my lotion bottle on the table andinstructed any ghosts who may or may not be there to knock it off on the floorso when we woke up in the morning we would know they were there.
Then I went to sleep.
When I woke up in the morning, my dad was already up. He washaving trouble with the internet again (like all the other hotels except theHyatt.) He said it worked sometimes then didn’t. We apparently were on the edge of reception.(Or the ghost didn’t want us to communicate with the world!)
I went to the bathroom and that’s when I noticed that thelotion bottle was knocked over. It was not on the floor but it was knocked overon the table.
That kind of freaked me out and I asked my dad about it buthe didn’t hear or see when it happened. He did tell me he saw a weird lightthing above the bed in the morning while I was still sleeping, and he heardsomeone cough right at the foot of our bed - twice. He said it was real freaky!
So we kind of freaked out about that for a while but in themorning with the daylight and all, it wasn’t very scary….So then we decided to takesome pictures at the hotel before we went shopping. My dad tried to use thesafe, but he could not get it to work, so the manager came over to fix it andher keys got stuck in the lock and she couldn’t get them out. That was reallykind of weird too. And then my iPod broke and wouldn’t work … crazy!
The Karokia is a really photogenic hotel. The furniture andthe whole place is really kind of old and run down, but when you take a pictureof it, it looks absolutely gorgeous. So we went to take some picture of me at variouslocations on the grounds.
We talked about our experiences of the night before as weworked. We noticed after a while that because we did not actually see anyghosts walking through the room in ghostly splendor, we could rationalize allthe odd little incidents away...........
The second night wasn’t as scary as the first night. It wasstill scary to be in the bathroom alone and one time I was in there and thetoilet started making noises and that really scared me. It was probably thescariest thing that happened to me personally. There was no reason for thetoilet to make those noises…..creepy…. but over all the second night wasn’t asscary. (Probably because I was getting use to the experience of ghost hunting.)
However, there was definitely stuff going on in that room.The black mass was at the end of the bed again, and this time I could see ittoo. It was just sort of blacker than the rest of the room. Then suddenly afterabout 20 minutes we both saw it disappear. I fell asleep pretty fast afterthat, but I did wake up once during the night. I kind of looked at the bathroomarea, and boy the bathroom at night…. well that was still just as creepy asever.
In the morning, my dad reported that nothing much hadhappened. He saw the light thing hanging over the bed again in the morning, butno coughs or anything like he had heard the previous night.
In the morning when it is light, the room just isn’t scary.It is mainly a nighttime phenomenon. So we got up early Sunday morning so wecould have breakfast at the hotel. (We missed it the day before. You have tomake it to the main lobby before 11 a.m.
The Karokia is a bed and breakfast and your meal is includedwith your room rate. (Which was $279 for our “ghost” room by the way.) So theyjust give everyone the same menu. We had soft tacos with eggs, salsa and beansin them. They were a little crunchy and actually it was really, really good.
We came back and packed up so we could head out to the Living Desert.I must say the stay at the Korokia overall was quite an adrenaline rush. I hadnever done anything like this before. Ghost hunting and all. I don’t think Iwould stay at the Korokia again however. No TV, no phones…..unless you want todo a photo shoot and you want to stay at the same place. (Or unless you want to“Ghost Hunt.”) It would not be worth it.
Dad and I have decided to pursue our “GhostHunting” some more. We want to actually SEE a ghost. So next month we are goingto stay in a haunted room at what is reportedly the most haunted place in theworld - The Queen Mary – in Long Beach.
Stay tuned for our next ghostly adventure.
If you have a ghostly adventure. Let me know about it here.
Cindy