Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog

More Evidence of the Paranormal at the Chelsea Hotel

During a recent trip to the Big Apple, my friend and I decided to call the Chelsea Hotel home for 4 days. It has always been a secret fantasy of mine to stay here and my friend was just content to get away from home for a while. Upon our arrival, the guy at the front desk put us up in room 124 as it was the “last room available” for the weekend. He could’ve put us up on the roof and I would’ve been just as happy. Its the Chelsea Hotel! I was to meet another guy who worked at the hotel later that evening who informed us that more rooms were available. I didn’t think twice about why they put us in 124. Like I said, we were in the Chelsea freakin’ Hotel!

Our room was quite spacious complete with a kitchenette, 2 large beds, a couple of desks and an old Victorian styled couch which looked like a prop from The Munsters’ TV set. My friend commented on the couch and likened it to a couch old school funeral parlors used to prop dead people up on so they could be photographed. We got to joking around about this and my friend decided to have me pose on the couch as if I had been murdered. A few hours after our impromptu photo session and after having been out to explore the golden secrets Manhattan has to offer, we found ourselves back at the Chelsea shooting the shit. I was sitting on my bed as my friend was relaxing on the couch. All of a sudden, his demeanor took a 360 and he turned pale. He very nonchalantly remarked, “I just saw a ghost.” I laughed. Ghosts aren’t real, they only exist in movies and Joseph Arthur songs. Supposedly he had seen a fuzzy image of a man walk out of our bathroom and disappear.

Afterwards, some dark gloomy cloud of sadness settled over him. “I’ve got to get up off this couch before I start crying,” he said, face red and eyes full of tears. “Something bad happened here, in this room, on this couch. I have to delete those pics we took earlier. It was wrong for us to have joked around about that. I HAVE to delete them now to make things right again.” I agreed with him. We did get carried away. After pressing him for a good 10 minutes about what it was he had seen, a small part of me began to believe him. This guy and I have been friends for our entire lives and our jokes never last longer than a minute or two. I was just finding it hard to wrap my head around such an abstract idea such as ghosts, and I’m the poet, go figure. Anyways, I suggested he call our friend who works at the hotel and see if he could answer some of our questions. As he was on the phone with the front desk trying to get connected to our friend, I made my way to the bathroom to take a leak. Midway through my business, I felt something pulling up 3-4 hairs on my right forearm. It wasn’t just that weird feeling you get like with static. It was something tugging on a few of my arm hairs. I looked down to see if something had gotten stuck on my arm like piece of thread from jeans and nothing was there. I then felt something like cold droplets of water falling on my left forearm. Again, I scanned my surroundings in search of a leak or something that would explain this weird sensation. I could find nothing.

Startled, I emerged from the bathroom and suggested to my friend that we head downstairs and try and get some answers. Half-dazed and in our bed clothes, we made our way to the front desk. The lady smiled at us and we just kind of stood there in a strange stupor. Moments later my friend opened his mouth, “Is this place haunted? We saw something in our room…” The lady behind the front desk just kind of laughed and said that the place wasn’t haunted and, with a fierce look in her eyes, silently asked us to go away. Back at the room, I suggested we Google the hotel to see if it was haunted. To our surprise, we stumbled upon countless stories of run-ins with the paranormal at the Chelsea.

I’m not sure what happened in room 124 of the Hotel Chelsea but both my friend and I experienced something in that room that we’ll never forget. I walked into the Chelsea believing that ghosts were figments of crazy people’s minds to walking out of the Chelsea believing in the paranormal. Life sure is crazy, ain’t it?

Matt

Mysterious Skeleton Haunts the Chelsea Hotel

Dear Ed,

My mom, sister, and I stayed at the Chelsea hotel a few weeks ago.  The three of us decided to take a spur of the moment trip to New York before I had to go back to teaching in the fall.  Because it was such a last minute trip, none of us had taken the time to research the hotel.  We had no idea about any of the ghost stories of the Chelsea until after our stay, but from the moment we arrived until the day we left we had quite an experience.  I have no doubt that the place is haunted!  We stayed in room (redacted) and the lights in our bathroom and hallway went off and on over and over while we were there.  Is that a normal occurrence at the Chelsea?  The people working at the front desk were as nice as they could be, but none 
of them seemed to have an answer for that.  While we were there, we found a small door in our closet that opened up to what I'm assuming is empty space in the wall.  I took a picture of it and I'm attaching it to this email.  Look closely on the far left peeking out from behind the door.  Zoom in to get a better view.  What in the world is that?  It looks like a skeleton with a clown nose.  It wasn't there in real life.  One night during out stay, my sister met up with a friend, so my mom and I were back in our hotel room getting ready for bed.  I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth with the door open and my mom was in the main room.  Suddenly there was a woman's scream (not high pitched...almost like singing) right in my ear really loud.  My mom came running into the bathroom, because she had heard it too.  Another strange thing that happened was on the last night we were there.  The sink kept turning off and on full blast and bubbles were coming up from the drain!  Our mom would get up to turn it off and everytime she would lie back down, the sink would come back on.  Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep that night.  While we were there, the hotel always stopped on the 1st floor whenever my sister was alone.  Since I've been home I checked out the Hotel Chelsea blog and got your book Legends of the Chelsea Hotel.  What an interesting hotel with so much history!

Kathleen

Woman Haunted by Mysterious Disemboddied Head In Mirror at Chelsea Hotel

Hi, I am writing to share a recent experience I had at the Chelsea Hotel. I was hoping to post my story and get some feedback to see if anybody has experienced the same:

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My boyfriend and I decided to visit New York City this month. It was our first time, and we chose to stay at the Chelsea hotel for 3 nights. I had little prior knowledge of the hotel's history (as far as the spritual visitors which are supposed to still live there). We were staying on the first floor in Room 114. The first two nights were fine- I slept peacefully. However, on the last night, things changed. I am not a complete believer in ghosts, although I believe anything is possible to a point, and I know I have good intuition and can read people and situations fairly easily. The entire night was too vivid and the details too accurate and fresh in my mind for me to 100% believe that it was a dream.

 

That night, we ended up going to bed around 1:30 am. My boyfriend fell asleep immediately. It was not the same for me. I had a strange feeling, not a good feeling at all. I had this immense fear that stayed with me the entire night. I tried to close my eyes and re-play a "joyful" song in my head, but the eerie thoughts and feelings kept creeping back. Nothing had happened, but this overwhelming feeling crept over me, and I felt my heart beating nearly out of my chest. I began sweating profusely. I tried to cover myself with the blankets, and cling onto my boyfriend, but I felt like I was not alone. I had my phone next to me, and each time I would check the time. I suddely heard a door slam extremely loudly and a man yelling with the sound of frantic footsteps running down the hallway. I froze. The running continued for another three minutes or so and then was gone. I then heard the sound of footsteps creeping in the room behind me. This continued the entire night. Somewhere during the course of two hours, I suddenly looked up and right in front of the bedroom mirror, I saw a head in mid-air. The head seemed to grimace at me, and I will never forget the eyes staring me down, almost bug-eyed. The face seemed to be wearing some kind of theatre make-up, bright red lips drawn on very carefully, white face paint, and ear-length tightly coiled black hair. Suddenly, the face shifted over to a black and white version of the face, without the makeup. I froze and not knowing what to think (I was terrified) I ducked under the bed and pressed tightly to my sleeping partner. After ten minutes or so, I emerged, and the head was gone. However, I still felt a cold "compression" next to my right ear for five minutes. I grabbed my phone. It read 4:16 am. I had set my alarm for 7:00 am, but I changed it to 6:00 am, just hoping for the morning light to rescue me. I was terrified, and even considered waking my boyfriend, but I became afraid that if I did so (I don't know why I thought this) that the "head" would re-appear. I did not sleep the entire night and I contemplated what I was doing there, and why. Couldn't I just run down and call a cab to take me to the next "non-haunted" hotel? I seriously considered this. After I set the alarm and stayed awake until my alarm sounded off at 6:00 am. My pillow was drenched when I awoke. I was in shock with the image clear in my mind. It's menacing look will stay with me...and I wondered who that was? I have an idea of who this man was after looking at images of the famous that lived there and departed to the afterlife. The picture I observed made my stomach sink..it was the same face, that same grimace, and those same sad and large eyes. It looked like Dylan Thomas' face.

 I would like to put this information out in hopes that someone has had a similar experience and would like to share. I am listening.

 

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Hopefully, I will be able to share this story and get some feedback. Please let me know!

 

Thank you,

Anna