yes kevin i read that also, i would love to investigate that place. here is the story. and here is there contact info. Robin and Tom (hint,hint,hint) lol. its only like an hour ride. i say we jump on it before other groups swamp them ya think?lol this has some great stories, the basement sounds very cool.
Hotel Bethlehem
Downtown Bethlehem PA
437 Main Street,
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 18018
Reservations: 800-607-BETH
Telephone: (610) 625-5000
Fax: (610) 625-2218
Email: info@hotelbethlehem.com
Website:
www.hotelbethlehem.com Bethlehem hotel embraces ghost stories with "Room with a Boo"
3/11/2007, 2:39 p.m. EDT
The Associated Press
BETHLEHEM, Pa. (AP) — A historic Bethlehem hotel, far from trying to throw a sheet over reports of ghostly visitors over the years, is embracing the spooky past with a "Rooms with a Boo" event next month.
Staff and guests at the Hotel Bethlehem, located on a site that dates back to the city's founding in 1741, have been saying for years that the place is haunted.
Officials say two guests have asked to leave because they believed they saw "someone" in their rooms, and a night engineer no longer wants to enter the subbasement, reportedly a center for the unexplained incidents.
So, rather than try to quell the reports, the hotel has decided to embrace them — even though management, under new private owners Christmas City LLC, was "very reluctant to discuss the hauntedness in general," according to hotel historian and special events manager Natalie Bock.
Bock cited as sources of the eerie events the hotel's early history as the location of Bethlehem's first house, site of the former Eagle Hotel in the 1800s, and the Roaring 20s heyday of the current restored Bethlehem Steel Co. creation.
Over the years, people have reported unseen taps on the shoulder, cold spots, voices calling employees' names, reflections in mirrors and glass, and "vacuums turning on and moving across the floor (when they are not even plugged in!)," according to the hotel's Web site.
Other reports include a woman in period dress appearing in the kitchen, frightening the entire staff, and vanishing in the dining room, and visions of a little girl in a window, thought to be the spirit of an actress/singer of the 1890s, May Yohe, who grew up in the hotel, the Web site says.
The April weekend event will feature ghost tours, lectures by paranormal researchers — and a complimentary Bloody Mary at midnight.
Bock said, however, that no reference will be made to a January 1989 fire that claimed five lives, including elderly residents from a nearby senior apartment building being housed at the hotel during renovations.
"Any haunting we are talking about would be Colonial or Victorian times," Bock stressed. "We aren't talking about any recent deaths."
Other hotels have hosted similar events, and other places such as Gettysburg also market their haunted past.
Besides, Bock said, ignoring the tales "wasn't productive for the staff."
"They were getting spooked out," she said.