Moon Mausoleum
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A Luxury hotel in the wilderness of Yosemite National Park, the Ahwahnee Hotel has housed many famous guests, and some of the guests have, according to rumors, never really checked out and lingers in the hotel as ghosts.
A Luxury hotel in the wilderness of Yosemite National Park, the Ahwahnee Hotel has housed many famous guests, and some of the guests have, according to rumors, never really checked out and lingers in the hotel as ghosts.
Yosemite National Park covers 759,620 acres and stretches into four counties in California. It has been a World Heritage Site since 1984 and is filled with granite cliffs, giant sequoia groves, crystal clear lakes and streams and storming waterfalls from the mountains.
Although the European settlers’ story in Yosemite is from 1851 when it was “found” by James D. Savage, the Native Americans story in the valley stretches back to nearly 4000 years. As for human presence, perhaps as far as 10 000 years. And by the look of it, it also seems to be one of the more haunted National Parks in the USA as well.
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Many people come to seek a simple life, tenting under the stars. Still, there are also many lodges and hotels in the park for those that would like to watch the splendid nature through the windows. Many of these hotels have haunted rumors around them, but none more so than the Ahwahnee Hotel.
In the heart of the Yosemite Valley right by the famous Half Dome you will find the legendary and historic Ahwahnee Hotel that was built in 1927 as a luxury hotel for the park’s visitors built by the Yosemite Park and Curry Company.
The y-shaped building has 97 hotel rooms, but including the cottages as well, there are 121, all inspired by Native American designs. It is situated below a meadow area that was once Miwok village.
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The Ahwahnee Hotel’s interior design is said to have inspired the fictional horror hotel Overlook Hotel in Kubrick’s version of The Shining. Because although the hotel in the book was inspired after Stephen King’s stay at the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, the hotel lobby as well as the red elevator with blood gushing out from it look eerily similar to the one found at The Ahwahnee Hotel.
The Ahwahnee Hotel is said to be haunted by the ghosts of Donald Tresidder and Mary Curry Tresidde who took the place from being a tent camp to a luxury hotel. Donald met Mary at a visit at the park where Mary was the daughter of Camp Curry and together they spent their life dedicated to the Ahwahnee Hotel and the Yosemite Valley.
In their later years of their life they lived in a private living quarters on the sixth floor of the hotel. The first to go was Donald while away in New York in 1948. Mary died in the Ahwahnee Hotel in 1970 but both are said to have stayed on in their afterlife.
According to the legends coming from the guests and staff working at the Ahwahnee Hotel, they are still both haunting the hotel they put their heart and soul into developing. Mary is said to be especially active and it is said she wakes people up to get them dancing in the wonderful common rooms of the building.
The ghost of Mary is also said to be haunting her former home on the 6th floor where even some guests claim they have felt as if a ghost have tucked them into bed as well as folding their clothing. So all in all, a pretty popular and most helpful ghost overall.
She is not alone however, according to some claiming to have seen her husband, Donald, also wandering the halls of the Ahwahnee Hotel. The ghost of Donald is mostly seen walking down the stairs of the hotel to get a glass of milk.
In addition to celebrities and famed socialites, many presidents have stayed in the Ahwahnee Hotel, like Reagan, Eisenhower and Obama, but only one of them is rumored to be haunting the hotel.
John F. Kennedy came and stayed at the Ahwahnee Hotel in 1962 on the 3rd floor, and many claim that they have experienced strange things on that floor that they claim has to be tied to the former president.
People working in the Ahwahnee Hotel have reported seeing him rocking in the rocking chair he requested while he stayed at the hotel when he was alive in the early 1960s because of his bad back.
The chair in question is also said to be moving around on its own when no one is there. Today, there are no rocking chairs in the hotel, and if you see one, it is not supposed to be there.
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