spookt

The Man Upstairs

Built in 1896, the first portion of the Inn, a two and one-half story wood frame structure, was built as a hotel and boarding house. It was located toward the south end of the parking lot on the block where Sid's Market now stands, and was built with lumber milled in South Bend, barged to Nahcotta, and transported to Seaview by the Ilwaco Railroad.

The building had 14 rooms for permanent and summer boarders and, in addition, was spacious enough to accommodate builder Charles L. Beaver's family which included his wife, Inez, and their two children - Harold, born in 1892 and Faye, born in 1894. Charles named the hotel the 'Shelburne' after a grand hotel in Dublin, Ireland, and he put his wife in charge of running it.

The Beavers operated the hotel for 10 years and then moved to Portland, selling the business to Timothy and Julia Hoare. The Hoares were restaurateurs and, for the first five years that they owned the Shelburne, they remained in Portland, leasing out their hotel on the North Beach Peninsula. In 1911, they gave up their Portland interests, moved to Seaview and became full-time hotel proprietors.

Mr. Hoare, a canny businessman, also made arrangements with the railroad company to have the Shelburne serve as one of the stops along the line. Today, the original Shelburne is still adjoined to the house directly to its south and several additions have been made to that part of the Inn. The third building is no longer there, though no one seems to remember just what happened to it.

Timothy Hoare died in 1921 and from that point, until her death in 1939, Julia managed the hotel on her own. Hers was Room 8 which was just above the front door. From that vantage point, she could keep an eye on the comings and goings of her guests and her hired help.

It is Room 8 in which one of the strangest of the ghostly happenings occurred. There was a man, a wine maker from California, staying in that room and he got locked out. In addition to the lock which required a key (and which he had) there was a dead bolt lock on the door which could only be locked or unlocked from the inside. This man locked his room from the outside with the key, left the hotel for awhile, and when he returned found that, although his key worked fine, the room remained locked from the inside. Someone had thrown the dead bolt! In order to open the door, the owner had to crawl out the window of the room next door, inch his way along the porch roof, jimmy open Room 8's window and crawl inside to unlock the dead bolt. The guest was given another room and all was well. Not long after that the deadbolts were changed.


Places in the story
Books with info on this story

Privacy Policy | Terms of Use

Copyright © Spookt 2023.