Antoinette May herndon 209 286-1320

By Antoinette May Herndon

Jerry Ward’s a cautious man. Feeling the effects of a lively party at Mokelumne Hill’s Hotel Leger, he took a room for the night rather than drive the treacherous Jesus Maria Road to his home some twenty miles away.

Ward’s sound sleep ended abruptly. He wakened suddenly smelling the acrid odor of burnt wood. Switching on a the light, Ward found the room charred Almost beyond recognition. A woman knelt in the corner, keening miserably and cradling a baby in her arms.

As he watched frozen with fear, the image slowly faded. The woman disappeared and the room resumed its normal appearance.

“Well, that surely sobered me up!” Ward says today. “I knew I’d never get back to sleep so I got up, dressed and drove home.”

That’s one story. The Hotel Leger (pronounced “luh-zhay”) has many. A hub of Mother Lode activity since 1851, the building once included the county courthouse with a convenient downstairs dungeon and a hanging tree out back.

George Leger built the inn. A fire destroyed it in 1854—could Ward have relived the grim aftermath?— but within a year Leger and his wife, Louisa, were back in business.

The 1870 census no longer lists Mrs. Leger but there’s a daughter named Louisa. The story goes the mother died in childbirth. Does that explain the eerie sounds of a woman crying that hotel guests report?

Stories proliferate. In Room 2, visitors see a Victorian woman. In Room 3, it’s a little boy. Maids make beds in Rooms 10 and 11,then return to find them torn up. The wildest story is the midnight cattle drive down Main Street—sounds of mooing, hoof beats and cowbells. Guests—as well as Ashley Canty, a current owner—have rushed to the window only to see a dark, deserted street.

Ashley’s mother, Jane Canty, cleaned the dining room after a party, using three keys to lock three doors before leaving late at night. She returned the next morning, unlocked the doors and found the room in disarray. Tables were shoved together.

Dishes, glasses and silver used. “A hoax seems unlikely,” she says. “It was so elaborate—a lot of trouble to execute and difficult to conceal.”

The hotel owners called in Bay Area Paranormal Investigators, a ghost busting team headed by Mark Boccuzzi. Dagmar Morrow, a Mountain View medium, accompanied the squad. At first she felt overwhelmed by impressions “So many spirits are connected to the hotel,” she said. “Imagine 150 years of passion and intrigue. Some are mischievous. They tease: ‘Find out about us if you can’.”

Slowly, Morrow sorted them out. In the dungeon, desperate men speculated on their fate. In the lobby George appeared, still keeping tabs on the hotel.

Morrow’s most vivid image was the “Gray Lady,” a thirtyish woman wearing Victorian clothing—nipped in waist, lace at the cuffs and neckline, a short frilly apron. “She was shy, diffident, looked at me questioningly as if asking, ‘Is everything alright?’ Some of the young women investigators were drawing diagrams of the hotel. She didn’t approve of them sitting on the floor, didn’t think it ladylike.”

While Morrow communed with her Gray Lady, Boccuzzi detected an electromagnetic anomaly; a column of energy recorded on his tri field meter. When he tested the spot later, the anomaly was gone.

I’ve always liked such stories. The scarier the better. When the tale was told, I’d laugh and say, “Naturally, no sensible person believes such things.” Now I’m not so sure. Consider the case of Bathroom Machineries—a chain yanker if there ever was one.

Not only does the Murphys emporium have antique plumbing, light, keys and hardware, but a resident ghost. The 100-year-old I.O.O.F. Hall is high spirited to say the least—just ask the folks who work there.

Tom Scheller, the business’s owner, has been hearing and seeing things about the place since 1976. Then not long ago two prospective customers he’d not met before came in. The couple started up the stairs to look at tubs on the second floor. Suddenly they stopped dead in their tracks, paused and turned around. They had felt a presence on

the stairs, “saw” a woman’s form stumble and hurtle downward. The couple knew that the woman had died as a result of the floor.

“It really didn’t surprise me,” Scheller said. “Only a week before I’d heard noises on the stairs and run up to investigate. The motion light in an upstairs room went on before I could get there. I was six or eight stairs away, the ghost was just ahead of me. I call it the ghost. What else can it be—there was nothing human or animal up there.”

John Vienop, a clerk, was joking with Scheller about the now legendary ghost when a soap dish suddenly flipped off a shelf. “There was no way that it could have slid off by itself.”

Another time Vienop and Brian Wynne, another employee, were speculating about the ghost while moving an antique tub. “Just then a tub shelf from another tub flipped up at us. We tried jumping around, thinking that vibrations might have caused it but that was clearly not the cause.”

Jim Muller, another long time employee, has often heard footsteps coming from the floor above when he was alone in the store. I went up to investigate and a door slammed shut in my face. Other times merchandize has just flown off the shelf. There was no breeze, just a big “boom!” as it landed on the floor.

Once while working upstairs, he saw a woman out of the corner of his eye. He turned to say, “May I help you” and she disappeared.

Why should a bathroom supply house be haunted? Nobody knows. The building enjoyed lively days when it housed the I.O.O.F. Hall. Echoes of laughter and conversation are still heard by all three men. It’s also known that club members were embalmed in the building and that commemorative bricks are imbedded in the floor. Perhaps, too, the vintage fixtures—tubs and toilets—dating from before the Civil War carry a kind of psychic energy. It’s all very human—in an inhuman sort of way.

The Hotel Leger is located at 105 Main, Mokelumne Hill. Phone: 286-1408. Bathroom Machineries is at 495 Main, Murphys. Phone: 728-2931. Antoinette’s books include Haunted Houses of California and Adventures of a Psychic.