The Copper Queen

BISBEE, Ariz. — “Many hotel guests would complain if they were awoken by bumps in the night or if they found their things had mysteriously disappeared from their dressers,” reports Marc Lacey for The New York Times. “But not visitors to the Copper Queen Hotel, a rustic old place that is considered Arizona’s longest continuously operated hotel.”

“The Copper Queen is haunted, or at least that is what the owners claim and what numerous guests have affirmed over the years with stories about mysterious voices, odd sounds and smells, and even levitating objects,” reports Lacey. “For many, a quiet, uneventful night at the Copper Queen, which dates to 1902, is a dire disappointment.”

“The front desk clerk’s voice grew low as he told how he heard a female voice one evening while riding the elevator between the third and fourth floors, even though he was the only physical being inside,” reports Lacey. “And he swore up and down that he once saw a room key floating in the air.”

“At his side were the ghost journals, accounts left by guests over the years of their encounters with the hotel’s resident spirits. So compelling are some of these tales that they have been compiled into a book that came out this month,” reports Lacey. “Adding credence to the hotel’s claim of three resident ghosts, at least for those who believe in the paranormal, was the hotel’s appearance in an episode of the “Ghost Hunters” show on the Syfy Channel.”

“One Copper Queen guest, Tina LaVon, wrote about how she had tried to take a photo in the hotel but the camera said it had no memory card,” reports Lacey. “The scary part is, she insists it did have a memory card.”

“Others wrote of hearing whispers, of the remote control for the television not working or of a cellphone battery mysteriously losing power,” reports Lacey. “A child wrote of losing her stuffed animal only to have it mysteriously reappear later.”

Read the full article here.