St. James Hotel

From: T (angelkissed7@hotmail.com)
Story type: Ghost
Location: Cimmaron, NM
Source: Form Submission

My parents and I went on a historical trip this summer through southern colorado and New Mexico (my father is a historian) One of the hotels that we stayed in is very famous, the St. James Hotel (featured once on unsolved mysteries). Many old west outlaws and other well known people stayed there on a regular basis; like Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday..Etc. It is also known to be haunted. There is even a room, Rm 18, that NOBODY goes into anymore. The new owners of the hotel told us that they have had the room closed off because bad things happened at the hotel when people ventured into that room and people had been chased out of there by balls of light. Supposedly, the reason is that a man won the hotel in a poker game one night, but then he was shot the same night right outside the poker room and then he was dragged to room 18 where he died. Well on the second night we were there, my mother and I decided to wander through the old hallways to see if we could spot any ghosts or smell the pungent cigar smoke and rose perfume reported by hotel staff to be from spirits inhabiting the hotel. (lots of ghost hunters as well as regular folks explore the place at night, and the famous rooms are actually slept in by the patrons) The night was pretty uneventful, aside from my silly mom scaring me half to death by being jumpy and scared! I have to admit though, when we walked by room 18 and I knocked on the door and tried to look into it from the keyhole...I got a very weird feeling, almost a feeling of dread... and it was ice cold by that room. We went back to our room which was in a different part of the hotel. My parents were asleep, and I had gotten up to use the bathroom. While in there, I heard the phone ring, and I thought to myself, "who would be calling us this late?" and on top of that, none of our extended family even knew we had left town! The phone rang again before I came out of the bathroom. When I came out and asked my mom who was on the phone, she said no one answered both times. I thought maybe it was someone calling from another room and punched in the wrong room number. But then in the morning at about 7:00, it happened again. And when we talked to the lady who owns the hotel, she told us that calls cannot be placed directly from room to room, they have to go through the front desk operator first..AND GET THIS....nobody is operating the phone lines after 9:00 pm....those calls came in well after midnight!!! AND DON'T FORGET, NOBODY WHO KNOWS US KNEW WHERE WE WERE!!!!! SO WHO WAS IT!!! Later on that day after we had been sight seeing around the little town, we had made dinner reservations at our hotel's restaurant. My parents went straight to the restaurant, but I needed to get something from the room. That is when I noticed that the phone receiver was off the hook. I knew that it wasn't knocked off by accident by the way it was sitting right between the top row of buttons, and the cradle....it had to have been gently placed there because hitting it by accident would have knocked it awkwardly to the floor. (not to mention that we had been back to the room AFTER the maid had been there, and the phone was in place) I went to meet my parents...just then, a staff member was telling them that they had tried to leave us a message about our dinner reservation time, but that our phone was off the hook. That is when I told them all what I had just seen in our room. We all got the creeps! I wonder if any of that had to do with my messing around in front of room 18!....It was a fun trip though and I will never forget The St. James Hotel.