You may be asking right about now, “OK, great – but what about the haunty stuff?”

Well, here it comes ….

The staff sightings and stories are the most consistently reported paranormal occurrences according to my research on Hotel Galvez. Activity ranges all over the hotel, from the laundry and administrative areas to the guest rooms and grounds.

Hotel Galvez has 226 rooms, and the story of the Ghost Bride centers around room 501. The story goes that a beautiful young woman who was in love with a sailor would go up to room 501 and then look out at the sea from a hatch in the hotel roof, waiting for her lover’s return. According to the story, the young woman heard that a storm destroyed her lover’s ship and that all hands were lost at sea, never to return. Devastated and heartbroken, she hanged herself in the west turret of the hotel. In an almost Shakespearean surprise twist, her lover DID return from his travels only to find his beloved dead by her own hand. Staff in the hotel believe her spirit is still there, mourning her lost chance at true love. The hotel employees state that they see orbs of light and other phenomena in the hotel around the spaces associated with the story.

Other accounts of paranormal goings-on include a little girl seen with a ball on lower levels of the hotel and the presence of a man in part of the hotel laundry. There are further reports of unexplained happenings like candles blowing out in the absence of drafts or wind, dishes breaking without cause, items moving around the rooms, sounds like breathing and laughter near the Music Hall, and children’s laughter near another bathroom.

People living at the Hotel Galvez for extended stays also report a ghostly female figure in a maid’s uniform, and the apparition of a man walking into a closed-door, only to disappear….

The last bit of paranormal information I found that really gave me that deliciously creepy feeling is the hotel’s somewhat infamous haunted painting.

The Hotel Galvez boasts a painting of its namesake, the Viscount Bernardo de Galvez, who died in 1786. In the painting, the military leader’s eyes are said to follow guests as they walk by. People standing close to the painting report feeling chills or general uneasiness. But creepiest of all? When people attempt to photograph the painting of the Viscount, their photographs turn out distorted, with skeletal images emerging instead of the image of Galvez himself. According to one source I read, the only photographs of the painting that have shown a clear image of the Viscount have been the ones in which the photographer first asked for permission to take a picture of the portrait.