One night in 1884, Butch Lambert was playing poker with some men in the Gold Mine Hotel's saloon. It was getting late, everyone had consumed a fair amount of whiskey, and the stakes were getting high. So high that, confidant he would win, Butch bet his house and the 55 acres on which it stood. However, a guest of the hotel, Mr. James White also felt he had a winning hand and stayed in the game when everyone else had folded. When the bets were made and the cards revealed, Mr. White's hand proved the better one.
Contented with his win, Mr. White decided to retire for the night. As he staggered up the stairs and down the hall towards his room, he was shot in the back. Mr. White proceeded on to his room, #105, holding the wall for support. He shut the door behind him, lay down on the bed and slowly bled to death. Although obvious to some who the perpetrator was, Mr. Lambert was never arrested or charged with the crime, and it remains one of Gold Hill's unsolved murders.
Room #105 is considered haunted and, in fact, the Gold Mine Hotel stopped using the room for guests and turned the space into 'Housekeeping Supplies'. The reason? Guests kept complaining of objects being moved, window screens rattling, and an awful moaning coming from under the bed. It is said that Mr. White's very irate, baleful spirit still occupies room #105.
Management claims that Housekeeping simply needed larger quarters, and guests weren't satisfied with that particular room because it is situated over the kitchen and the humming of equipment was keeping them awake at night. (This is presumably the 'moaning from under the bed') One employee, however, (speaking off record) says the real reason management changed the room to a supply area is because they've had more than the average number of unexplained deaths in that room over the years.
Wonder if the room will be available this winter!
Stranger than Fiction Magazine is your premier source for tales of the bizarre and extraordinary. Published quarterly. Established 2004.
Fall 2004 issue (here)
