When the first wave of prospectors settled in Gold Hill, they needed every bit of inspiration they could muster. In the early 1970s, it took just as much strength for housekeeper Beth Gauthier to go to work at the Gold Mine Hotel every day. Beth claimed to have seen the ghost of a young bride who honeymooned at the Gold Mine in the late 1800s.
In the beginning, Beth said, there were small, inexplicable mysteries and events. On no less than four occasions, she recalled making up room #107, exiting the room for extra towels or cleaning supplies, only to find (upon her return) that the bed looked as though it'd been slept in. This happened over a period of three to five minutes. Most of the people employed by the hotel were aware of the various ghost stories and legends associated with the building, so at first Beth thought it might have been a co-worker playing a practical joke.
Then she began to notice cold spots, very apparent drops in temperature, much different from the air elsewhere in the room, which lasted only a moment or two. It was similar to swimming in a lake and passing through a cold patch of water. This happened especially often in the southeast corner of the room, where sat an original Gold Mine Hotel rocking chair.
Beth also felt a palpable despondant aura surrounding the chair, and thought it to be emanating from a tortured soul lost in death. She caught glimpses of a figure in the mirror when she would quickly look up from cleaning the bathroom sink. Guests also reported hearing unusual noises, and waking in the middle of the night with a feeling they were being watched.
After doing a bit of research on the hotel and talking to locals whose family roots are in Gold Hill, Beth found some further evidence that the spirit inhabiting room #107 was that of a young bride.
It seems the groom, although pleased his new wife was a virgin, also had an appetite for the more 'experienced women' who worked in an area adjacent to the hotel. The lout waited for his wife to fall asleep on their wedding night, and crept downstairs to hire one of the 'ladies' employed by the hotel.
The bride awoke to find her husband gone, and went downstairs to search for her groom. Someone in the saloon suggested she check the annex, and as she moved toward the back of the hall, she calmly (and unnoticed) picked up the firewood axe, and proceeded on to the ladies' chambers.
She opened every door, surprising wayward husbands by the score, until she threw open the one that revealed her new husband entwined with one of the more seasoned ladies of the night. In a jealous rage, she blundgeoned them both to death, and then wrote the word "betrayer" on the wall in their own blood. She calmly left the room, replaced the axe, and returned in a haze to room #107.
She then took her husband's pistol from the night stand, sat down in the rocker and shot herself through the temple. She was eighteen.
Beth Gauthier was actually relieved when the new owners of the hotel failed to prosper, and she was let go. She said she doesn't believe she could have continued to work there and retained her sanity.
Stranger than Fiction Magazine is your premier source for tales of the bizarre and extraordinary. Published quarterly. Established 2004.
Fall 2004 issue (here)
