Ghost Tour

by Claryn Vaile

  Even more crucial than speed and accuracy to a professional in the Keep stenographer’s position was discretion. As scribe to its powerful and influential patrons, she was privy to a great deal of sensitive information. Potent information. Often volatile information. The stenographer fretted in her journal that she sometimes worried about matters which were none of her concern. A frequent guest, once noticing her furrowed brow, advised, “’Let the day’s business go through your fingers, not through your head.’”

  Having started just a few months before “Black Thursday” in 1929, the stenographer noted a dramatic shift in the demeanor of The Keep’s wealthy clientele after the Stock Market Crash. “Gone is the brash confidence and swagger of previous days, and in its place, anxiety and desperation plague the hotel’s stalwarts. I sense that these captains of business and politics would do almost anything to safeguard – or to restore – their fortunes.”

  The stenographer, it became apparent as Rebecca read on, was also at the beckon call of hotel owners R. J. and Lilah Kuhrsfeld. She transcribed insincere regrets and made-up “prior commitments” for RSVPs to parties Mrs. Kuhrsfeld elected not to attend. She typed-up heartfelt apologies and passionate promises from Mr. Kuhrsfeld to his mistress, a department store fashion model he kept in a suite at The Keep. The stenographer made it clear in her journal that she did not respect the Kuhrsfelds. Nor did she trust them.

  By 1929, the eighth-floor site of the two-story Ladies Ordinary had been converted to a Convention Hall, where traveling salesmen were invited – for a substantial fee – to showcase their wares. Based upon the reports of colleagues in the banquets department, the stenographer speculated that the space regularly hosted more nefarious activities after hours.

  “They have told me in confidence that every Friday night around 11:00, they deliver platters of food and contraband alcoholic beverages for 40 people to the Hall. As soon as the servers leave, the doors are locked. When the custodial staff are admitted around 5:00 AM, the chaos they are tasked with clearing gives every evidence of orgiastic depravity.

  “My friend Malmud says he has personally witnessed loose women from the Silken Rose being smuggled through the coal tunnel under Carson Street and up the service elevator for these parties. Rumor has it that both the elder and the younger Mr. Kuhrsfelds host the weekly debaucheries with the eager collusion of the Rose’s madam, Dolly Lacey.”

  The journal reported equally hush-hush meetings of local powerbrokers and business leaders taking place periodically in the Grand Salon late at night. Doors locked. Staff barred. But unlike the wild parties in the Convention Hall, these congregations left no trace whatsoever of their mysterious activities.

  “The Salon is always spotless the next morning,” a custodian told the stenographer. “They clean up after themselves and one would never know they were there, let alone what they were doing.”

  Further entries revealed that the stenographer counted many friends among her fellow Keep employees, acquaintances from their shared Opportunity School days. All were recent immigrants who had learned English and employable skills at the nation’s first public school for adults. All were grateful for their positions with the hotel. But none of them was deaf or blind. They heard things, they saw things, and they confided to the stenographer discoveries that concerned them.

  “This morning Sofia told me she had seen a live, bleating lamb brought into the basement butcher shop. When she asked the butcher about the unusual delivery, he waved her away, saying, ‘This is how we ensure the freshest meat.’

  “Today Pavil reported one of the bags he’d carried up to a prominent guest’s room fell open, spilling a hooded black robe embroidered with strange symbols .”

  “Luca in stewarding was both impressed and disturbed by the array of long, gleaming knives he was directed to sharpen for a special guest of the Kuhrsfelds.”

  “Bridget confessed tearfully this afternoon that she is quitting her job, though she needs the money desperately. ‘You would cringe at what I’ve seen in some of the hotel rooms,’ she said to me. ‘In that rich Romanian’s suite on the sixth floor-- a child, a little colored girl, chained to the radiator, staring at me like she was drugged. To my shame, I was too frightened to help her. When I reported it to Mrs. Merchant, she told me that we must respect our guests’ privacy above all, and that I should forget about the child if I knew what was good for me. I won’t stay another minute in a place where such wickedness goes on.’”

  The suspicious entries did not appear all at once, but over a period of about two months in 1930 around Christmas time. Around the winter solstice.

  “Coincidence?” Rebecca asked Lochlan when they met in the paint shop to discuss the journal the next morning. “I know you put great stock in the mystical energy of astronomical events.”

  “I do,” he confirmed, “as do the Knights Templar, as do the Freemasons, and as do Satanists, for that matter. Momentous things are presaged by the movement of the planets and the stars. Their power can be tapped for good, or for evil.”

  “So what do you think was going on in those days at the Griffins Keep? Lambs and knives and black robes add up to ritual sacrifice in my book.”

  “And the little girl chained to the radiator?”

  “Don’t,” Rebecca pleaded. “I can’t even think about it.”

  “OK,” Lochlan agreed, gently placing his hand on her forearm. “We won’t go there.”

  “December 23 - The angels wept. Management claims the moisture on the Grand Salon ceiling fresco is due to leaky plumbing. But I am not the only one who has seen tears in the eyes of the archangels -- as if they had witnessed something terrible.

  “This building has mystical powers, some say. My beloved James was a member of the local Scottish Rites Lodge. Just before he died, he confided to me that the Freemasons know many Griffins Keep’s secrets. He said the structure channels spiritual energies intended for the good of the city, which was still struggling when the hotel opened.

  “I suspect that certain unscrupulous men have been attempting to pervert those energies to their own purposes in recent months. Dabbling in the occult, summoning diabolical forces to do their bidding. I’m frightened of what may come of their efforts.”

  “March 9 -This afternoon Mr. Kuhrsfeld dictated an urgent letter to a Professor Ivan Kolov:

  ‘It is my understanding that you assisted Mr. Nikola Tesla with his electro-magnetic experiments in Colorado Springs several years ago. I have also been given to understand from colleagues versed in spiritualism that you are experienced in harnessing electrical energies to purge spaces befouled by dangerous forces. I solicit your assistance with just such a matter.

  ‘Money is no object. Electrical generation is no issue. As many as four Corliss engines will be at your disposal. Secrecy is imperative. I beseech you to come to Denver at once, as terrible entities, unwisely summoned, are beyond our control.’”

  The stenographer had added a postscript to this entry:

  “Not knowing whether Mr. Tesla will be remembered, I should explain that he is considered a ‘mad scientist’ for his work with transmitting electrical energy through the earth without wires and for creating manmade lightning. It is also rumored that he has experimented with electro-magnetic connections to the spiritual realm. He has even invented a ‘spirit radio’ for communicating with the dead and claims to have received signals from other worlds.

  “Mr. Kuhrsfeld was drinking straight scotch as he dictated this correspondence. His hand trembled. He never looked me in the eye. He instructed me to bring the letter to him directly as soon as I had typed it up. ‘I’ll arrange for its delivery myself,’ he said, still not meeting my eyes. I have often seen him tense, agitated, anxious. But never like this. Never terrified.”

  “March 18 - Professor Kolov arrived today and immediately sequestered himself in the Grand Salon. The room has been designated off-limits to all until the professor completes his work. From the trunks which accompanied him were unload
ed spools of wiring, metal rods, and all manner of coils and tubes, switches and meters. What on earth can he be planning?

  “March 21 – It is a good thing that hotel occupancy was low last night. Apparently Professor Kolov’s activities in the Grand Salon used so much power that the basement generators could scarcely meet his demands. Staff who worked the graveyard shift reported that the professor’s equipment created such a tremendous charge that they could feel it coursing through them, as far away as the Front Desk office. The hotel detective claimed the light visible from beneath the locked Salon doors was so intense that he had to look away.

  “No one is quite sure what the professor was up to. But when he emerged from the room, witnesses swear, the hair on his head was completely frazzled and standing on end. The Salon itself, they said, smelled of sulphur and ashes.

  “’It is finished,’ he said in the letter to Mr. Kuhrsfeld he dictated to me the next morning. ‘The negative energy has been neutralized and dispersed. You will be troubled no more by the ‘problem’ you invited. I must warn you in the strongest possible terms to never, never tap into those forces again. You were very fortunate that polarity reversal worked this time. But if you call the trouble back into being, never contact me again.’”

  “March 30 – Mr. Kuhrsfeld has been like a man possessed since Professor Kolov’s visit. He seems determined to reshape The Keep for reasons he does not share. ‘I’ll castrate this place if it takes my entire fortune,’ I heard him tell a close associate.

  “Work has already been undertaken to retouch the ceiling fresco in the Grand Salon where moisture streaked the archangels’ faces. The carpet and draperies are being torn out and burned in the basement furnaces. I doubt we will ever know what actually happened in the Salon, either in the period before Professor Kolov’s arrival or during his mysterious visit. But many of us employed at The Keep have the sense that the hotel and its inhabitants escaped disaster of dire proportions by the narrowest margin.”

  Rosslyn handed the stenographer’s journal back to Lochlan two days later. “This goes a long way toward explaining all the drastic changes made to the building during the Kuhrsfeld years,” she said. “Somehow, R.J. loosed something horrific while trying to channel the Keep’s powers to the ruthless advancement of himself and his cronies.”

  She shook her head in wonder. “Whatever it was, it scared the hell out of him. But refusing to accept blame for bringing the evil on himself, he blamed The Keep, along with the Freemasons who had empowered it. By altering its physical features, he must have believed he could undo its magic – magic the builders intended for enlightenment, but that he tried to use for dark purposes.”

  Lochlan agreed. “To some extent, he succeeded. By changing the main entrance from the Grand Avenue side to the Carson side, he redirected the orientation and the flow of the place. And I have to assume his demolition of the eighth-floor banquet hall was an intentional assault on the space in which the Knights Templar dedicated the building.”

  “He changed or eliminated so many of the potent architectural details -- shut off the artesian-well elevator hydraulics, completely destroyed the second grand staircase, chiseled off the huge stone griffins that flanked the Seventeenth Street entrance, even removed the griffin above the lobby fireplace – all in his effort to diffuse the building’s esoteric powers.”

  “Makes the current remodeling and redecoration look pretty insignificant by comparison,” Rebecca realized.

  “Were you able to find out anything about our journalist?” Rosslyn asked.

  Rebecca reported some success. “I found an in-house publication from 1930 in one of the archives cartons we hid in the basement. It listed all the hotel guest services, including the floral shop, the barber shop, and the hotel stenographer, Dorothy Wright.

  “I looked up her obituary at the DPL Western History department,” the historian said. “Seems Dorothy didn’t stay at The Keep for long after the journal entries stopped. Got a good job at the Colorado National Bank and taught evening classes in stenography at the Opportunity School until she retired. She passed away peacefully in her sleep at the age of 72, survived by her son and daughter and five grandchildren.”

  “Sounds like a happy ending,” Lochlan said. “Wonder if she still visits the Keep?”

  “What do you plan to do with her journal?”

  ”I believe I’ll put it back where I found it. That particular wall is gone now, of course. But I’m sure I can find a space in the terra cotta block in the same general area to tuck it away for some future Keep engineer to uncover down the line. Share the thrill – and the shock – of its discovery with posterity, just as Mrs. Wright intended.”

  Rebecca was no stranger to the seduction of occultism.

  A folded note discovered on her husband’s bureau in the fifth year of their “open marriage” had led her to conjure sympathetic magic a second time. On pale yellow paper, written in a feminine hand, she read the instructions, “Please proceed to the screening room to get your brains screwed out.”

  She’d stared at the message for a long time. Almost from the beginning of their marriage, she’d known that her husband was cheating on a regular basis, had known that he wanted her to do the same, in order to share the experiences for his perverse entertainment. But to hold the visceral proof of his betrayal in her hands brutally kicked the heart out of her.

  Had he left it there intentionally for her to find? When confronted with the evidence, Bryce had admitted it was from Bianca, a fellow theatre student studying costume design. Their affair had been going on for more than a year.

  “She inspires me to perform in ways you never could,” he’d told Rebecca. He wanted a divorce. It was the beginning of their end.

  Rebecca had blamed the seductress rather than the willing seductee. She had never felt such hatred, pouring the pain of all Bryce’s betrayals onto Bianca and vowing revenge. Remembering the voodoo doll incident of her childhood, she set out to acquire some personal possession infused with Bianca’s essence upon which to vent her anguish. A sympathetic friend who worked with the costumer had supplied the perfect object: a pin cushion.

  “I saw Bianca prick her finger on a needle the other day before she reached for this,” the accomplice had explained. “It must have absorbed a few drops of her blood. Will it work for your purposes?”

  Rebecca had slit the cushion open on one side and stuffed the screening room note inside. Under a full moon two nights later, she’d intended to pierce the bundle with sewing shears. But on that bright, cold midnight, as she’d stood outside of Bianca’s apartment to perform the curse, a saber-tooth icicle had broken loose from the roof gutter and fallen at her feet. With all the malice she could muster, she’d stabbed at the cushion with the icy dagger. When it snapped off without puncturing the dense packet, Rebecca feared she had failed in her vengeful ritual.

  But one week later to the day, while hiking up to Bridal Veil Falls with a group of friends, Bianca had slipped from the trail on a patch of ice and fallen to her death on the rocks 60-feet below.

  Ice. Coincidence? No one – including Rebecca -- could prove otherwise. But she knew that she had summoned something primal to serve her bidding. The realization excited and terrified her. Sensing that she was wading too deeply into darkness, she’d pulled back once again from the dangerous brink.

  Chapter 21

  The music was totally unexpected. With the scaling back of Lobby Tea, the longtime musicians had been let go. All one heard in the atrium anymore was Muzak.

  But what was this Rebecca was hearing through the door of the mezzanine sales office?

  A single violin. Live. Could it be?

  Rebecca ignored the ringing phone and stepped out onto the second floor balcony. About twenty people were enjoying Tea in the lobby below. Seated on the old Victorian-style furniture that she thought TITHE had gotten rid of, they clustered around a single long table by the Griffin Fountain. At its head was a tiny, elderly lady in a spectacular pur
ple hat and feather boa. The affectionate multi-generational group feting her could only be friends and family. A huge sheet cake set before the guest of honor featured more candles than Rebecca had ever seen at once.

  But it was the musician who drew her attention. Long, wavy, gray-streaked hair fell to his shoulders. The formal jacket and white shirt that he wore were apparently borrowed from banquets staff. The kilt was his own -- MacKenzie dress tartan, she had no doubt. Rebecca flashed back to that clan’s motto, as recited by Lochlan soon after they met: “I shine, not burn.”

  And shine he did. Lochlan’s violin gleamed in the stained-glass-filtered sunlight. Its song rose like passion to fill the open eight-story space with soaring sound. The spritely Celtic melody lilted throughout the atrium to be absorbed by the structure already resonant with thirteen decades of piano, harp, string quartet, jazz combo, and orchestra music.

  Dawn came out to the balcony and joined Rebecca. “It’s Imogene Lawbaugh’s 100th birthday,” she said. Every Griffins Keep staff member knew the name. Imogene had been coming to the hotel since she was a little girl. Her mother had been the hotel’s seamstress. Her aunt and uncle had lived in one of the Parapet apartments for years. She celebrated the end of Prohibition in the Pirates Pub. She got engaged in the Versailles Room, married in the Silver Spoon Club, and honeymooned one the Keepsake Suites. She hosted countless fundraisers for charitable causes at the hotel throughout her long and colorful life. Her annual birthday celebration had been held without fail at The Keep every year since she turned 9.