The Knickerbocker Hotel
Linesville, Pennsylvania
INTRODUCTION
Exactly halfway between New York City and Chicago, in the sleepy northwestern Pennsylvania town of Linesville, sits a beautifully refurbished and decorated three-story brick landmark, the Knickerbocker Hotel, which happens to be bursting at the seams with spirits. Those spirits—while sometimes moody, mischievous, even cranky—often seem as willing to entertain guests as were the original, living innkeepers during the building’s heyday a century and more ago.
The original proprietors, Milo and Clara Arnold, built the establishment, originally called Arnold House, on land Mrs. Arnold inherited from her second husband (Milo was number three). On January 12, 1882, they held a gala ball to open this hotel, restaurant, entertainment lounge, and family residence. The twenty-room building has weathered the winds of change and stands proud and strong on its original foundation, with the past and present, the seen and unseen, inextricably intertwined.
The current owners, Peg and Myrle Knickerbocker, felt a calling to restore and decorate this gem as a tribute to the people, history, and style of its Gilded Age origins and have done so since they assumed full control of the property in 2005. Peg Knickerbocker changes the theme and décor of each room on a regular basis to keep visitors and ghosts on their toes. Every room is a moment caught in time.
Among the most prominent ghosts of the Knickerbocker Hotel are founding matriarch Clara Arnold, who died of tuberculosis at age thirty-seven just three years after the Arnold House opened; at least one small child variously seen in the basement and heard with stunning clarity on video; a roaming shadow figure caught on infrared video on the third-floor hallway and stairs; and a remarkably tangible former feline, seen, heard, and captured on video in the second-floor Cat Room.
Countless paranormal teams have reported and documented activity while investigating here, and the Knickerbockers have opened their doors to television shows including A&E’s Paranormal State and the Biography Channel’s My Ghost Story. Brian Cano, of Syfy’s Haunted Collector fame, filmed a documentary here with his home team, SCARED!
Meticulous research, attention to historic detail, and the general positive vibes of the place make the Knick a must-see for any paranormal enthusiast.
Take the Haunted Tour—The Main Floor
From the hotel’s austere exterior, it’s difficult to imagine the size and the splendor of the Knickerbocker, but once inside, the welcoming charm of the hotel enfolds the visitor. The lounge area is elegant and comfortable, with ample room for a small gathering. Small tables and chairs are positioned about, and plush couches frame the subdued, rectangular space.
Adjacent to the lounge is a brightly lit room used for meetings, informal get-togethers, and dining. It is ideal for lectures and similar events and is typically the staging area for paranormal investigations held at the hotel. Captured evidence can be conveniently reviewed and shared via large flat-screen TVs with computer connections in the dining room and lounge, giving this area a modern feel in sharp contrast to the period rooms and hallways above.
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
An odd sequence of events befell paranormal legend Lorraine Warren of The Conjuring fame during one of her many visits to the Knick, on the occasion of her eighty-first birthday.
Warren was sitting in the dining area at a small table with her purse at her feet listening to a paranormal lecture. When the speaker concluded, she reached down to retrieve something out of her bag, only to find it missing. Bewildered and upset, Lorraine asked Peg to help her find it.
Peg gave a little smile and helped her search for the purse, knowing it wouldn’t be found through “normal” methods. Peg often refers to the Knickerbocker as if it were a living, breathing entity, with characteristics and quirks like the rest of us. When a purse, phone, pair of earrings, or set of keys seems to vanish into thin air, one must ask the building to “please give it back.”
Dubious, but willing to try, Lorraine stood up and with open arms pleaded, “Building, please return the purse.” The other guests found this amusing, but Peg assured them it would work. After the room was cleared as part of the process, Lorraine quickly returned with Peg, and to her astonishment, found the purse exactly at the spot from where it had gone missing.
Object manipulation of this type is indeed rare, and the ramifications fascinating: Where did the purse “go” in the interim? Was it actually somewhere else or was its presence somehow cloaked? Was this the action of a single spirit or some sort of group effort? The world can be a very strange place.
Theresa had a similar experience in the Angel Room on the third floor, which we will recount later.
Grand Opening Reenactment
In September 2011, the Knickerbockers held an event reenacting the original 1882 grand opening of the Arnold House. Using a contemporary newspaper account as their guide, participants relived the day the hotel first threw open its doors, beginning its strange journey through time. The guests all dressed in period attire, and each had a part to play. Peg was chef and served a lovely dinner to the guests, Myrle entertained the crowd with piano music popular in the 1880s, and their friend Mark Painter portrayed Milo Arnold, original proprietor of the hotel.
It was a grand party, much like the one held over 130 years ago. Everyone stayed in character throughout the night, enjoying food and music authentic to the era. After serving the guests in the lounge, the “staff” sat down for their meal in the dining room.
Eventually “Milo” stood up and addressed his guests, thanking them for coming to the grand opening celebration. As he spoke, the party guests stared in awe at what was conjuring behind him. “Milo” turned as well, just in time to see a wavelike body, like a heat mirage, emerge from the east wall and sweep across the room to the west.
Before anyone could speak, a man dressed exactly like faux Milo stepped out of the wall into the room, took a quick look around, and then stepped back into the wall and disappeared!
Stunned by what they had seen, the partygoers bolted from the lounge to the dining room to report what had just happened. Peg was shocked when she heard their tale, especially since her group, the ones portraying hotel staff, had seen the same man peeking in at them through the door just moments before. It seems as though Milo Arnold crashed his own party.
Personal Experience—
Peg Knickerbocker (Owner, Knickerbocker Hotel) and Clara Hyder (Sister): Impatient Bathroom Specter
A woman and her grandson from Mentor, Ohio, were in town in September 2012. It was around 4:30 P.M. on Sunday and everything was closed. The woman knocked and asked if her young grandson could use the bathroom. I was out, but my sister Clara Hyder, who was visiting, said, “Of course.”
The woman took her grandson into the bathroom, and when she came out she said, “I’m sorry if we made the woman in the bathroom mad, but my grandson really had to go.”
“Who was she?” my sister asked the grandmother.
“She was a short woman with short dark hair that cupped her face, black cat-rimmed glasses, and wearing a little brown outfit. She stood right there, tapping her foot with her arms crossed. I said ‘Ma’am, I’m sorry, but my grandson will be done in a minute.’ Then she left.”
My sister told the stunned woman, “That’s wonderful, because only you, me, and your grandson have been in the building.”
Take the Haunted Tour—The Kitchen
Today, guests enter the building through the east side entrance, which opens to the aforementioned lounge area to the left, with the bar on the right and a central reception area straight ahead. One can almost picture Victorian- and Edwardian-era crowds, dressed in their finest, gathering for cocktails at the bar before sashaying off to the opera via the hotel’s private entrance on the second floor.
Farther to the right, behind the bar, is the kitchen—a moderately large, workable space that was the heart of the hotel during its glory days, serving not just guests but family and staff as well.
My Ghost Story—
A Lighter Shade of Shadow
The Knickerbocker was featured on season four, episode nine of My Ghost Story, which first aired June 9, 2012. In the episode, Peg says that she wasn’t aware of the building’s haunted nature before she and Myrle purchased the Knickerbocker. But when they started renovating the second and third floors, it soon became evident that the hotel had come with some extra guests.
Peg was at the sink washing up dishes after an event. She suddenly felt as if she weren’t alone. She glanced up toward the back kitchen door. When she looked up at the door there was a shadow person, standing, looking at her from the doorway. She was shocked. She thought, “I need to get out of here,” so she did just that.
This wouldn’t be the last time Peg saw the shadow man. Like a silent sentinel, this mysterious figure has appeared over and over again—always quiet, always vigilant, keeping a watchful eye on the hotel.
Others have reported seeing a shadow man as well, but for them, his presence has been a little more chilling.
While touring the Knickerbocker with Peg, guest investigator Megan Newell also encountered a shadow man in the same area. When she walked past the kitchen she saw a shadow that ran past the back of the kitchen. She was petrified. She had never seen anything like it.
Visitors have reported a shadow person in several other areas of the hotel, including the stairways and the basement. The My Ghost Story episode included a stunning photograph of a shadow man in the Angel Room on the third floor. This is near the same area where staggering video of a very active shadow person was captured by the Paranormal and Supernatural Seekers group in 2009.
This shadow person may be a single entity or one of many. With the menagerie of ghostly entities at the Knickerbocker, it’s hard to know for certain.
Take the Haunted Tour—The Basement
Hidden below the main floor of the Knickerbocker is a place of literal and perhaps spiritual darkness. Underneath the liveliness and comfort of the lounge and dining rooms, a locked door opens to a narrow staircase that descends to a dirt-floor basement, the one area of the building that actually looks and feels creepy.
The basement features everything you might imagine in the cellar of a haunted house: dirt floors, low ceilings, storage areas that hold nothing but cobwebs, bricks, and damp wood. There are pipes that run along the ceiling; furnaces and water heaters that linger in the shadows, unnoticed except for their constant hum; and the incongruous pulse of dim computer lights, sending out the building’s streaming video signal to the world.
Personal Experience—
Theresa
My fellow Haunted Housewives and I were invited in June 2011 to a premiere party for Zak Bagan’s ghost hunt competition series Paranormal Challenge by our friends Adam Kimmell and Daniel Hooven, whose Resident Undead team was one of two competing in the inaugural episode.
Our own episode of Paranormal Challenge was scheduled to air later in the season, and we were dying to see what a finished product looked like. The Knickerbocker was a perfect place for a premiere party: lots of televisions, an inviting gathering area for speechifying, a gracious host, and a genuine haunted venue to investigate after the program!
Resident Undead front man Adam Kimmell is a natural with crowds. He is warm and welcoming, with a charismatic personality that draws you in and makes you want to follow him. Daniel Hooven was relatively new to the paranormal, having been with the team less than a year, but he had experienced enough in that time to make him well seasoned in the field.
About twenty others joined in the festivities that night, all eager to see Resident Undead do their thing on TV. The crowd watched the show unfold and cheered joyfully as Resident Undead came out victorious!
After the show was over, about a third of the crowd drifted cheerfully out into the night and about a dozen remained as we moved on to the next portion of the evening. Among the participants were experienced investigators, true believers, and a few skeptics thrown in for good measure.
Peg Knickerbocker regaled us with a brief history of the Knick and some of her most riveting haunted experiences. Then we broke into small groups and took turns rotating to different areas of the hotel to investigate. The time came for my group to head to the basement. I was apprehensive about this, not because I feared the ghosts said to be down there, but because I am somewhat claustrophobic, which is not a fortuitous trait for a paranormal investigator.
Dread pulsed through me and my heart beat faster as we made our way down the creaky wooden stairs into the thick, inky blackness.
Senses tingling, I made my way through the gloom across two-by-fours laid out as a makeshift walkway. I had to duck several times to avoid smacking my head into pipes that hung low from the ceiling. The only light visible was the eerie electronic glow of the computers tucked away to our right, about halfway toward the back of the basement.
Time to get to work. We pulled out our handheld digital voice recorders and began an EVP session. As a rule I do not believe in provoking spirits. I think it’s rude and disrespectful. But there are certain occasions when I will bend this rule. I have a great dislike for anyone, living or dead, who treats women poorly, and a spirit with whom we hoped to communicate had a nasty reputation for misogyny.
Cathi sensed this man’s angry presence all around us and felt something touch the back of her head. Cathi is a bit vertically challenged, so we ruled out the ceiling pipes as the culprit.
We asked any present spirits to identify themselves. “What is your name? What business do you have in this place?”
Our first attempt yielded only a few muffled responses, so I got a little more personal.
“Do you have a problem talking to all women, or is it just us you’re angry with? Are you afraid to talk to us?” I taunted the spirit.
This time when we played back our recording we got his message loud and clear.
“You . . . fucking . . . bitch!” Hmm, sounded like we struck a nerve.
I was eager to leave the area and return to the upper floors after this. When we compared notes with some of the other teams, it seemed we weren’t the first group to encounter this guy that night.
Then it was time for everyone to meet in the basement for one final group session. Maybe there would be safety in numbers.
Recorder in hand, Adam began a group demonstration of ITC—instrumental transcommunication—basically, talking to the dead by use of a digital recorder and “real-time” EVP.
He explained the process. He would ask a series of questions, leaving ample silence between each, hoping to catch a response from any ghosts that might be present. The recorder was voice activated, so if the group didn’t make any sounds, there would be nothing but Adam’s voice on the recording during playback. Simple. Logical.
Adam asked for a volunteer. One young lady offered up her boyfriend, whom she had dragged to the event unwillingly. He was a skeptic bordering on nonbeliever and thought the whole exercise was rather pointless. Adam exclaimed confidently to the group that he would prove the dead can speak, that we can communicate with ghosts. His bravado was astonishing, even to his teammates, who all hoped he would make good on his word.
With the volunteer by his side, Adam began his session.
A few basic questions: “Is anyone here with us?” “What’s your name?” “Can you give us a sign of your presence?”
Straight out of the Ghost Hunting 101 playbook.
Then Adam announced the clincher. He asked the volunteer, someone he had never met before, to say his first and his last name.
“Randy Caldwell,” the man answered.
“Okay, now I want any spirits here with us to say this man’s name. First and last. Please, nice and clear, say, ‘Randy Caldwell.’”
Adam knew what was on the line. It was evident by the small beads of sweat forming on his brow and the nervous smile on his face.
“This is it; this will prove that this stuff is real.”
He asked for silence and told everyone to have their recorders ready. He played back the recorder, holding it up high for everyone to hear.
A question. A muffled response. Another question. Another unintelligible response.
Then the mother lode.
“Please, nice and clear, say ‘Randy Caldwell,’” instructed Adam’s voice on the recorder.
“Randy . . . Caldwell,” came the response.
A collective gasp went out from the group, along with a few choice expletives.
Daniel said, “Play it again, play it back one more time!”
One and all clearly heard, “Randy . . . Caldwell.”
An intelligent, deliberate response from an unseen entity captured on the recorder in front of a room full of witnesses in real time. There was no tampering with the recorder, nothing set up in advance. The man whose name was called was not in on any kind of scam. He was a skeptical man dragged to some silly ghost hunt event and asked to participate in a parlor trick.
“So what do you think now, Randy Caldwell? Do you believe in ghosts?”
A dumbfounded, bewildered Randy shook his head and said, “Well, I believe now.”
Skeptics may be able to dismiss one person’s account, find a reasonable explanation for an event reported by two, but this event was witnessed and documented by a dozen people.
Tools of the Trade
Real-Time EVP: immediate playback of recordings during an EVP session, allowing a conversation-style communication between investigators and entities.
A few people made a quick exit after this, having had enough paranormal activity for one night. The basement took on an extra creepy feel at this point. We all knew we were not alone. There was at least one spirit down there with us—one who knew how to manipulate an audio recorder and speak to the living.
Take the Haunted Tour—The Stairways:
The Ups and Downs of a Haunted Hotel
A recurring visitor claim at the Knickerbocker is the sensation of being pushed when on the stairs. This is a tough claim for an investigator to tackle, as it is nearly impossible to document a “push.” Paranormal State’s Ryan Buell and his team attributed the sensation to old, creaky, wooden steps contributing to a sense of imbalance in the unsuspecting, while filming an episode of his show at the Knick.
Personal Experience—
Theresa
During an investigation, I ran upstairs to retrieve a tape from the stationary infrared camera I had set up outside a third-floor guest room. Eager to join my companions on the main floor, I grabbed the tape and quickly made my way to the landing. I paused momentarily, noticing a strange burst of cold air on my neck. I tried to brush off the uneasiness that washed over me as I headed back down the stairs.
At first I thought I was hearing noises carried up from my friends downstairs. By the time I reached the second stairwell, I couldn’t ignore what was happening. It sounded like a muffled conversation or possibly an unfamiliar language. I slowed my pace and strained to listen.
The voices grew more distinct and much closer. It was as if they were standing directly behind me. I could “feel” their presence as well as hear them talk: two voices, locked in conversation. I fought the urge to run, fearing I would fall.
“Should we go?” a female voice whispered.
“No, stay,” came the ghostly reply.
I bounded down the stairs two at a time until I reached the bottom.
THIRD-FLOOR HALLWAY AND STAIRS: SHADOW PLAY
The Paranormal and Supernatural Seekers team from Trumbull County, Ohio, held an investigation at the Knickerbocker on the night of October 9, 2009. The team, led by Cindyjo Dailey, Danielle Dilisio, and tech whiz Steve Dailey, captured something on video that is nothing short of astonishing.
The team set up a series of infrared cameras in various hot spots of the hotel. Each camera was connected to a central DVR system. One camera was stationed by the south wall of the third-floor hallway, facing north toward the stairwell. The camera had a view of the top of the staircase, the banister around and above it, and the dark north hallway beyond. A separate IR camera was trained on the camera that recorded the fateful video.
The day after the investigation, during the routine—and frankly, tedious—review of hours of the DVR footage gathered by each camera, Steve noticed movement so distinct and purposeful, he assumed it had to be an investigator.
“At first I thought it must be one of the team; it had to be a person,” Steve told us.
“But I checked the DVR and everyone was accounted for. You could see where the rest of the team was on the other cameras.”
For the first seven seconds of the video, the world as we know it prevails: No living thing is present and nothing moves. Then, just after the seven-second mark, we see the quick, faint flash of an investigator’s camera from the darkness of the north hallway beyond the stairs.
A second or so after the flash—almost as if frightened or startled by it, as Steve noted in a conversation about the video—we see movement from the north hallway toward the stairs, toward the recording camera. Remember, there is no source of visible light (other than the momentary flash) in the area.
At first, it’s a barely perceptible darkening of the darkness in the hallway, but then the darkness congeals and sharpens strikingly into a humanlike form that descends a few stairs, its “head” still visible just above the banister, its “body” below it with the balusters between it and the camera. Then with inhuman fluidity and speed, it turns to its left, glides toward the wall, and disappears.
This would be remarkable enough, but there’s more. Between the eleven-second and fifteen-second marks, the figure reappears out of the same spot in the wall into which it had vanished and moves back up the stairs much more slowly and laboriously than it had previously moved, as if walking up the stairs one step at a time and with what appears to be the flourish of a cape or Victorian dress off to its right, before disappearing once again into the darkness of the hallway beyond.
But there’s still more. The figure appears again from the hallway at the sixteen-second mark and descends rapidly, though with a walking rather than gliding motion, down the stairs and out of sight.
All told, the shadow figure is seen for a full eight seconds—eight of the strangest and most compelling seconds we have ever witnessed.
Steve and the crew tried to debunk the footage by recreating the shadow and its movements themselves. If a person was moving in the north hallway, could they cast that kind of shadow movement? First, there is no light source. Steve assured us that at the time of the recording, “No lights were on at all—we were completely in the dark.”
Second, even if there were a light source coming from the north, how would you account for the clear movement up and down the stairs?
If the light source were from below on the second floor (perhaps car lights shining through the window on the south wall), you could create some form of up-and-down shadow movement on the stairs, but there would have to be a person to create it, and that person would have to actually be on the stairs.
And there wasn’t one.
In addition, the shadow is humanlike in form, but the gliding movements are too rapid and smooth to be human, and humans don’t often vanish into walls.
Other investigators have tried in vain to explain this video by either debunking or re-creating it. To date, no one has even come close. In addition to being posted on the Knickerbocker website, the video was also included in the My Ghost Story Knickerbocker episode. If you can come up with a natural explanation, we’d like to hear it.
Take the Haunted Tour—The Cat Room:
Maybe They Really Do Have Nine Lives
The two-room suite in the southeast corner of the second floor is the Cat Room. There is a large bed, a dresser, and a single wooden chair in the first room. The adjoining room can fit two single beds, a couch, or whatever suits Peg’s fancy at any given time. Its décor has changed many times, but one thing remains constant: This room is the favorite hangout of the Knickerbocker’s most popular spirit, the Ghost Cat.
The single chair has been placed in the room specifically for the comfort of the phantom feline. A startling photograph of the Ghost Cat is proudly displayed on the dresser. Although the image is a relatively low-resolution screenshot of the live feed sent in by a viewer, it clearly shows a translucent cat curled up comfortably in the chair. One can even make out its markings: orange on top, white below. The Ghost Cat not only has been seen, but has been heard on numerous occasions.
Personal Experience—
Theresa
Cathi Weber and I were conducting an EVP session in the room across the hall when we heard cat noises.
At first we thought the sound was coming from outside. Worried about a poor stray caught out in the February cold, we searched in vain for the source of the sound. There was no way the cat was outside the window, as we were on the second floor. Others with us that evening captured meowing and purring on their audio recorders as well.
The appearance of animal spirits raises many interesting questions about what happens to our beloved pets after they die. Do they have personalities that survive bodily death? Are they aware they are dead? Is it their intent to remain here? As humans, we have knowledge of the paranormal; we may even be able to choose to remain earthbound or return as spirits. But how does that apply to an animal?
The ghost kitty at the Knickerbocker is not a residual spirit. It can and does interact with the living on a regular basis.
Paranormal Activities
Residual Spirit (Residual Haunting): the energy imprint of a spirit or event that replays, often at regular intervals, like a recording throughout time. Energy absorbed by surrounding inanimate objects can sometimes be released in this form of physical manifestation. The event replays as if on a loop; the apparitions never vary in their behavior. Residual spirits cannot interact with the living and are unaware of changes in their environment. They are not thought to be ghosts in the traditional sense.
Personal Experience—
Chris Mancuso (Paranormal Investigator, Co-Founder of SCARED!)
Brian Cano of Haunted Collector fame has been a guest at the Knickerbocker on several occasions. In 2009, Brian and his SCARED! team partner Chris Mancuso stopped by the Knickerbocker for a brief visit on their way to a convention.
Peg graciously opened the hotel for them and invited them to spend the night. Chris had heard much about the insane volume of paranormal activity in the building but had yet to experience anything for himself.
In fact, at that point in his career, Chris, then an eight-year veteran of the field, had had only one previous undeniable paranormal experience. He was pretty much a hard-core skeptic.
Exhausted from a long day’s travels, Brian and Chris decided to turn in for the night. “It was twelve thirty or one o’clock in the morning, we were tired, we picked out our rooms. Mine was on the second floor toward the front. Brian had the room right across the hall, and Peg had her apartment,” Chris recalls.
“So we went to bed. I put my pajamas on. I shut the door, and as I shut the light I heard a voice in my ear saying, ‘We’re right here!’”
Chris was stunned and momentarily paralyzed. As luck would have it, he didn’t have any equipment running to capture the disembodied voice. After all, they weren’t there for an investigation.
Being in a state of shock and not wanting to wake anyone up, Chris took the only logical course of action. “I tiptoed back to my bed and pulled the covers over my head—if I can’t see them, they can’t see me!”
Well played, Chris Mancuso, well played.
Until that evening, Chris had considered himself very much a skeptic: years of paranormal investigating and only one personal experience. His unforgettable night at the Knickerbocker definitely moved him closer to the believers’ side of things.
Brian and Chris were so impressed with the Knick that they chose it as the subject of a future SCARED! documentary. Brian wants to focus heavily on the history in this film, believing that it’s the key to much of the paranormal activity happening inside the Knick.
Take the Haunted Tour—The Opera Room:
The Supernatural Superhighway
Once the place to see and be seen, the Arnold House was conveniently located adjacent to Stratton’s Opera Hall, even offering direct access through a private doorway on the second floor. The Arnolds’ well-to-do guests—including traveling politicians, captains of industry, and Hollywood royalty—appreciated this amenity, which afforded them the opportunity to make appropriately grand entrances to the opera, their finery unspoiled by the rabble or inclement weather.
Today the entrance is bricked up; there is no access to the drugstore that has rather prosaically taken the place of the Opera Hall. The Knickerbockers have turned this former foyer in front of the blocked entrance into a guest room, but the arched doorway, although bricked, can still be seen.
The room is one of the smallest on the second floor, but it is also one of the most intriguing. A framed vintage photograph of an opera performer is on proud display, along with assorted other bric-a-brac of the time. The bed is soft and inviting, as are—truth be told—all beds at the Knick.
In the Opera Room, the theory that doorways can sometimes act as gateways between our realm and the next seems to be borne out. Many visitors, including Theresa, have reported strange voices and disembodied laughter, backed with anomalous readings on K2 meters and EMF detectors. The well-groomed ghosts of the Arnold House apparently still patronize the doorway to the Stratton, long after the final curtain call.
Tools of the Trade
K2 Meters and EMF (electromagnetic field) Detectors: handheld devices that detect natural and man-made electromagnetism in the environment. Electrical conduits, wires, and outlets; appliances; and metal pipes all give off alternating-current (AC) electromagnetic fields. Other types of meters (Trifield meters and gaussmeters) detect naturally occurring direct-current (DC) fields found in the environment.
Take the Haunted Tour—The Angel Room
The most popular room in the Knickerbocker is the Angel Room. Located in the northwest corner of the third floor, it offers space and solitude to those who spend time here. There is an antique bureau, a mirrored vanity, a wooden bench for laying out one’s evening wear or jacket, and a dining table set for two. Lovely and evocative antiques are displayed throughout.
Personal Experience—
Theresa: I Always Feel like Somebody’s Watching Me
During my first visit to the Knickerbocker in 2011 I was instantly attracted to the Angel Room, but I also had a sense that I was invading someone else’s space. I felt as out of place as the infrared cameras set up in the room for the webcam, which in this room carries audio as well as video.
After almost seven hours of investigating with a group of a dozen friends, I was ready to call it a night. I removed my pearl earrings and placed them on the pillow next to me. The earrings were a gift from my daughter, and very special to both of us.
I had been asleep for only a couple of hours when my friends called me downstairs for breakfast. I jumped up, collected myself and my equipment, and turned to head out of the room. I realized I didn’t have my earrings and went back to the bed to retrieve them.
They were nowhere to be found.
I assumed they had fallen off the bed and probably landed on the floor. Or maybe they had slipped under the covers, even though I had only lain on top of them. Perhaps they were caught in my hair or still in my ears.
None of the above.
After a quick but thorough search, I headed down to my friends, explaining the delay. I recruited everyone, including Peg, to help me search for the missing jewelry. We looked everywhere, even going so far as to take the blankets and sheets off the bed. We removed the mattress; we searched inside drawers.
Armed with flashlights and determination, we scanned every nook and cranny of the Angel Room, to no avail. Peg asked if I was ready to accept the fact that the building had taken them. Desperate and tired, I conceded defeat.
“You know what you have to do, Theresa,” Peg said with a knowing grin.
With a sigh of resignation I said, “Building, please give them back. Those earrings are very special to me, and my nine-year-old daughter would be very disappointed if I lost them.”
As per the dictates of the ritual, we vacated the room for a moment and then returned. It took less than a minute before someone spotted the earrings, placed neatly together on the wood plank behind the headboard of the bed we had dismantled moments before.
The building had, in fact, “given them back.” I have twelve witnesses to the fact that the earrings had vanished only to reappear minutes later in a spot where we had just searched! There were even people watching and listening to the live streaming video who concurred that no one had come into the room while I slept, no one had touched the earrings, and no one had placed them back after our thorough search.
I cannot explain the depth of wonder I felt. The unseen world of ghosts and spirits can physically interact with us, not just by shadows and sound, but by object manipulation and intelligent intent.
I’m just relieved that the spirits of the Knickerbocker are kind enough to return the items they “borrow” from visitors. I feel privileged that I was able to experience such an unusual and fascinating phenomenon.
“I Don’t Want You to Go”
On December 3, 2009, Peg invited a small group of friends over to the hotel for the evening with the hope of introducing them to some of the Knickerbocker’s resident spirits. The group gathered for an EVP session in the Angel Room on the third floor. The session was recorded individually by several of the people present, as well as by the streaming camera’s audio and video.
After a forty-minute period of questions and attempts to communicate met with little concrete activity, Peg figured the spirits might be a bit “camera shy,” hesitant to come out with so many strangers around. She thought if everyone left the room, they could slowly come back in one by one, letting the spirits gradually adjust to the presence of the investigators.
On the video you see and hear Peg gently explaining to the spirits what they are doing, and as the group rises and begins to leave, Peg says, “We’re going to each take a turn . . .”
A pleading child’s voice replies, “I don’t want you to go . . .”
Some EVPs have an inhuman, even metallic timbre to them, but this voice is so human, so clear and immediate you assume it had to come from one of the group. But it didn’t.
None of the five living participants heard the voice at the time. It was, however, captured on one other video camera and two of the four audio recorders. The fact that not every recorder picked up this EVP strengthens its validity. If the voice had been a living person, a natural sound in the room, all recording devices would have captured it more or less equally.
It was also a shockingly intelligent and intimate response to what was happening at the moment, and it was directed toward Peg, someone with whom the spirits were very familiar.
According to Peg, this is the clearest EVP ever captured at the Knickerbocker, and it’s one of the most compelling we’ve ever heard—the plaintive cry of a lonely ghost child.
Take the Haunted Tour—The Third-Floor Common Area: The Woman in White
The hallway of the third floor is divided in half—on the north side of the floor are the two Children’s Rooms, the Angel Room, a communal bathroom, and the hallway between them, creating something of a suite.
In addition to the wildly active shadow figure captured on video by the Paranormal and Supernatural Seekers team, this hallway is the domain of the Woman in White. Her ghostly appearances have been reported by guests and the owners of the Knickerbocker.
Psychic C. J. Sellers, featured on the Knickerbocker episode of Paranormal State, picked up on a female presence upstairs in a white gown, with the name Katie or Katherine or the like. Unbeknownst to C. J., Peg told Ryan Buell of a Katie Hickey who lived and worked at the Arnold House in the 1880s and who nursed Clara Arnold on her deathbed.
“This Place Is Going to Kill Tata”
From the third floor to the stairwells, a disembodied woman’s voice has sent chills down many a visitor’s back.
Reports concur that it is a muffled sound, hard to decipher, spoken by a female who seems to be speaking in another language. At times the voice seems like it is right behind you; other times it’s just out of range.
Katrina Weidman of Paranormal State got a taste of this foreign phantom.
She heard something, a voice uttering a short sentence, she informed her teammates in the episode.
Katrina and team member Eilfie Music tried to communicate with the spirit, asking if there was a woman who wished to speak with them.
A startled Katrina heard the same voice again, right in her ear.
Ryan joined the ladies on the third floor to see if he could also hear this audio anomaly.
He invited any spirits to come forward and communicate with them quickly, as time was short.
As if on cue Katrina heard the voice again, a woman.
The team picked up a female voice on their recorders. Upon playback it seemed muffled, but Katrina was adamant that what she had heard was a quieter version of what she had heard the night before.
Peg Knickerbocker’s sister Kathy also saw and heard a female apparition in this area, face covered by a veil, wandering about. According to Kathy, the apparition spoke, “but in a foreign language—I couldn’t understand her.”
Agnes Tomczak lived and worked at the Knickerbocker decades ago with her husband and her children. Polish immigrants, the Tomczaks were hardworking, family-oriented people. Agnes—known as “Tata” by her loved ones—spent long hours inside the hotel cooking, cleaning, taking care of guests, whatever work there was to be done. Her dedication was admirable, but it took a toll on her health. Her children began to worry about her.
“This place is going to kill Tata,” her daughter said on several occasions. Paranormal State’s team captured that exact phrase in Polish on their digital recorder.
During a visit in 2011, Kayla Paden and her fiancé, Richard, encountered the startling spirit of a Woman in White right outside the Angel Room. Theresa was at the bottom of the stairs on the second floor when she heard their screams. She nearly ran into them as they retreated from the area, and she made her way toward them to see what had happened.
They were “newbies” to paranormal investigating, and seeing a full-bodied apparition terrified them.
“She just appeared out of nowhere, all in white,” Kayla reported.
“She looked right at us, turned, and disappeared!” added Richard.
“Congratulations,” Theresa told them, trying not to let her investigator envy show through. “Some of us go a lifetime without ever seeing a full-fledged ghost!”
They took little comfort in her words and quickly darted downstairs to a “safer,” more brightly lit area of the hotel.
CONCLUSION
The Knickerbocker can be compared to a storybook, with each of its rooms representing a chapter, each chapter with its own unique characters. Each character has a common denominator, a connection to the building itself. When you enter the Knickerbocker you become part of the story, and the characters may reveal themselves in fascinating and sometimes frightening ways.
Theresa has had a number of ghostly encounters at the Knick. She has witnessed many bizarre things unfold before her during these visits. She believes each of these encounters has been with a different spirit, and that is what she finds so intriguing about the place.
There are haunted houses and then there are haunted houses. If you’re lucky, you might find one or two ghosts during a hunt. At some larger venues you may find more. But the Knickerbocker seems to be rife with paranormal entities at a ratio far greater than just about anywhere else.
Sometimes a place is destined to be haunted due to tragic and traumatic history surrounding it, such as Waverly Hills Sanatorium, where thousands of lives were cut short by disease and despair. These emotions provide ingredients for a supernatural soup. Occasionally, in a place like the Stanley Hotel, it is the land itself that appears to power the haunting, the geography literally fueling paranormal activity like a battery.
Clara Arnold, for whom the hotel was a short-lived dream, was very likely a Spiritualist, someone who adamantly believed in spirit communication through a living agent, embracing it as religious dogma. Those who knew Clara considered her a staunch supporter of the movement fomenting in nearby Cassadaga, New York, at that time. Her dying words, “I am only going to sleep,” are very much in the Spiritualist tradition. Perhaps her belief, and perhaps participation, in the fascinating world of afterlife communication created a foundation for the events that have continued to unfold long after she left this earthly plane.
We can only venture to guess what Clara did behind closed doors, but it seems possible her Spiritualist beliefs have something to do with the haunted happenings at the Knickerbocker. She is likely the original ghost, the first and the most permanent entity reported at the hotel, joined by a profusion of other former residents.
Peg and Myrle Knickerbocker have become much more than just property owners; they have taken on the responsibility of being caretakers of the past, preserving and celebrating the lives of the dead. There is an old legend that a haunting will cease when the dead are forgotten. If no living soul says your name, you simply fade away into obscurity. If this is true, then the spirits at the Knickerbocker will remain, never forgotten and always respected, under the watchful and loving eyes of Peg and Myrle Knickerbocker and those worthy of being guests at one of America’s most haunted hotels.
Postscript
There’s one more amazing aspect of the Knickerbocker that we’ve never heard attributed to any other building. Like some kind of historical or metaphysical boomerang, things always seem to come back. It’s not just spirits who return to the place they held so dear in life, but objects make their way back as well.
Over the years the Knickerbocker has gone through a multitude of changes: owners, renovations, redecorations, repairs—old and worn furnishings and displays have been replaced as needed by each of the proprietors. This is typical for any business or home over time, of course.
Fortunately for the Knickerbocker, its current owners have worked enthusiastically to restore the building to its former glory. Peg tries to have each guest room represent a different ten-year period from the hotel’s glory years. She is always on the lookout for period items and furniture to include in her displays.
Just days before our most recent visit to the Knick in January 2013, Peg came across some historical documents that listed the hotel’s inventory when it changed hands in 1932 upon the death of then-owner Joseph McGuire. She had these papers with her as she was giving us a tour of some of her more recent décor changes.
Theresa was admiring the new addition of an old steamer trunk and its vintage contents—leather shoes; nylons; fur wraps with legs, tails, face, and all—tucked neatly inside its drawers. Then Peg pulled out the 1932 inventory of the very same room: one bed, one chest of drawers, one floor lamp (all of which were in the room now), and one steamer trunk with identical items inside.
In the hallway were a sofa, framed photographs, and a vacuum cleaner, again all of which were listed on this document. But it didn’t end there. In almost every room was the same number of chairs, tables, rugs, couches, or lamps. Somehow, the hotel had called these things back, reconstituting itself. It’s as if the building is not only full of spirits, but the hotel itself is a spirit.
What You Need to Know Before You Go:
The Knickerbocker
115 W. Erie St., Linesville, PA 16424
Contact Information:
(814) 818-0055
knickerbockerlinesville.com
contact@knickerbockerlinesville.com
For rental rates and availability, please contact Peg Knickerbocker. For a calendar of events, check the website.
The Knickerbocker is located in Linesville, a small town on the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Although the building is sometimes referred to as a hotel, it does not offer overnight lodging for guests. Peg and Myrle Knickerbocker run the building as a gathering place, an event facility, and a place for paranormal exploration.
Please refer to the Knickerbocker website for more information and to view the videos mentioned in this chapter.
The Knickerbocker is wired for Internet video and audio and streams live to thirty-seven countries around the clock. The thousands who watch the live camera feeds have reported amazing real-time activity that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Lodging:
Hotel Conneaut, (814) 213-0120
12241 Lake St., Conneaut Lake, PA 16316
(Rumor has it that this hotel is also haunted.)
Hampton Inn, (814) 807-1446
11446 N. Dawn Dr., Meadville, PA 16335
hamptoninn3.hilton.com/en/index.html
Quality Inn, (866) 611-6770
17259 Conneaut Lake Rd., Meadville, PA 16335
qualityinn.com
Econo Lodge, (866) 611-6770
11237 Shaw Ave., Meadville, PA 16335
econolodge.com