Some say friendly apparitions are inhabiting Ventura's Pierpont Inn

 

Taken 97 years ago today, the photograph shows a teenage girl named Emma (Eliza) Darling posing near the Pierpont Inn in Ventura, which had opened the year before.

Nobody knows why she was visiting the inn that day. Her mourning garb suggests a funeral. But some say that after her 1997 death, she decided to come back.

"Personally, I don't really believe in ghosts, but I've seen some pretty interesting things working here," said Pierpont Inn night auditor John Mork.

According to Pierpont spokeswoman Denise Bean-White, guests through the years have reported seeing a woman dressed in black, early 20th-century clothing in the Pierpont parking lot and near its cottages. One restaurant worker reported seeing a transparent young woman dressed in black "dancing, waving her hands and jumping high into the air without a care in the world," Bean-White said in a news release. "She disappeared as he entered the car."

If Darling is haunting the inn, witnesses report she has lots of otherworldly company. Besides visions of what might be Darling's ghost, many say they've seen apparitions of a little girl, a man in a top hat, and a ghostly party.

"Most of the ghosts I've been able to determine are members of the family who lived and worked there, as opposed to visitors who may have stopped the night," said Ventura historian and ghost hunter Richard Senate.

But Venturan Rod Houck, married to a granddaughter of former owner Mattie Gleichmann, said such claims are ridiculous. Gleichmann ran the inn for nearly 70 years before her death in 1996. Houck spent 10 years working at the inn himself.

"I've been in every room, I've been in every inch of the property, and I have never, ever in any way experienced anything but the wind howling," Houck said.

The Pierpont Inn is being sold to an owner whose name is not being disclosed until the sale is complete. Architectural historian Cynthia Thompson, who did most of the interior decoration for the Pierpont after the Gleichmanns sold it in 1998, believes the new owner is getting a bonus from beyond.

"My opinion is, ghosts are good for business," said Thompson. "The No. 1 question I get at press conferences is, How many ghosts do you have?'"

Thompson's answer: quite a few.

Bubbly toast from a ghost?

The ghosts are all friendly, witnesses say, even hospitable.

One such incident occurred the first week Mork came to work at the Pierpont three years ago. As he did every night, Mork locked every door and window of the hotel's main building at 11 p.m., with plans to reopen it at 7 a.m., when his shift ended.

Around midnight one night, Mork was in the back storeroom when he heard the ringing of the front desk counter bell.

"I heard the bell, and I thought, Oh, I forgot to lock a door,'" Mork said. "When I came out to the front, there was nobody there."

Adding to the mystery was a full glass of champagne sitting on the counter. He checked all the locks in the building. They were all secure. He returned to the front desk and puzzled over the glass. Maybe the champagne had been forgotten by a guest.

"But it was cold. And it was fresh," Mork said. "The carbonation was still popping and everything."

Mork grinned as he admitted he didn't want to be rude and drank it.

When it was empty, Mork put the glass, which had gold filagree designs at the base, in the kitchen next to the other used glasses, which were plain and looked nothing like this one.

The next day, Mork asked the kitchen manager what type of champagne glass was used at Pierpont. The manager showed him champagne glasses that looked nothing like the glass Mork had drunk from the night before. Plus, the glass seemed to have disappeared.

"The kitchen guy I talked to said he'd never seen a glass like that before, and he had been working there for like, 11 years," Mork said. "I said, Where is it?' Nobody could find it."

Another incident occurred during Mork's first year at the Pierpont. One morning around 3:30, a guest called to complain about a faulty heater. Mork went to fix it, locking the door to the main building behind him.

When he returned around 4:30 a.m., he realized he had forgotten to give another guest a requested 4 a.m. wake-up call. "So I called the guest and apologized and said, I'm really sorry for the late wake-up call,' and she said, Oh, don't worry. A woman called us from the front desk and woke us up at 4.'"

A shocked Mork asked if the woman had left a name. "And she said, No, she was just an elderly woman. She was very nice,'" Mork said.

If he's sharing his night shift with ghosts, "at least it's comforting to know they've got my back," he said.

Nobody's quite sure of the identity of the elderly hostess ghost. Thompson believes it could be Gleichmann. Gleichmann, who lived to see her 100th birthday, put so much love and energy into the place that it makes sense she would want to return regularly.

Houck said such claims are absurd. "I find it somewhat presumptuous, and I find it somewhat disrespectful to the heritage of our family," said Houck, whose wife, Alisa Houck, is Gleichmann's youngest granddaughter.

"I find it somewhat disrespectful to the history of the Pierpont Inn."

Its history began on Sept. 6, 1910, when the inn was opened by Ojai socialite Josephine Pierpont-Ginn, who hoped to attract tourists motoring up the coast in the newly invented automobile. The Craftsman-style inn was designed by Los Angeles architect Sumner P. Hunt.

"The founding of the inn marked the beginning of the eastward development of Ventura," Thompson said.

The inn was sold in 1915, then purchased by Ventura residents Mattie and Gus Gleichmann in 1928 for $80,000.

Gus died in a car accident in 1938, leaving Mattie and their son, Ted, to manage the inn. When a brain tumor claimed Ted's life in 1975 at the age of 52, Mattie was left to manage the inn alone.

Houck said Gleichmann managed it with flair. She was known for growing flowers on the property and fashioning them into creative arrangements for the inn.

"She brought flowers there literally every single day for the entryway," Houck said. "They were never store bought."

The scent of funeral flowers

Thompson believes that might provide a clue to what Bruce Barrios and his friend Patrick Ward said they experienced about five years ago. The two were sitting at the bar when Barrios detected what looked like ribbons of vapor in one corner against the wall, he said.

"It was like fog or steam — some kind of haze," Barrios said.

The buddies nervously laughed it off, then went out to Barrios' van. When they climbed in, both smelled a strong fragrance inside the van, but not outside.

"I smelled strong, strong lavender," Ward said. "I have allergies, so I know."

Pierpont spokeswoman Bean-White said folklore attributes the smell to Darling's perfume, or funeral flowers. Both guests and employees have reported the strong scent of perfume in various rooms throughout the inn, Thompson said.

What looks like mourning garb suggests the Jan. 11, 1911, picture of a 16-year-old Darling captured her on the day of a solemn event, perhaps a funeral. Darling, who grew up in Ventura, attended college and married a man named H.A. Hastings Jr., was a good friend of Mattie Gleichmann.

"We feel she may not want to leave because of the emotional connection she may have had with the person for whom the serious occasion was held at the Pierpont," Bean-White said of Darling.

A curly-haired apparition

Houck, who said he's a spiritual person, doesn't think that the incident is tied to Mattie.

"I think she's moved on," Houck said. "I don't think she needs to come back."

Phil Goossens, who owns Pemko Manufacturing Co. in Memphis, Tenn., stays at the Pierpont whenever he visits the Ventura Pemko branch. He said he's grown accustomed to waking up in the middle of the night to see apparitions in his room.

"There is one young girl, probably somewhere between 8 and 10, with curly locks, either red or brown hair," he said. "She had the covers pulled off me one time."

They may not agree on the presence of ghosts at the inn, but Thompson and Houck both love the inn, which is a designated Historic Hotel of America and Ventura County Landmark No. 80.

Both hope the new owner gives it special attention.

"This place needs an on-site personality," Houck said.

"It has the energy of people from the past," Thompson said, "almost a will of its own to survive."