A Surprising Visit from Iver the Ghost

My ghost story occurs in a historic hotel.

I had to pick my daughter up from college in Seattle at the end of her sophomore year; the day for that also happened to be my son’s 15th birthday. So, I decided it would be fun to stop at the Olympic Club Hotel in Centralia, WA, to celebrate his birthday and break up the travel time to Seattle.

 Historic photographs hang, and extensive original artwork chronicles the building’s intriguing history.  The hotel has a legendary history as a “gentleman’s resort,” filled with colorful tales of countless gamblers, raids, and dark secrets deeply buried.  The Olympic Club Hotel has been a point of power, intrigue, and contention since its opening in 1908.  The hotel is a stone’s throw away from the historic Centralia Depot and the railroad lines that transport freight and passengers daily and night. The train horns blow every 30 to 40 minutes, so the Olympic Club provides complimentary earplugs for all its light-sleeping guests. 

The hotel has 27 guest rooms featuring vintage furnishings and conveniently located shared bathrooms. There are no phones, televisions, or even closets. I booked a tiny room with a bunk bed on the second floor.  Our room had no windows but a vast skylight, a sink, a small table, and a chair. My son took the top bunk, and I took the bottom one.

 Our room on the second floor had a painting of Don “Iver” Iverson decorating it. A brief bio: Don first entered the Oly Club as a wide-eyed ten-year-old kid in the late 1940s. Years later, in the early 1970s, Iver took great photos in the Club showing the old regulars playing pool, standing by the stove, and gawking at the women.

The room was noisy!  The room was filled with people’s conversations while drinking and talking quite loudly, plus the regular train horns, and when that finally ended, the kitchen noises floated in as we were also directly above the kitchen; the staff was there cleaning up, banging pots and pans, rinsing dishes, and laughing until 4 am.  I put the earplugs in, but they didn’t work well, so I took them out.  I think I managed to get about an hour and a half’s worth of sleep, but then the light of dawn poured through the skylight.  I could hear my son softly snoring in his sleep above me.  As I looked at the portrait of “Iver” getting more prominent with the light, I thought, “I wonder if this place is haunted?”  Seconds after I thought this, I heard a loud voice in my ears, “BOO!” as his laughter dissipated into the wall behind “Iver’s” portrait. I didn’t get any sleep that night.