3. How Much is That Ghost in the Window?

Get ready for a little Shining vibe, more ghostly drama and the Great Bambino!  The spirits in the ballroom of the Lord Baltimore Hotel may not like us that much.  I mean, they may not like anyone.  That won't keep us away.   We're about to get a big shock just standing on the sidewalk across from the hotel.

Check out videos and photos from our trips to haunted hotels and our Scary Stories!
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Transcript

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What do you do when you’ve made a ghost or two kind of mad at you?  

at least we have a little experience with the supernatural.    

Welcome to the Low Budget Ghost Squad podcast – thanks for listening.

I’m Natalie

I’m Alison

And I’m Ethan.

Nat: we are at the lord Baltimore hotel – where things are getting strange…yet again for us.

Alison:  but this is nothing new  – we go to haunted hotels – solve a mystery or two and then go eat

Ethan:  and you forgot to mention, meet a few ghosts.

Nat:  then we come back and put the story together for you. and that’s how the low budget ghost squad came to be.  We went to our first haunted hotel because of something alison and ethan saw on youtube, and then we solved some mysteries there.

Alison: and That was just season one.

Ethan: and here we are doing it again.

Alison:  the spirits in the ballroom aren’t really liking us. they’re blinking the lights when we go in.  they send messages like – get out and leave.  but it doesn’t seem to happen when others are in there.  they’re picky.

Ethan:  I personally don’t think we need to be going in there.  but I know we’ll have to go back in because someone doesn’t want to listen to ghosts.

Nat:  I assume you’re speaking about me.

Alison: and oh yeah – strange voices are coming from the mezzanine above the lobby.

Nat:  and we made a new friend.  She’s 102 and her name is clovis and her mom used to work here at the hotel. .But y’all…before we get into all that, I need to let you know  -  I saw the woman again in our room in the middle of the night.  remember that had happened the first night we were here and we talked about it in a previous episode. This time she was near the closet. And this time… no joke… you’re not going to believe me but I’m going to tell ya, I felt the bed shake. This really did happen.  Like somebody was hitting it several times. but Just for a second or two.

Brian: this is brian – the husband and father of the ghost squad members.  I am along for this trip - And for the record – I didn’t feel that shaking or anything – but I sleep through everything including a fire alarm in college.

Nat:  y’all something was going on in there.  but nobody else was seeing anything.

Ethan: or feeling it apparently.

Alison: we got in the elevator – these elevators have been known take you directly to the 19-th floor which is said to be the most haunted in the hotel. but no weirdness this time for us.  You know, they have a big sign in there about the history of the place and it reminds you of all the famous people who have stood in these elevators too. 

Nat:  the rev doctor martin luther king junior stayed here in 1965 – while he was in Baltimore for a meeting.  He actually gave a news conference from the hotel about launching a new voter drive.

Ethan: before that in 1958 – this was really big.  the lord Baltimore actually allowed african-americans to stay there when at the time most hotels would not. 

Nat:  baseball greats hank aaron, willie mays, frank robinson and others all checked in when they were in town for the all-star game that year.

Alison: amelia earhardt was honored there on March 4, 1930.  She told the newspaper during her stay that she saw a big future for women in that line of work, and she said that one day maybe she would try to fly alone across the Atlantic.  Which she did two years later.

Nat: an autographed program and menu from that dinner that was sold for 23-thousand dollars.

Ethan: then you had babe ruth check in too – 

Alison:  you know, he’s the sultan of swat, the titan of terror, the colossus of clout, he’s the king of crash, man… he’s the great bambino!

Ethan: that’s enough talking, it’s my turn to speak.  Anyway, if you’ve seen the movie the sandlot, you get that. Babe ruth was from Baltimore and came back to town for a charity baseball game – people recognized him in the hotel and would say – oh there’s the babe.

Nat: speaking of baseball – the Baltimore orioles had a huge dinner there in 1979 when they were in the world series against the Pittsburgh pirates. The pirates won by the way.  Now, from what I read in the newspaper article about the dinner – it said unlimited free drinks.  I bet that was a good time.

Alison:  that baseball dinner appeared to be in the calvert ballroom all those years ago.  

Nat: and it’s in that ballroom that we keep seeing the lights flicker.

Nat:  we heard this great story about what was seen in there one night – ethan, do you want to tell it – 

Ethan: one night, somebody saw three people.  it was late and dark inside so she went to get her boss to say – hey, there are people in there… should they be?

Alison: so that boss or whoever she was went in…saw the people – you see, the moonlight was coming through the three big windows in the middle of the ballroom.  There was a man in front of the far left, a woman in the front of the middle one, and then another man on the far right.

Nat: and they were all just looking up – not saying anything. And one of the guys was wearing like a dark blue sports jacket with metallic buttons that caught the moonlight.  And he had an ascot around his neck.

Alison:  now if you don’t know what an ascot is.. think fred jones from Scooby doo.  That orange thing he wears around his neck all the time.

Ethan: So this woman who was standing there staring at these three people asked them if they wanted the lights on and she turned them on….and they vanished.

Alison: just totally disappeared – like a legit Scooby doo episode.

MUSIC

Alison: on the wall of the ballroom are these murals that show the history of the city of Baltimore.

Ethan:  a husband and wife painting team came in here in 1944 and actually did it.

Nat:  one is a view of Baltimore in 1752

Alison: another shows a place called the Kaminsky inn – and supposedly George Washington stopped by…

Nat:  plus, you can see the paintings of the battle monument that marks the war of 1812 and the Washington monument – did you know that there was one in Baltimore.  Yes there is.

MUSIC

Nat:  we’ve mentioned the director of sales who showed us, the low budget ghost squad, around the hotel and told us about the history.  And I noticed when we were in the ballroom and he was talking about the murals…the lights weren’t flickering.  

Alison:  but since we had already had some odd things happen in there we asked him about the room. and he said that all those paranormal investigators that had come in said the room is fu ll of negative energy.

Nat: and we were about to see that negative energy first hand.

Nat: so outside the ballroom there are not only photos of all the lord baltimores ever born that we’ve told you about… but also old party pictures that remind me of the shining.  You know at the end of the movie when you see jack front and center of the old black and white picture…well, those are all over the wall showing fabulous dinners and parties like the university of Maryland nurses alumni association, the electrical workers union, the florists club of Baltimore, and even eastern high school alumni association.  They all had their parties there.

Alison: many of the pictures are from 1929.  From before the stock market crashed. That includes the one that kept mysteriously falling off the wall.

MUSIC

Ethan:  we would try to keep rehanging it before anyone saw – and we got in trouble, but it wouldn’t stay up there.

Nat:  it was one of the photos I mentioned – the university of Maryland nurses’ alumni association dinner.  That was May 22 to be exact. 1929.

Alison: the app was going crazy again as we tried to rehang that picture.

Nats

Ethan:  this time we got some names on the app – hannah and Jonathan.

Nat: remember this ghost app transcribes what a spirit may be trying to say.  But after those names came through, the picture stayed on the wall.

Alison:  when we went downstairs we saw that hotel worker who had told us about ghosts in the guest rooms earlier.  His name is Christopher and He was by the front desk talking to other employees. 

ethan:  so we decided to ask him – do you know of any of the ghost stories here that have the names hannah and Jonathan linked to them?

Alison:  I could tell by face – he knew who we were talking about.

Nat:  he said – are you sure that app said Jonathan and hannah?  

Alison: I said – yeah and it also said eggs and apple so it may not really mean anything.  But we all knew it did…..

Nat:  he said – I know of a hannah and Jonathan but they’ve been dead for like 90 years or something like that.

Alison: if they were alive they wouldn’t be ghosts though

Ethan:  we asked – well, who were they?

Nat: he looked around…trying to almost like to make sure no one was hearing. and led us over to the couches in the middle of the lobby where we had met our friend clovis earlier.

Alison:  he said – he had a great-great..i don’t know how many greats, great something uncle named Jonathan who used to work here and died right in front of the hotel. 

Ethan:  then he said hannah was that guy’s girlfriend. 

Nat:  but there was more to it.  He said he was always told that hannah was married to some wealthy guy named Robert Fielding– but then, Robert died suddenly.  Here in the hotel.

Alison: but Jonathan and hannah both were killed in front of the lord Baltimore hotel back in 1929 – in some kind of trolley accident.

Ethan:  he then told us – I think I have something you may find interesting.  I’ll bring it to you tomorrow.

MUSIC

Alison: and here came clovis in one of those three-wheeled motorized scooters.  She wanted to know how our visit had been and if we had any more run-ins with some ghosts.  Of course mom said yes.

Nat:  well, I mean I did.  I couldn’t lie about it.  but y’all did you notice how interested she was in what Christopher had been telling us? and then we showed her our app and her granddaughter at first thought – oh you know she’s not going to understand it.  but let me tell you something.  That woman knew exactly what this was.  Because see I think clovis is a believer in ghotsts.

Alison: and we were reading the words we had received so far here at the hotel…because it keeps a list… and when ethan said “hannah and  Jonathan.”  That woman’s face went pale.

Nat:  her granddaughter immediately started asking – are you ok? And she was checking her pulse and things like that.  It was really dramatic.

Nat:  thankfully she was ok and she was kind of irritated with all of us for making quote such a fuss about her.  but she immediately began telling us that she knew all about hannah and Jonathan and their love triangle.   She said they had met at one of the big dinners there.  and clovis had seen it happen.

Alison:  she said she used to run around the hotel when her mom was at work in the evening.  Her mom was at her station on her floor, but clovis would sneak out and go exploring.  Sometimes she would hide in the corner of the ballroom and watch everybody in their beautiful dresses at their fancy dinners.

Nat:  she didn’t remember when it was because remember sometimes her memory wasn’t quite what it used to be.  but she remembered people being upset because Jonathan, a hotel worker who had been serving the food, was seen dancing with this very well-to-do wife of a one of the rich guys in town.  She had been at that dinner by herself you see.

Ethan: so this was after the dinner when people were starting to clean up.  she didn’t want to go, so she paid the band to keep playing music.  When people from the hotel would tell Jonathan to go back to his job and she would threaten to get them fired..   

Nat:  clovis said they were dancing away in one of the side parlors, you know the side area and not the main area because that’s where all the tables were.  

Alison: are these the side parlors where everything strange has been happening?

MUSIC

Alison: that night we went to the little Italy district for dinner and we were walking…

Ethan: and walking…

Nat:  you guys, it wasn’t that far, ok.

Alison:  well, when we came up on the hotel we were facing the original front of it.  And we were across the street and wanted to take pictures at night.  

Nat:  yeah, it’s a beautiful old building and it’s all lit up.  you can see pictures on our social media.

Ethan: but there was a shadow figure in the window.

Alison: and at first I’m thinking – it’s just somebody in their room and that’s funny that you could see someone like that from the street.

nat:  but we looked at it and I said – y’all that’s our room.  that shadow figure was in our room.  

Coming up on the low budget ghost squad:

We’re about to start searching for hidden treasure And we’re going to need some cat balls in this place…  (record scratch)

Ali: don’t start that again.