If you happen to be exploring the sights of California’s mountain range, Sierra Nevada, careful where you might stay.
Here’s a creepy story that happened to me while I was visiting family in California last year with my brother.
Photo credit: flickr/kuram
Updated 2/9/2020 – While visiting, we decided to stop at one of the quaint hotels at the foothills that feature a restaurant and an old style saloon.
The hotel was simply called the Sierra Nevada House.
I didn’t know much about it at that time, except for the fact that it looked like a nice place to stop for the night.
Or so it would seem.
After we had checked into the hotel my brother and I went to the bar for a couple of drinks.
Besides us there weren’t many people; a couple at a table and one lone man sitting at the bar.
We approached the bartender, who seemed friendly enough, and she served us a couple beers.
I noticed afterward that the bartender looked confused, and seemed to be eyeing for something around the bar.
I asked her what she was looking for and with a matter-of-fact tone she responded, “Isabella must have moved the salt again.”
I asked if Isabella was another employee, and the bartender replied that Isabella was the name of a spirit that frequently moved things around in the bar.
I’m not one to believe in supernatural forces.
Up until this point in my life I had never witnessed anything paranormal so I shrugged this off thinking the bartender was a bit nutty or superstitious.
After a couple of beers I eventually had to use the bathroom, and while walking back something happened that I can’t quite explain.
I paused in the hallway to look at myself in a long mirror, and in the corner of the mirror appeared a woman in a blue dress.
Photo credit: flickr/kevindooley
I quickly turned around to find that I was the only one standing in the hallway.
When I turned back to the mirror, a woman appeared again, only this time completely in black and white.
I quickly jumped away from the mirror and looked up and down the hall. No one there.
I tried to calm myself down and walked back to the bar where I told my brother what had happened.
The bartender chimed in that it was indeed Isabella who I saw in the mirror.
She said that the spirit was once a member of the kitchen staff who caught her lover in bed with another woman in the hotel.
Once confronted, she was pushed off the balcony by her lover, and fell to her death.
Ever since then she has been haunting the staff and customers; moving items or appearing in the long mirror I had seen.
After the bartender was out of earshot, I convinced my brother that we needed to find another hotel.
Even while I was sitting at the bar I had the feeling like someone was watching me.
He of course called me crazy, but we left nonetheless.
So the next time you’re vacationing in the California mountains, make sure you check the mirrors in the hotel you stay at; you could see something besides yourself staring back at you.
