We all held hands and asked for a protective circle of faith from God, and each person said a prayer to himself for assistance in case this “thing” should come out. I had real reservations, and I said to the woman, “This could be frightening. It may be that I am exposing these people to something dangerous.”
“They are here of their own free will,” she said, and she began to talk to the darkness all around us. Beside her was a candle that she had blown out but that the apparition kept lighting. We had divided up some paper into several pieces, and we each had a pen.
“We know you are here, but who are you?” I heard her say.
Nothing happened, and all of us just rolled our eyes around, trying to see each other’s face in the dark. I really was afraid, I must admit.
“Come on. You are disturbing Millie Jones, and I want to know who you are. You have a problem, and we can help you.” There was no answer.
My heart began to thump so hard that it was all I could think about. Then came a startling noise. The medium had struck her hand sharply on the tabletop. I started to cry out and said, “I really don’t want to do this.” But I heard the harsh, almost angry voice of the medium speak to me.
“Hold on to your pen!”
My arm hurt between my elbow and hand and got very, very hot as the pen wrote. It was as if a strong but invisible hand were guiding my own. The words formed on the paper said “Mary Phelps.” I read it and heard my own voice saying, “It fits myself,” and the medium said, “All right, Mary Phelps, you have a problem. Now, how can we help you?” My hand began to move across the paper. I had to use my left hand to spread the pages out in order to hold the words.
Mary Phelps wrote that she lost a baby in a room fire in 1884. Other questions were asked, but no one got to write as I did. Someone asked what was the baby’s name. The medium wrote “Baby Jon.”
You just held your pen, though you did not have to hold on tightly. It just wrote, and when Mary Phelps was through talking through you, your arm relaxed. I tried to trick her; I asked what was the room number. They have been changed often, and sometimes on New Year’s Eve one of the guests, as a prank, will change a room number.
I knew that the hotel had not burned until almost ten years later, in 1893, and I was puzzled. My hand began going back and forth and back and forth, and I thought it was just relaxing from having been used as an instrument. Around the whole table nothing was happening, except that my arm would not stop moving back and forth, until the medium said, “You must be more specific, Mary Phelps. Which room?”
At this question, the pen shot off the page in a sharp line, and then my arm went limp and dropped. I said, “I just can’t imagine what this could be.” Then I realized there were no room numbers then. In a moment my arm moved once more, and my hand, traveling across the page independent of my own will, wrote, “Go where the wall is bent.”
Two days later a member of our bartending staff said, “Why, I know where the wall is bent. It’s on the second floor, right outside Number 9.” We assumed that this must have been the room in which the baby boy, Jon, died and that it was not a hotel fire: it was a room fire. That’s why it was 1884 rather than 1893.
A year later, in October, I was cooking dinner. Eight people came in when we were almost ready to close. After they were served the waitress came back to the kitchen and said, “You have some fans in there who would like to meet the chef!” I went in and curtsied, and they applauded. A young lady in the party was especially enthusiastic.
“I just love this hotel. I don’t know why we’ve never been here before, for we live in Calaveras County.”
“That really isn’t far from here. I hope you’ll come again.”
“Your waitress tells me you have ghosts?” came the unexpected reply.
“Yes, it seems to be a lady named Mary Phelps.” When they heard that, the group went, “Oooh!” A Mexican gentleman among them turned to the young lady I had been talking with and said, “I’m going into the bar to talk with your husband. I don’t want to hear this.”
The face of the girl turned very white. “My maiden name was Mary Phelps. My grandmother and great-grandmother were named Mary Phelps, and at one time they lived in this old hotel!” You can be sure that I was as shocked as she.
The next day she came back, bringing her grandmother, who held in her hand a small, black, leather-covered diary written in Gaelic. She translated as she read from one of the pages written by a Mary Phelps in 1884. The words were, “I have recently lost my little son, Ian, in a hotel-room fire.” In Gaelic, Ian means Jon. The entire family came back and burned a candle in the dining room for the child.
We heard no more from the spirit of Mary Phelps except on October 26, 1980, just after we did a television show for That’s Incredible. At that time Mary Phelps was seen by a couple from Sacramento who,
