Are There Ghosts at The Riverside?........Probably

Or so the infamous ‘FAQ’ sign in the Riverside answers to that oft-asked question. Before I get into the ghosts, I’ll take this opportunity to tell the story of the ‘FAQ’ sign in the lobby. The first time I walked into the Riverside hotel, in June of 1993, the first thing that struck me was a 2’x4’, heavily scripted wooden sign hanging on the north wall of the lobby. (OK, that’s a bit of a lie. The first thing I noticed was the Little Shop of Horrors plant collection that threatened to eat you as you walked into the lobby. Then I noticed this creepy little man sitting in a rocking chair. Then I said to myself, “My, how quaint, how charming. Where is my gun, because I’m going to shoot my friend who recommended this place.”)

Back to the sign.

It grabs your eye as you walk in the door, and it answers most of the questions that people would want to ask about the hotel, the town, the river, the hot springs, etc. My guess is that the unknown owner (someone prior to Abe) who put the sign up had gotten sick and tired of answering the same questions over and over and over and over and over; on a larger plane, I’d also guess that he got sick of talking to and dealing with people in general.
Some of the questions/answers:
When was the Riverside built?………………………….1903
What is the elevation?…………………………………...7763 ft.
How cold does it get in the winter?......-30F, sometimes colder
How far is Boulder?..............Not far enough

And so it goes. The sign is written in a colloquial, folksy sort of way; i.e. the answers are given in the form that a friendly, old-timey, homey hotel owner might give them. I immediately loved the sign, and it was one of the little things that made me love The Riverside. Knowing this, you can imagine how I felt when I walked into the hotel on the day we were to close the sale, after pulling a 12’ loaded U-Haul trailer across I-70 in a snow storm, exhausted, frightened to death at what we were undertaking, and the first thing I noticed was the empty space on the wall where the sign used to be. Abe was sitting in a chair, and I didn’t say “Hello Abe”, I said “Abe, where the hell is the sign???” I was, to put it mildly, pissed. Abe kind of cleared his throat, and nervously said “I, uh, er, I gave it to a friend in California.” An obvious lie, but the best thing he could come up with at the time. It was a portent of other surprises to come, much bigger and much more costly surprises, relating to shady things Abe did and didn’t do in his transfer of ownership of The Riverside. I’ve said it earlier – we bury our dead, we dry our tears and we move on.

Two wonderful things came from this missing sign thing. My sister-in-law found a picture of the sign on an old web site, and re-created the thing, right down to the original font. I cried when she gave it to us as a housewarming gift; a labor of love I’ve not seen equaled. We also found out that in fact the original sign wasn’t given by Abe to a friend in California, (surprise, surprise) but sold to a man in Boulder. If there’s any human being on earth that should have this sign, (other than we, who paid for it) it is the man that now has it, and paid for it as well. I am at peace with this issue.

My sister-in-law took some literary license when she recreated the sign; she updated it, and added a few new FAQ’s. In particular, one of the most newly often-asked questions being “Are there ghosts at The Riverside?” and the answer on the sign being….. “Probably.”

This is a natural question for people to ask as The Riverside has all of the qualifications for a place that might have ghosts, assuming of course that there are such things. It’s old, it can be a little creepy, (especially at night, upstairs, when you’re walking down the halls alone), and it’s had numerous inhabitants over the years; one might take the leap that odds are one of the previous owners might have actually assumed room temperature in the hotel.

After we purchased the hotel, one of the locals told me of a murder that happened in the bar. She was a little scary herself as she told the gruesome tale, saying “he was standing right here, and a man came up behind him, grabbed his hair and pulled his head back and slit his throat”, as she dramatically made the now-banned NFL throat-slashing gesture.

"My, how lovely." I thought.

I asked Grandpa (my neighbor who lives across the street, and was detailed in an earlier blog) what he knew about this, and he grumbled “that wasn’t what happened”. His story is as follows: In the early 70’s when they were building the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70, (located about 45 miles south of Hot Sulphur Springs) every hotel for miles around was full with workers who were involved in the tunnels’ construction. Grandpa said that this made for some wild nights in all of the local towns and bars, as these itinerant roughnecks, with wads of money to spend on the weekends, had nothing to do on a Saturday night but get drunk and raise hell.
Times haven't changed much. The locals pretty much get drunk and raise hell every night in Hot Sulphur Springs.

One of the workers, who was staying at The Riverside, got a little too friendly with the spouse of a local, and according to Grandpa, the local went into the hotel late at night, found and entered the offending parties room, and stabbed the man to death. Grandpa said, “he was dead in there for days, before the smell got bad enough that they finally found him.”

Gee Grandpa, thanks for clearing that up for me!

This may disappoint some of you, but it thrilled me when I found out that both of these tales were taller than Mt. Bross; untrue, bogus, BS, hokum, didn’t happen. In fact, there is no record (that I can find) of anyone ever being murdered, or even dying, in The Riverside. What did happen, and what I’m sure was the seed for these grisly recollections, involved several of these tunnel workers who did get into an altercation in the hotel bar, took it out to the street, and one stabbed the other in front of the hotel.

Ghost stories be gone, and on to reality...

Two years ago, prior to our purchase of The Riverside, I would have steadfastly said “I do not believe in ghosts!” I can’t say that now, at least not with the conviction that I used to have on the matter. I have had four instances of things happening- two apparitions I’ve seen and two physical occurrences I've felt. No matter how hard I try to convince myself that what I saw, or what physically happened, simply wasn’t so, I can come up with no other logical explanation for what occurred.

Throw the arrival of Lucy,the world’s coolest pooch, into the picture and her consistently peculiar behavior in certain parts of the hotel, and I’m really starting to change my tune regarding the existence of other-worldly phenomena.

To be continued…….