I also believe in family curses. First my father and then my older
brother died in the Lyceum. My father was a parapsychologist who went
to the hotel to investigate rumors of strange happenings and tales of
ghostly sightings. He stayed overnight in Room 6 and was found dead the
next morning.
My brother was a psychic, and years later he arranged a seance in the
hotel to make contact with our father. The seance was unproductive, and
my brother decided to stay the night in Room 6. He too was found dead
the next morning.
Neither death was solved. There were no clues or suspects. An
enterprising young reporter for the St. Louis Post Dispatch discovered
that both men were related, and theorized both were frightened to death
by the ghosts. His article added to the rumors about the hotel. So
much for objective reporting.
That reporter was almost right. However, it wasn't a ghost that
killed my brother and father. It was the diabolical hotel itself. How
do I know? I catch ghosts for a living. I'm a ghost hunter. My name
is Patrick Kelly and I intend to destroy the Hotel Lyceum.
***
It was Saturday night, and I snuck in around ten-thirty when the
attention of the audience and actors was diverted by participating in
the mystery. I hid in one of the upstairs rooms and waited until
everyone left.
Around one-thirty the dinner and cleanup were over, and I heard the
bartender lockup and leave. I emerged from my hiding place and began to
explore. Room 6 was the last room on the second floor near the
backstairs exit. It was the only locked room, so I had to break open
its old wooden door. Using my pen light, I peered inside. The sparsely
furnished room contained a dusty old bedspring, a stained mattress, a
small dresser with a cracked mirror, and blank walls with pealing
wallpaper. The room was narrow, with a high ceiling from which a naked
bulb hung. It had a bare wooden floor. An eerie glow illuminated the
room from the solitary street light outside.
The room smelled musty, and disturbed dust swirled in the beam of my
light. Its atmosphere was made more sinister by cobwebs draped like
bunting in the corners with gray, dusty strands stretching to the thin
curtains. Longer, tangled, dingy webs were between the dresser and the
mirror. As I walked around, I felt a dark presence. This had been a
room that strangled sobs, smothered hopes, and embraced death. This was
a place where past events hung in the air and replayed themselves over
and over.
I had the sensation of being watched. The skin on the back of my
neck tightened and goose bumps raised on my arms. There was
indescribable negative energy filling the room. I'd only experienced
this feeling once before. That was when I was taking a tour of a New
Orleans haunted house where slaves were tortured by their insane
mistress.
DO YOU BELIEVE that a place can be evil? I do. I believe that
certain buildings possess an inherent malevolence from the time they are
built. Evil permeates them like a fog, silent and cold, waiting for the
right moment to spring upon an unsuspecting victim. A godforsaken
spirit that seeps through every flaw and crack. A place where the
sights, sounds, and smells of the past are impregnated in the walls.
The Hotel Lyceum in south central St. Louis is such a place.
The Hotel Lyceum's owners' traded on its haunted allure by staging
mystery dinners in the creepy ambiance of its dining room. From a tour,
I discovered that the owners' restoration efforts covered just the first
floor at this time, and not the upstairs guest rooms.
