Gadsden Hotel in Douglas has ghostly guests

Robin Brekhus used to amuse herself by joking with the ghosts of the Gadsden Hotel when she worked in the basement. She was down there a lot after moving to the border town to run the old hotel. She would jokingly call out to the ghosts, asking if there was any buried gold, but she didn't believe the legends of apparitions and unexplained noises in the old hotel. That changed on Friday, March 13, 1992, a little after 4 p.m. The hotel lost its power, and the lights went out, the clocks stopped, the elevator froze. The staff needed candles, so Brekhus picked up a flashlight and headed for the basement to retrieve some. She started getting creepy vibes almost as soon as she got down there. "I got the feeling that someone was watching me," she said recently, standing in one of the hotel's basement corridors. "The hair on my arms stood up. The hair on my neck stood up." Brekhus recalled how she pointed her light down the hall. Nothing there. She grabbed candles from one of the rooms and walked back into the hall. She shined the light toward the other end of the hall, the end with no entry or exit. Someone was standing there, calmly watching her, she said. Brekhus ran for the stairs. "He looked like a cowboy," Brekhus said. "It looked like he had a long duster coat and a cowboy hat. I know I saw somebody. It's like he was waiting for me to acknowledge that I saw him. Then he just kind of turned and moved down the hall. It made a believer out of me."...more