The Vanishing Woman of the Marines Memorial Hotel | Ep. 69

Welcome to another week of Believing the Bizarre.

It’s listener submission time, and we are heading to San Francisco, California. This paranormal encounter is brought to us by John, who had a creepy experience – along with his sister, Mary – at the Marine Memorial Hotel.

From unexplainable apparitions to shadow figures in the dark, there is a ton to tackle in this listener submission.

But, is it true? Listen now!

What’s up Bizarros? This week we dive into a listener’s story of a paranormal event on his vacation.

John shares with us a paranormal story he and his sister, Mary, experienced on vacation. John and his sister seem to be sensitive to the other side, and he gives us two stories that happened on the same trip.

They take place at the same location, at almost the same point in the trip on their vacation in 2009. 

“I bounced around a lot growing up. But he was born in  Albuquerque. In 2008 my family moved to Monterey California because of my Dad’s job.  While we only lived there for a few years our parents enjoyed taking advantage of living so close to a big city on the coast like San Francisco.” John recounts.

The events of this story take place the 2nd time they had been to the Marine Memorial hotel. 

It is 12 stories tall and built-in 1926, originally it was called Western Woman’s Club. Then it was bought and reopened on November 10th, 1946 as the Marine Memorial Hotel. It opened on the anniversary of the Marine corps.

John says, “The hotel is quite fancy and maintains a lot of the grandeur that was designed during its construction.” 

Mary’s sighting comes first in this timeline. Noone saw what she did, she was alone in witnessing this phenomenon.

John and his family checked in and they started to go to their room in the late morning. Somewhere between the 6th and 9th floor.

They are just getting off the elevator and just start going down the hall.  Their room was of course located at the end of the hall.  As they are going down the hall they pass a small off-shoot hall to the right. 

Mary walked past and looked down the short hall. Mom and dad were focused on going forward and John was looking at his iPod. She was the only one that focused down the hall. She stopped in her tracks as the family kept going.  

“She was almost stuck where she was,” John recalled

Mary called out to her family.  Wide-eyed she gestured for them all to stop and come back to where she was. She pointed down the small hall. Not seeing anything the rest of the family asked what she was pointing to because they all saw nothing.  It was just an off-shoot that had two doors and a small window, there was nothing impressive there. 

Mary said as she looked down the hall she saw a woman looking down the hall through the other side of the window. She was wearing an old-fashioned green dress and a large hat that covered most of her face. Mary was hung up on the fact that she was not in a contemporary dress.  

John and his mom believed what Mary said. And they discussed it in the hall.

Being a talented drawer, Mary drew what she saw then took it down to the staff to see if this had been reported before. 

“We decided to go back to the same spot and I started to get freaked out because I realized that there was no fire exit by this window,” John said.

There was no physical way for her to be where she was. Even if this woman was inside and real she couldn’t have run into the doors that were there because there was a key card lock on both doors that they all would have heard that. 

“The only other way out would have been to walk right past the whole family. And that didn’t happen.” John said.

In the lobby, Mary was still finishing her sketch. While she did the receptionist started to make small talk with the two youths. 

Politely she asked if she could see the drawing, and as she turned the sketch the woman became silent. She then had to excuse herself from the room.  She came back a moment later accompanied by another woman, who asked to see the drawing. She told them that she always sees this same woman staring through windows or down halls, but she is always gone by the time you look again. 

“I believe that my sister saw this woman,” John says.

The next encounter is John’s own.

John discusses his last night at the hotels. “On the last night, we ate at the fancy restaurant on top of the hotel.  Toward the end of the meal, I left to explore the topmost floors of the building. The lights were off so I used my iPod for a flashlight.”

There were a lot of empty big rooms that John assumed were ballrooms and conference rooms. As he was going down the stairs when he was done and leaving John remembered the feeling of being watched. 

“I’ve only ever gotten that feeling a few times and this was perhaps the most ominous,” John remembered.

As John turned to look he saw in the corner an extremely black mass in the shape of a person. He felt tenacious and immediately ran up the stairs to the safety of his family and fine dining. At this point, he was done exploring.  

What is at the Marine Memorial Hotel? Are these former guests won’t leave?  What makes this a hotspot for John and his family?  

Would you spend a night in the hotel?