High on Sunset Mountain above Asheville, North Carolina, the Grove Park Inn opened in 1913, built from granite boulders hauled down the slope by mules and ropes, some weighing five tons. Its founder’s son-in-law, Fred Seely, ran it like a sanctuary: no cars at night, no running water late, quiet in the halls. Into that hush drifts a guest who never checked out.
They call her the Pink Lady. Legend says a young woman, perhaps in a pink gown, fell to her death in the Palm Court, the open atrium at the heart of the old hotel, sometime around the 1920s. She may have been murdered. She may have taken her own life. She may never have existed. No record confirms her. But staff and guests have described her for half a century: a pink mist in the early morning or late at night, a cold chill in Room 545. A bellman reported a woman in one photograph who was gone from the next. Two employees said a young woman in a pink party dress came through the back door at 4 a.m. on New Year’s Eve and vanished. Children have said a young woman in pink comforted them when they were sick.
Today the Omni Grove Park Inn is open to all, its Great Hall still warmed by fireplaces built for 12-foot logs. Some guests ask for Room 545. Others ask to be as far from it as possible. Come in winter, when the halls are quiet, and decide which guest you are.
Story Source: www.omnihotels.com
Address: 290 Macon Avenue, Asheville, NC 28804
Accessibility Rating: Open to All — Freely accessible to the public with no advance requirement. Includes hotels, restaurants, bars, and public historic sites where visitors may walk in without prior booking.
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What Others Have Experienced
A TV station’s lifestyle editor spent the night in Room 545 with a photographer, arriving already uneasy about the room’s reputation. The night stayed mostly quiet, but while her colleague showered, she watched a makeup bag drop from the bathroom counter, and her colleague described it as being flipped over rather than sliding off.
— from WRAL
A sportswriter learned only after checking in late that he had been given Room 545, and the news kept him awake for hours with the TV on. At one point in bed he felt as though someone were pressed against his back, though he admitted his nerves might have invented it, and he left describing the presence as unobtrusive.
— from On3
