family portraits, old books, and artifacts. His heart was always full of memories. If his kindness and hospitality were any indication, the hotel must have been a warm and friendly place.
Although Bob was a young boy at the time his parents owned the hotel, he still remembered the staff saying “it was magic.” What they were referring to, of course, was a feeling that someone was there watching them work in the hotel. He confirmed that there was unexplained activity in the hotel in the 1930s and 1940s.
After his parents sold the hotel, it changed hands a few times and was variously known as Bala Bay, The Cranberry House, and the Bala Bay Inn. The successive owners felt no obligation to honour the original agreement between E.B. Sutton and Thomas Burgess. Once the hotel was sold and liquor was served, hauntings became a regular occurrence.
Tiffany and Ken Bol operated the hotel as the Bala Bay Inn from the 1990s to 2004. In the summer, rooms were available for guests and in winter only the restaurant was open. In all seasons they offered the same hospitality that was there with the Sutton family.
In 1996 I entered the front doors of the 32-room hotel. I could sense the history of the building. The first thing to catch my eye was the elaborate staircase leading from the main lobby to the second floor; a set of doors to the left led to a lounge with a central stone fireplace. Here, the Suttons entertained guests and held festive dances on Saturday nights. At the back of the hotel was the original dining room, where E.B. Sutton lay in state. On the right was the doorway to the bar where once there were rooms for rent. The back section of this bar area had been family quarters for the Suttons.
Tiffany and the staff openly shared their personal experiences with me. They agreed that “stuff” happens, but theories abound concerning numbers and identities of the spirits. Is it Thomas Burgess, E.B. Sutton, old hotel guests, someone simply in love with Bala?
Tiffany was a skeptic in the beginning, “I didn’t believe in that at all. A month ago I arrived at work with my 18-month-old son, Shayne. My office is located on the second floor of the building at the top of the stairs. When I reached my office door I suddenly realized that I had left my keys downstairs. I remember trying the door, just in case. Sure enough, it was locked. I left Shayne by the office door and rushed downstairs to get the keys. When I returned, to my amazement, the door was open and Shayne was in the office in the toy box. Who opened the door and took him into the office and set him in the box? I shuddered in disbelief. Was it a ghost?”
Swastika hotel, early 1920s.
Near the entranceway to the Sutton’s former quarters people often see something. Tiffany clarified this, “People see shadows in one particular spot in the kitchen. You can actually see the form of a person.”
“Activity” in the building can be felt or heard in several different areas, including a number of hotel rooms. In room 319, the room in which E.B. Sutton died, the housekeeping staff always have problems. The television can be heard when no one is occupying the suite. The staff turn the television off, but in a few minutes it’s back on again. The room is often disturbed by some unseen hand. Tiffany was working one afternoon in the room when she heard the rattle of a bag in the hallway. “I thought it was another worker so I yelled, ‘Hello,’ but no one answered.” It’s not uncommon for the staff to clean the room and return later to find their work undone. The curtain gets pulled halfway across the rod. Sometimes when the door is closed you can hear the curtain moving back and forth.
Who lives in this room? As I walked around the room I tried to sense some presence but was unable to detect anything. The room seemed vacant and like any other.
This was not the case when an unsuspecting family rented room 312. They were the only guests on the third floor. All but the father went out. He was alone in the room when he decided to have a cigarette on the fire escape right next door. On the fire escape he heard a rumble coming from the room and then the door to room 312 began to rattle. As soon as he put his hand on the doorknob, it stopped. He returned to his cigarette. Again the rumble and the doorknob began to rattle. This time he fled down the fire escape to the ground floor.
During the winter of 1993–94, when air conditioning units were being removed from rooms, a staff member entered room 312. He found the television set on. He tried to turn if off but the switch would not work. He leaned over to unplug it and to his dismay — it was not plugged in!
The second floor has been the scene of unexplained activity as well. Tiffany said, “One day a staff member was showing a room to some prospective lodgers. The hotel employee put the master key in the door lock, turned the key, but there was a force pushing on the door from inside the room. Flustered and understandably embarrassed, she went to the front desk for help. When I reached the room, I had the same experience. The door refused to budge. We found another room to suit the customers’ needs.” Presumably, an uninhabited room.
Room 208 is notable for sounds of people walking about the room — always when it is officially empty. Staff and visitors have also heard footsteps of people walking up and down the hall on the second floor, perhaps a man and a woman.
In the mid-1980s a group decided to get to the bottom of all these so-called hauntings at the Bala Inn. Their intent was to contact the spirits, identify them, and assist them to leave. One can never anticipate events when exploring the spirit world. One should expect the unexpected. Just so this night.
They gathered around the table in the dining room — the room where E.B. Sutton had been laid in state; candles were lit casting shadows around the room. They waited for a sign. And they got it!
The candles suddenly went out. They sat expectantly there in the darkness. Then the doors in the hotel began to open and shut very loudly. The noise would have been incredible with 32 doors opening and slamming shut. The group fled out the front doors, no more enlightened than before.
Kris Wydra is an amiable man who worked at the hotel on and off from 1992–1996. He handled a number of different jobs and in 1996 he was the cook. Kris definitely had some connection to the spirits in the hotel. Not a day had gone by that he hadn’t experienced some form of unexplained activity. He believed that once you had worked in the hotel, it was a struggle to leave. He felt there were many spirits there who had an enormous effect on him, but he added, “I love this building. Every day is an adventure. Sometimes when I’m sitting at a table out in the bar area, I feel a hand on my shoulder. Somehow, I sense that the spirit is attempting to comfort me.”
In the mid-90s Kris had been responsible for the security of the building. It was not uncommon for him to spend the night in the hotel alone. Many times, in the late evening, he would hear footsteps up and down the hallways. He never saw a full figure but, what he did see, was the dark outline of a person and a glow around the outline.
He was strongly attached to the building and he felt that the energy in the hotel drew him in. He also felt that the spirits in the hotel wanted to communicate with someone. “I was doing my prep work one morning when four or five times in the span of 20 minutes, someone would open the door and call my name. After the fifth call, I left the kitchen, went into the restaurant area and told the waitress to stop bothering me,” Kris said.
She had not called his name at all!
Half an hour later, she arrived at the kitchen door and told him to stop calling her name. There was no explanation. They were the only two people in the hotel at the time. Later that same day the phone rang. Kris picked up the phone and heard someone breathing on line three — just a prank call. Then he realized that line three had never been connected! For the rest of the day every little thing that could go wrong did go wrong.
Each time Kris closed up the kitchen for the day something would happen to him. He felt “they” did not want him to leave at the end of the day. “One summer I lived in the front of the building on the third floor. Every night I closed the hotel and then made a round to check that all the lights were off. Shortly thereafter I would discover rooms still lit. Sometimes a repeat round would bring the same results. I was the only living person in the building,” said Kris.
During