BROOKDALE
ISAIAH GUZMAN
Sentinel correspondent
If somebody started looting your house, you'd be upset too, right?
That's how paranormal investigator Erich Breger says the spirits at Brookdale Lodge, now renamed Brookdale Inn & Spa, have been feeling lately. Breger, the lead investigator with California Paranormal Investigations, took his team to the famed Santa Cruz Mountains resort late Thursday night to see if they could draw the local haunt's haunters out from the shadows and find out why all the ruckus.
Brookdale employees, particularly the cooks, have said they've seen increased paranormal activity since the previous owners sold the business and began taking with them old furniture, clippings and memorabilia.
"I think why it's happening is there is definitely a defiling that's going on here," said Breger, a Boulder Creek man with an intense stare, raspy voice, suit and black trench coat.
Brookdale Inn & Spa has long been thought to be haunted by the spirit of a little girl -- among others -- who drowned in the creek that runs through the dining area. During the 1940s and '50s gangsters made the lodge their home, and some legends say they buried bodies under the floor.
Opened in 1870, the lodge has been featured on "Ripley's Believe It or Not" and has hosted notables such as Marilyn Monroe and President Herbert Hoover.
In recent weeks, there have been reports of shadowy figures. Employees in the kitchen have reported hearing bangs. Chef Juan Diaz said he and a cook saw a pot do a full rotation while sitting on the burner about two months ago.
"It was all full of water so it was heavy," said Diaz in Spanish. "And we saw it spin around like somebody was moving it."
Then there was the incident this summer with the swinging doors to the kitchen, said Diaz.
"They opened like somebody was coming in but there was nobody there," he said. "Then they opened again like somebody was leaving."
Bartender Jonelle Badger, who has worked at Brookdale Inn & Spa for a year, says she's only heard stories of strange occurrences from her co-workers.
"I've never had an experience here that would lead me to believe there was a ghost," she said.
But Breger, the fleet manager at Ocean Honda when he's not tracking spirits, said his team thinks something was definitely going on Thursday night. His fellow investigators include Ed Hayes, Ronaldo Williams and Shelly Crowley, all of Brookdale and Boulder Creek. The four walked the different levels of the lodge Thursday night with equipment such as an EVP [Electronic Voice Phenomenon] monitor, EMF [Electro Magnetic Field] monitor, infrared cameras and a Ouija board. Breger said he and his team will review their evidence in more detail tonight.
"Based on what we've gathered so far there is definitely something going on there," he said.
Breger said he's never been scared of anything he's experienced in 15 years of pursuit. He also takes his team out to wrecking yards to look for spirits involved in fatal vehicle accidents.
"It's a totally untapped resource," he said.
As for skeptics of paranormal activity and investigation, Breger said he doesn't blame them.
"Until you experience something," he said, "it's one of those things where you have to show me the proof."
*This Article contributed by:
The FABULOUS NINA of WINTERSTEEL ~ Paranormal Extrvaganza
http://Wintersteel.com/,,
Contact Isaiah Guzman at isaiahguzman@hotmail.com.
SOURCE:
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/story.php?sid=65024&storySection=Top+Stories
WHO IS ROSE
- Rose
- Santa Cruz, California, United States
- I cannot remember life without GHOSTS/SPIRITS... My interest began in the paranormal when I was 2...that's when my mom told me I first started talking about GHOSTS/SPIRITS. I grew up like most of you, learning that one shouldn't talk about the things they can see, hear and feel. Now, after years of ignoring these abilities and senses, I can no longer deny it. The TIME has come...
Sunday, January 20, 2008
A HISTORY OF NEGLIGENCE HAUNTS BROOKDALE LODGE
Amid Renovations, A History of Negligence Haunts Brookdale Lodge
J.M. BROWN SENTINEL STAFF WRITER
Sentinel Staff Report
BROOKDALE -- The new owner of the fabled Brookdale Lodge -- where the "River Runs Through It" dining room is still a marvel -- says only time will judge whether he is capable of returning the fatigued $5.3 million landmark to its former splendor by remaking it into a destination spa.
Despite his investment in new roofing and what he described as sustainable decor for the lodge's 46 guest suites, Sanjiv Kakkar has not gotten off on the right foot with county officials and the former owners. During the past month, agents from the health and building departments say they have warned Kakkar about mounting garbage and construction debris, as well as his failure to secure the proper permits for reconstruction.
A Sentinel investigation also uncovered a similar history concerning a hotel Kakkar owns in San Francisco. The San Francisco environmental health agency has recorded at least a dozen uncollected garbage violations stemming from unpaid disposal bills at the Abigail Hotel since Kakkar bought the Tenderloin District property seven years ago. The building inspector has forwarded to code enforcement officials a March 2007 permit violation that hasn't been resolved.
Kakkar said he doesn't believe the ongoing problems with the Abigail should reflect on the work he is undertaking at the Brookdale, which he renamed the Brookdale Inn & Spa after buying it in October from a retired Bay Area police officer who had owned it for 17 years. Santa Cruz County officials said Kakkar has been responsive to the garbage and permitting problems they've documented in the past month, but said they are monitoring the property -- which includes a historically significant 117-year-old original lodge -- to make sure he follows through with his promises.
In the meantime, Kakkar and the former owners agree their one-time congenial relationship has soured amid accusations of unresolved debts and other conflicts related to the transfer of ownership, such as the garbage gaffe, as well as allegations that property belonging to the former owners was stolen by one of Kakkar's workers -- a charge Kakkar denies.
Jennifer Gilbert, daughter of the former owner, Bill Gilbert, said her family has long loved the lodge and feel as though they are "giving up a kid to a bad family."
Letting go of a legacy
The lodge is one of the most well known sites in Santa Cruz County -- certainly a landmark on Highway 9, where local folks still come for dinner and weekend brunch in the famed 1920s-era Brookdale Dining Room, where Clear Creek runs through the middle of the 200-seat eatery. The niece of a former owner drowned in the creek decades ago, and her spirit -- as well as those of dead loggers and gangsters that inhabited the lodge through the years -- are said to haunt the property, where paranormal investigators and psychics still visit to capture ghosts.
TO VIEW THE FULL ARTICLE:
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/story.php?storySection=Local&sid=65052
Friday, June 22, 2007
HISTORICAL MEMORIES HAUNT BROOKDALE LODGE
Historical Memories Haunt Brookdale
by Ross Eric Gibson
A girl in a formal dress runs across the lobby, then disappears into thin air. In an empty Mermaid Room, voices and music are softly heard. Hidden rooms and secret passages are mysterious vestiges of Brookdale Lodge's rich past.
Brookdale, two miles south of Boulder Creek, opened in 1900 when the Grover lumber mill was purchased by Judge H.J. Logan, originator of the loganberry. The extensive acreage became campgrounds and summer cabins, with the mill's log- lodge headquarters from 1870 converted into a hotel. A bridge over nearby Clear Creek led to the small dining hall, which overlooked Minnehaha Falls.
After Dr. F.K. Camp purchased the site, the river changed course in 1922, cutting a channel through the hotel grounds. Embankments were needed to keep the creek in its place, but Camp felt they shouldn't detract from the stream bed's natural appearance. The resulting terraces lined with granite boulders suggested a marvelous setting for dining, and Camp envisioned a dining hall straddling the fern-lined creek.
This vision was carried out by architect and landscaper Horace Cotton, whose design gained critical acclaim among architects for so deftly integrating a rustic structure into the very fabric of the forest. It was ranked with Yosemite's Ahwahnee Lodge as that rare example of serious "rustic style" architecture.
The large barnlike structure resembled a redwood log cabin, with whole-log verandas decorated in sticks of "tanglewood gingerbread." Inside, the terraces were supposed to protect the lodge from rising water. For 70 feet, the creek passed through the dining room, under a large atrium skylight that allowed continued growth of the woodwardia and other ferns. Trees growing through the roof formed a natural canopy.
In a back wall above the rustic bridge over the falls was a round window, lit at night to look like moonlight through the trees. Here a woman sang "Indian Love Call" opening day, on what became known as the Honeymoon Bridge. Horseshoes from the old mill were welded together as lanterns. Even the stream was lit, with colored underwater lights (a device perfected by architect Cotton), and people could watch trout swimming by as they dined. And the kidney- shaped pool (lit from below) later had an underwater window behind the Mermaid Room bar.
Cotton also remodeled the 1870 lodge into a lobby and reading room. New entry doors went up, each four inches thick, 51 inches wide and weighing 300 pounds. Their ornamental hinges were cut out of the mill's scrap boiler plate. The river-rock fireplace had a 6-foot tall opening, and the chandeliers were rounds of polished burl hung with lit clusters of pinecones.
Camp, a Seventh-day Adventist physician, was a strict prohibitionist. So even the end of Prohibition didn't end his habit of sniffing the customers' drinks, and pouring out liquor into the brook. Yet in spite of his idiosyncrasies, Camp's era from 1924 to 1945 was the golden age for the lodge. He ran it as a first-class retreat, attracting international celebrities, Hollywood stars, presidents and kings. Shirley Temple and Johnny Weissmuller had homes nearby. Herbert Hoover visited often, and enjoyed fishing off the dining room bridge. And during the San Francisco conference establishing the United Nations, world leaders and diplomats came to the lodge to relax.
Brookdale was also a popular host of famous bands and singers of the swing era. At least three songs were written about the lodge, such as "My Brookdale Hideaway," "A Place Known as Brookdale" and "Beautiful Brookdale Lodge." The last was an Ink Spots tribute, which will be performed at an upcoming Actors Theatre revue in Santa Cruz.
The lodge changed hands in 1945, shortly before Camp's death. The twin evils which Camp had successfully kept out during his ownership -- booze and gangsters -- now became familiar fixtures in a lodge falling rapidly into disrepair. Secret passageways and hidden rooms filled the lodge, and there were rumors of mobsters having buried a body under the floor. The capper for this shady era was when the niece of the lodge owner drowned in the dining room creek. Sightings of her ghost have been reported ever since.
Barney Morrow, who bought the lodge in 1951, remodeled it after a 1956 fire destroyed the dining hall. He called his design a "Hansel & Gretel theme motel," transforming the redwood buildings into a mock-French Tudor and "Santa's Village Swiss" hybrid. Most of the campground was paved for a massive parking lot, bordered by a barracks-like motel wing, the only one built of five planned cinder-block wings.
Current owners are conducting a more sympathetic restoration of the lodge. In 1990, real estate investor Bill Gilbert and his family paid $2 million for the lodge and surrounding eight acres, and are refurbishing 46 motel rooms, the Brook Room and the lounge, which are open for business.
This article originally appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, October 19, 1993. Copyright 1993 Ross Eric Gibson. Reprinted by permission of the author. Post cards are from the Santa Cruz Public Libraries' collection.
Disclaimer: It is the Library's intent to provide accurate local history information. However, it is not possible for the Library to completely verify the accuracy of individual articles obtained from a variety of sources. If you believe that factual statements in a local history article are incorrect and can provide documentation, please contact the Webmaster.
Local History Santa Cruz Public Libraries' Home Page
Monday, May 28, 2007
BROOKDALE LODGE'S FAMED DINING ROOM
Saturday, May 26, 2007
BACK IN BUSINESS ~ The Brookdale Lodge
BROOKDALE
The storied and rustic lodge reportedly haunted by the spirit of a little girl who drowned in Clear Creek is on the market. The asking price is $5.45 million, or $50.37 per square foot, according to real estate agent Harry Altick of Sperry Van Ness Commercial Real Estate Advisors in Larkspur.
The original lodge was built in 1890. The dining room with the brook running through it was added in the early 1920s. A feature in "Ripley's Believe It or Not" brought the lodge worldwide fame, and it's played host to a number of notable guests, including Marilyn Monroe and President Herbert Hoover.
The 1940s and '50s ushered in a period of gangsters and other shady characters at the lodge, according to Halloween and harvest season event Web site Haunted Bay. Secret passageways and hidden rooms were installed throughout the lodge, and rumors of buried bodies under the floor began to circulate. Also during that time, Sarah Logan, 6, the niece of the lodge owner, drowned in the dining room creek. Her ghost is the one reportedly seen at the Brookdale.
The present-day owners, William and Lee Ann Gilbert of Woodside, have been interested in selling the legendary property for several years, according to their granddaughter, Melanie Gilbert, who lives in Brookdale and works at the lodge. They also listed the property in the late '90s, saying the challenge of renovating it was more difficult than they'd expected.
Now, said Melanie Gilbert, her grandparents are ready to step up their efforts to sell in order to concentrate on a new investment or on their other businesses.
"There are so many different facets to the Brookdale Lodge that it's hard for them to spend time and effort here," said Gilbert, speaking at the lodge on a quiet weekday morning. Her grandparents have owned the lodge, which is surrounded by towering redwoods, since 1989.
Real estate agent Altick is marketing to upscale hotel operators. He hasn't received any offers yet, but said he has gotten 15-20 interested responses to his listing, mostly from California hotel operators but a few from out of state.
"Ideally who's going to buy this is a hands-on upscale resort developer who can maximize all the properties," Altick said. "It's an outstanding investment for someone with the expertise and money to do the upgrading, and the wherewithal to promote it properly"
Gilbert said the community need not worry about a hotel developer coming in and obliterating a prized if faded piece of valley history.
"If a big chain destroyed it, that would devastate my family," she said. "I don't think they'd sell it to someone like that"
A developer will be subject to certain restrictions regardless of moral issues because the Brookdale is on the preservation inventory for the county, said valley historian Barbara Kennedy, a commissioner on the county Historic Resources Commission and a board member of the San Lorenzo Valley Museum.
That means "any changes would have to go through the historic commission," she said.
For Ben Lomond resident Summer Finley, who lives a couple of miles from the lodge and goes there for entertainment on occasion, an improved lodge sounds like "a really good idea"
"The community could benefit a lot from it financially," Finley said. "It really does have the potential to be a really neat lodge, but it's just lost its way"
Gilbert declined to give sales figures for the business, and Altick did not yet have accounting returns for last year. The lodge employs about 25 people, Gilbert said. She was not sure whether the employees would be able to stay on if the lodge is sold, since there haven't been any offers yet.
But if they come in, will the ghost be included?
"Well she should be," said Altick, laughing. "I haven't really advertised her"
Contact Gwen Mickelson at mail to: gmickelson@santacruzsentinel.com?subject=Fabled.
Brookdale Lodge
The sale includes:
-The 8,000-square-foot Brookroom restaurant with Clear Creek tumbling through its center
-A 46-unit motel
-A 68-unit apartment complex
-Convention facilities
-Two indoor heated swimming pools
-A commercial strip center featuring a market, cafe and shops
-13 separate houses and cottages
-The old Brookdale Inn building, the original lodge, which is in need of renovation
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2007/May/17/local/stories/05local.htm
