Location Description and History

The Inn at Jerome has eight guest rooms, designed in their original Victorian style popular around 1900. This Inn has a large parlor with a fireplace. The Inn's restaurant, The Jerome Grill, offers registered dietician approved American cuisine and heart healthy cuisine. The breakfasts that come with the guests' stay are highly rated and recommended. This building, once known as the Clinksdale building, was built in 1899, made of poured, reinforced concrete. The walls were 18 inches thick, with the idea to make it as fire-proof as possible, as it was being built upon the ashes of a fire-destroyed building, the victim of the 3rd fire which hit Jerome. It was once the home of Madam Jennie Banters' Bordello, a very popular place which earned a pretty penny in its day. When the ladies of the night were forced off the main street of town, the building was used as a hardware store on the bottom floor and the upper bedrooms on the second floor were turned into apartments. This building has been in continuous use ever since.

Radios turning on and off at will, laughter and voices can be heard coming from empty rooms and deserted hallway. Guests' personal items moved in the rooms. Rooms and Hallway have "cold spots" and at time extremely "hot spots". One lady guest came downstairs in the morning, stating that she had been in the bathroom with the door locked while she took her shower and loudly heard a man's laughter in the same bathroom. The building also has a ghost cat that will leave its paw prints and "curled up" impression on the bedspreads. It will rub on the legs of the guests in the restaurant and generally has a good time chasing mints from room to room. Impressions of human forms have also been seen on the beds.

Madam Jennie Banter is believed to haunt the building as well. Easily the wealthiest woman in town in her era, became active in the building after it was transformed into the Inn at Jerome, probably very pleased with the renovation efforts. Her favorite room seems to be the Lariat and Lace Room. She has rearranged the furniture, likes to play with the ceiling fan, and has been known to move items in the room to places of her choice, much to the annoyance of the maids, and to the surprise of the guests. She is kind to the maids by turning on the radio as they tidy up the room for the next guests. Jennie likes to keep an eye on the cook in the Grille kitchen, and lets her presence be known. She has made objects like ice cream scoops fly off their resting place onto the floor, if not put away properly? She made the cook books move by themselves until they fell on the floor.

Elderly Male Ghost - A friendly, gentle spirit, with a sense of humor, who has chosen the Inn at Jerome as his eternal retirement home. Was seen by the manager as she walked down the hall past the guest rooms. She saw a hazy, grayish colored apparition of an elderly man, standing by the window in the room called Pillow Talk, looking down at the alley below. He was dressed in work clothes from an earlier time and wore a felt hat. He has been known to laugh at the maids and the Inn managers, and at some guests as well. After making the bed and straightening and smoothing the pillows and comforter in the rooms Pillow Talk and Kiss and Tell, the maid would leave for a moment and when she returned, she would find the indentation of a human body on the bed. She immediately redid the bed, only to find the same indentation when she checked the room again! The doors to the armoire in the Kiss and Tell Room seem to have a mind of their own, and open and close on their own schedule. This is also often blamed on the Elderly male ghost. Wall hangings and pictures are often rearranged or placed in the armoire.

The Grumpy Male Ghost - An entity with some issues. Perhaps he isn't pleased with the renovations of the building, or that this Inn at Jerome and Grille Restaurant has moved into the building. The ghost gets his chuckles by startling the living, though he never hurts anyone. He likes to hang out in the upstairs area. A cold wind blew strongly through one of the guest rooms, removing the blankets off the startled guests. The windows were closed, and there was no reasonable explanation.
While straightening up in the Victorian Rose Room, a maid saw a shadowy apparition of a man move across the room and go behind the door. The smell of roses, and sometimes of perfume, moves through the Victorian Rose Room, and the water faucets have been known to turn on and off in the sink at will.

Several unusual events have occurred in the the Jerome Grill as well. A waitress on the early morning shift was alone in the restaurant, when she heard a man's footsteps walking up behind her. Thinking it was the cook, she turned around to talk to him. Instead, standing there was the shadowy apparition seen in the Victorian Room with a bad attitude, starring at her with cold, grumpy disapproval, with his head cocked to one side. After she screamed, it disappeared quickly. Whistling has also been heard in the bar area.
In the kitchen, the cook was reaching down to pick up something off a lower shelf, when two plastic containers from a high shelf in the preparation area suddenly fell down and hit him in the head. While it didn't hurt him, it did shake him up a little.

This ghost likes to eavesdrop on occasion on conversations in the Grille. When a skeptic verbally expressed to her group that the hauntings were a bunch of nonsense, a metal sign sitting up on a ledge above her suddenly flew down with a bang onto the floor. Glasses sitting on tables have been known to slide off by themselves with a crash, and a waitress in the restaurant's rest room heard a woman singing, followed by a loud bang. No one else outside the bathroom heard this. The ghost(s) that haunt the restaurant are fascinated with electric devices, especially the answering machine. After it was turned off after the restaurant had opened, the machine turned itself on three different times, much to the annoyance of the waitress in charge of turning it off when she arrived at work.

During the Jerome Home Tours of 2000, the door between the parlor and hallway violently slammed closed 6 times. There is no possible way that it was caused by wind or air disturbance. The owner of the Inn was forced to prop the door open with a brick!

The Cherub statue on the dividing wall between the parlor and stairway is commonly observed turning with no one near it. This was one of the events that was noticed during our investigation here. The statue is facing towards the door leading into the hallway. If it is turned facing the opposite direction, towards the stairs, it will mysteriously move back to its original position.

We rented out the entire Inn during our visit. We conducted an EM sweep of the building and discovered one D/C EM field near the doorway of the lobby area. The field was static but lasted for fifty seconds before vanishing. We were unable to isolate a cause for that particular EM field.

Monitoring positions were set up in the lobby and at both ends of the main hallway. During the evening we heard several loud banging noises on the front door. When the door was checked no one was there. A brief reading of 4 milligauss was registered near the door after this event. The field vanished and further attempts to locate it were unsuccessful.

A natural Trifield meter was positioned in the hallway on sum mode and several pictures were taken when the meter's alarm sounded. Other than these two events, nothing else of interest was noted.

Photographs

Click on the thumbnails to view the larger image

Although several interesting EM events were recorded, nothing substantial was located to indicate a haunting during our visit.