Enjoy Your Stay
Here’s a spooky, real-life ghost story from the hotel that inspired The Springs Hotel in my Enchanted Antique Shop series.
The Historic Artisan Hotel on South Woodland Boulevard has been standing since 1929. In real life, it houses Chica’s Cuban Cafe. (Their Cuban coffee and plantain nachos are excellent, by the way.)
In its fictional counterpart, it houses Opal Hush, a cozy, comfortable wine bar … which, now that I think about it, is kind of like the Elusive Grape here in DeLand. I don’t create fiction out of whole cloth: I mash things up a bit.
Your Hosts, the Barnhill Ghosts
Edwin and Jeanette Barnhill had big dreams when they built the DeLand Hotel on Woodland Boulevard. They planned a budget-friendly retreat for middle-class travelers, like themselves. The building looked like a Mediterranean resort, and winter tourists were drawn to its stucco walls and arched façades. While the forty guest rooms were small, they were cheap and comfortable. The hotel’s location meant guests could walk up and down Main Street, shopping and stopping at cafes and restaurants along the way. On sunny days, the Barnhills’ guests could even pile into an open-air bus—which was actually two Model Ts welded together—and head off on a whirlwind day trip to Daytona Beach.
The Barnhills’ future should have been as sunny and bright as the Florida sky. Sadly, the life they hoped to build together would never come to be. Just four years after they built the hotel, Jeanette Barnhill died. A year later, Edwin was declared insane.
Some say it was Jeanette’s ghost that drove him mad. Even before she died, she had hounded him about his drinking, and she was fanatical about turning lights off to save money. After she died, they continued to disagree. Employees and guests would hear the widowed hotelier arguing with his wife’s spirit about how the hotel should be managed, what the staff should be expected to do, and which amenities should be provided with ever-diminishing funds. He would also shout furiously at her, demanding that she stop looking over his shoulder while he was doing the books.
Other owners stepped in. The hotel was popular during the 1930s and 1940s, but after that, it slowly spiraled into a deep decline. It became a refuge for troubled guests, many of whom were mired in alcohol, drugs, and prostitution. It wasn’t a tourist destination anymore; beds were rented by the month, week, even the hour. A prostitute was strangled on the premises. At one point during the hotel’s long decline, a troubled guest refused to leave his room. When the police came, he told them that an old woman in 1920s clothing had told him not to leave.
The hotel eventually closed in 1985 and stood abandoned for years. In 1997, investors bought the property. They consolidated the forty small rooms into eight suites and reopened it as a boutique hotel in 1999.
When they were alive, the Barnhills lived in a small room on the second floor. Some say they never left. Even now, guests and employees have reported seeing the Barnhills on the premises. While Jeanette seems to haunt the second floor near her old room, Edwin’s ghost lingers in the basement.
Others have encountered a young girl looking for her mother. She says her name is Sara Elizabeth, and she tugs on their sleeves. Some glimpse the troubled prostitute who was strangled there, along with other shadowy figures in doorways. They hear footsteps and whistling in empty rooms and corridors. Dishes fly off shelves in the hotel kitchen. Sometimes, a mysterious blue light floats through an upstairs hallway.
The Barnhills’ hotel is no longer a troubled property. Even so, it’s still just as haunted as ever. Maybe that’s because Edwin and Jeanette, freed from their financial burdens, can finally enjoy the beautiful hotel they built.