On Monday, February 22, 1909, a man by the name Joseph Coholich committed a very heinous crime in Amador County. Now, the newspapers reported his last name as Chahalich or sometimes Chachalich, and even his Find-a-Grave memorial spelled his name as Choalich, but his death record in the California Death Index was recorded as Coholich.
Per the Amador Dispatch, dated February 26, 1909:
"Early in the afternoon of Monday a horseman, greatly excited rode into town and notified Sheriff Gregory that Mrs. Lintillac had been shot by Chahalich. Gregory and Leverone immediated started for the Lintillac place. Upon their arrival there they found Chahalich gone and questioned the woman, learning from her the following particulars: Mrs. Lintillac shortly after dinner, was hanging out clothes near the house, and Chahalich, who had worked about the place, approached her carrying a shot-gun and demanded of her $25.50 which he claimed was coming to him for wages.
She replied they did not owe him that much as he had not worked for a time during the rainy weather, and also that he was indebted to them for board in the sum of $20, besides $2 for brandy, that all he had coming was $7, and told him he had better see her husband about it. Chahalich, who was standing about six feet from the woman, raised his gun and shot her in the legs twice."
The article, which is lengthy, goes on to state that the Sheriff went on to the Campanola's cabin where the suspect had been known to stop by for the past two weeks. The authorities found the shot-gun and a blue short that the suspect had been wearing, and so they knew he had stopped there before moving on. When questioned, Campanola denied any knowledge of the situation. It was ascertained that Joseph Coholich had walked across Campanola's property, through the fields approximately seven miles, all the way westward to Jackson, avoiding roadways.
By the time Joseph Coholich reached Jackson, he made the steep trek up Summit Street to the old Courthouse. According to testimony by eye-witness Thomas Lemin, Coholich was walking back and forth in front of the courthouse at about 5 p.m. that evening. The two men struck up a conversation, as Coholich sat down on the steps and began eating an orange. Shortly thereafter, Coholich belted out a painful groan and fell backwards into convulsions. When the onlooker tried to help him, he shook his head and stated that it was "too late." Still, two doctors arrived to the scene, Dr. Sprague and Dr. Gall, who both realized that he had been poisoned. They moved Coholich to the courtyard of the jail, and he expired within about 10 minutes.
When the body was searched, they found a vial of strychnine in his pocket and about 25 grains were missing. They believed he had put the poison in the orange that he ate, committing suicide instead of facing the legal consequences for his actions. Joseph Coholich had no family in the states, and it was assumed his wife was still home in the "old country." The newspapers stated that he was originally from Austria, yet his Find-a-Grave states he was from Italy. It is obvious that he may have been from Austria, having travelled to the U.S. by way of Italy, but by the spelling or pronunciation of his name it is obvious he was of Serbian or Croation descent.
Joseph Coholich was buried without a marker in the Jackson City Cemetery just next door to the Catholic Cemetery.
While continuing my research, I discovered that Mrs. Lucie Lintellac was forced to have her limbs amputated due to her grave injuries; one limb being amputated just below the knee, while the other just at the ankle bone. Sadly, it appears that her wounds never healed properly that her health continued to decline. As of the March 12, Amador Ledger, her funeral notice appeared. Although the newspapers stated she was buried in St. Patrick's Catholic Cemetery, I have been unable to locate her gravesite as of yet. I am still avidly searching for that piece of the puzzle, as I would really like to pay my respects to this innocent victim of this very wicked assault.
In my line of work, I stumble upon some of the saddest stories. I share them for one reason, so that their names and their lives will not be forgotten. Mrs. Lintellac, and even Joseph for that matter, have been forgotten in the pages of archived newspapers and old dusty death indexes that have been shelved for over a 100 years. My effort is to bring back those people's stories, to give them back a voice. To share their story for them, since they obviously can no longer share it on their own.
I hope that although this history was a bit dark, and unfortunately did not have a happy ending, that you can appreciate it is still a part of local history, nonetheless. Thank you for taking the time to read this and to remember the stories of the forgotten." (J'aime Rubio, Copyright 2024)
Some of my sources: California Death Index, Amador Ledger, 3/12/1909; Amador Dispatch, 2/26/1909; Bluelake Advocate, 2/27/1909; Stockton Independent, 2/23/1909; Union Democrat, 2/27/1909; San Francsico Call, 2/23/1909.
What happens to a glass of Coca-Cola when it is put under a
faucet and the water is then turned on? The Coca-Cola then becomes displaced,
and while water dilutes it and continues to dilute it, eventually the glass of Coke is no longer there, but only water in its place.
Well, that is what happens when people decide that the true
history of a person, place or even an object is not enough as it is, that they
need to add more and more to it until the real history becomes invisible, or
almost untraceable, and the fabricated legends and folklore take on a life of
its own, often times becoming accepted as fact.
One such example of this is the Ione Hotel. Over the years a
lot of misinformation has spread in regards to the hotel’s true history and now
it seems almost impossible to find any accurate information about it to date.
That will change starting with today.
If you look up the history of this hotel online or in recent books, you will find a plethora of information. Unfortunately, most of the information is incorrect. So that was why I decided to dig through the archived newspapers, old history books and records to find the real history behind this hotel so that I could share it once and for all with you!
The Ione Hotel has been called the Metropolitan, The Union Hotel, The
Haller Hotel, The Golden Star Hotel, and even The Bedbug Inn,
but the history of this hotel is much more interesting than even its various
names over the years.
This blog took a while for me to research, and it is going
to be long, but trust me, it will be worth the read. In this article I will go
through not only the history of the hotel, backed up with factual information
and documentation, but I will also address the local legends and lore.
To start off, I have always loved this hotel. I used to roam
the halls on summer days when I was staying up at my dad’s on Sutter Lane back
in the 1990’s. A friend and I would often
wander around Ione during the summer, and sometimes for kicks we would ask the
owners of the hotel to let us explore the so-called “haunted” hotel.Of course as teenagers, we would scare
ourselves, which made it all the more fun! Afterwards we would head over and
get a slice of pizza at Loretta’s or over to the diner to get a soft serve
cone. This was the time of my teenage years I found interest in Preston Castle
and its history as well.It shouldn’t
surprise anyone that I would eventually research Ione Hotel’s history, too.
Ione’s Early
History
To begin with, Ione was not the typical town or city during
the Gold Rush. In fact, Ione’s Main Street was not built up until the mid to
late 1850’s to begin with. Yes, some people moved there around 1848 and 1849,
but it was only a handful of miners and settlers who built their homes. Ione
itself did not become a bustling place until at it’s earliest the mid 1850’s. You
can verify this by reading The History of
Amador County by Jesse D. Mason which is available on Google Play to read
for FREE. So for the record, this
particular hotel could not have existed in 1849 as some other articles have
suggested.
The earliest hotels that I found in Ione were the Irena
House, owned by Thomas Rickey, and the Ione Valley Hotel. Again, this was
during the 1850’s. The Irena house was next door to where the City Hall sits
today, and the Ione Valley Hotel’s location is unknown. I could find no records
that state where it was located in town at all, but we know it existed and the book
The History of Amador County mentions
it to have been one of the oldest buildings erected in town. It also mentions
that it burned during the Great Fire of Ione on October 8, 1865.Could it have been at the location where the
present day Ione Hotel sits? Possibly, but unlikely. Why?
Well, the late, great Amador County Historian Larry Cenotto pointed
out in a fantastically written article back in 1995 that deed records indicated
the original two lots (a small one and a larger one) where the hotel sits today
were originally a butcher shop and a saddlery shop. Per Larry Cenotto’s
research it wasn’t until later on in the 1870’s, (on the small lot), that the
first hotel was erected and named the Metropolitan. It had only five rooms, a
saloon and a dining area. The man who operated that hotel was Frederick Haas.
In 1876, there are only two hotels in Ione by this point,
one of which was the Veranda Hotel and of course the Metropolitan. By the
1880’s the Glaze brothers owned the property. In 1880, Ione was flooded when
the creek overflowed and backed up into Main Street. It was such a bad flood,
that 1,300 feet of railroad track was washed away. No doubt all the businesses
on Main Street suffered some serious water damage from this flood.
After a fire at the Veranda Hotel (just down the street) on
January 26, 1884, the Eaton family who had been running the Veranda Hotel, went
over to work for the Glaze brothers. The Metropolitan Hotel was then renamed the Union Hotel.
Veranda Hotel
History (Location: City Hall)
The Daily Alta California dated January 27, 1884 mentions
the fire at the Veranda Hotel. It also notes that a gentleman named Thomas
Bennett lost his life in the fire. This is important to remember as we go
further into this blog, because this
is the ONLY hotel fire in Ione during that time period in which a death
occurred.
It is noted in the Volcano Weekly Ledger that the Veranda
House was built on the lot next door to where the Irena House once stood, which
indicates or insinuates the latter was destroyed. I found an ad for the Veranda
Hotel in the Volcano Weekly Ledger dating back to 1857. When the Veranda burned down in 1884, Mr. McCauley
eventually purchased the land from Mrs. Kingsley and built his Commercial Hotel
there. Of course later on it became the spot where City Hall is now situated.
Another Flood
The March 24, 1893 edition of the Amador Ledger tells of the
creek once again backing up, which overflowed into businesses. The water caused
damage to the lower level of the Union Hotel again, along with their stage barn. At this time period, the hotel had a stage stop there for passengers to rest in between stages and to obtain transportation to the railroad.
Renovations to the
Hotel
“The old Union Hotel has
been refitted and renovated throughout by its new proprietor J.S. Amick. The
house is well known for its clean, sunny rooms, white (as distinguished from
Chinese) cooking and well set table.The
hotel has no bar, is situated in the central part of town and caters especially
to families and ladies.”— Amador Record (April 1897) c/o Larry Cenotto’s
research in the Amador Ledger 6/26/1995
By 1900, Joseph and Rosa Tonzi, natives of Switzerland,
purchased the Union Hotel.Sadly though,
the hotel didn’t last very long.
Fire of 1900
“Disastrous Fire in Ione –
About 12 o’clock last Monday night the denizens of our sister town were aroused
by the dread alarm of fire. The fire started in the Union Hotel’s bakery in the
rear of the Union Hotel. It was soon fanned by the breeze into a devastating
blaze. The Union Hotel and Robert Mayes’ saloon were soon in a blaze and for
other food the fire fiend hit upon the old stage stables, devouring that also.
Hopper’s General
merchandise store, a fireproof building, sustained a loss of $1,000. The loss
to the hotel and saloon is estimated at $9,000, besides private losses to
inmates, and the insurance amounts to $3200, $600 of which is on the saloon. The
inmates of the hotel succeeded in escaping, though none of them were able to
save anything beyond what they wore, and that was very little in most cases. No
one was seriously injured, but several narrow escapes were reported. This is
the most disastrous conflagration Ione has had in some years.”--- Amador
Ledger, January 19, 1900.
After this fire, the Tonzi family chose to erect another
hotel in its place, but their first one was poorly made and only lasted nine
years before burning up in another fire in 1909.
Fire of 1909
“Fire in Ione– Of the fire which destroyed Haller’s Hotel
in Ione last Thursday, the Echo says:
“Soon after the fire
broke out Superintendent Randall of the Preston School, dispatched a number of
his boys who have been drilled in the method of fighting fires, and they
mounted to the roofs and handled the hose and fire axes in true fireman
fashion, aiding very materially in saving George Woolsey’s building, and
thereby the whole north side of Main Street, and they are deserving a great
deal of credit.
The hotel was a flimsy
constructed two-story frame building, owned by Mrs. Tonzi of Mt. Echo, and J.M.
Haller the lessee. The building was insured in the Orient Insurance Company,
J.W. Surface agent, for $1,000 which will go a long way toward covering the
loss. Mr. Haller, the lessee, estimates his loss at $1,600 with $450 of
insurance. Mr. Haller’s loss is nearly total, as much of the stuff moved out of
the hotel was either destroyed or so badly damaged as to be worthless.
The loss to Sibole
& Gillum was by water and smoke and is fully covered by insurance, as is,
also the damage to the building. Hammer’s store, a flimsy frame structure a few
feet west of the hotel, was saved only by the greatest exertion, and that, in
large part, by some of our women, who formed a bucket brigade and kept the
premises thoroughly wet, at the expense of disheveled hair and bedraggled
wearing apparel. Prominent among them was noticed Ida Williams, Mrs. Maddux,
Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Hammer, Mrs. Cotto, Mrs. Fissier, Mrs. Browning, Alice
Greenhaigh, and Ethel Mack and there might have been others.
Soon after the fire
started somebody telephoned the fact to Jackson and at once John Gabarini, Chief
of the Fire Department there, hitched up a team, loaded in two fire extinguishers
and 150 feet of fire hose, took in D.S. Mason, and made the drive twelve miles
in forty-five minutes. He arrived too late to be of any assistance, but the
neighborly act was highly appreciated by everybody in Ione.”----Amador
Ledger, June 4, 1909
The Golden Star Hotel
At this point the Tonzi family was through with wooden
structures, so they bought the larger lot next door and decided to expand and erect
a much larger, beautiful stone hotel instead and renamed it the Golden Star
Hotel. The Tonzi's would have different people run the hotel for them, such as Mrs. M.C. Jarvis, or E.F. Mueller, but the hotel always belonged to the Tonzi family.
The old well that once sat at the back of the lot obviously couldn’t be
moved, so during the construction of their grand stone hotel, the Tonzi’s decided to build around the well, which in later years would stir
up some controversy and superstitions about the well's origins. (We will discuss
the well later on in this article.)
The property remained in the Tonzi family up until Dorothy
Stacey purchased the hotel in 1971. It was during Dorothy’s ownership that she
briefly named the hotel the Bedbug Inn. It didn’t stay that way for long and it
eventually became the Ione Hotel (or Hotel Ione).
New History at the
Hotel (1977- 1988)
In April of 1977, Bill and Milly Jones, of Walnut Creek
purchased the hotel and dove headfirst into the hospitality industry. I was able to speak to Milly Jones over the phone and ask
her some questions about what she remembered when she owned the hotel with her
husband, as well as clearing up some misinformation about some of the legends
and lore at the hotel. At 90 years old,
she is still very much a lively, kind and quick-witted gal and it was such a
pleasure to speak with her.
According to Milly’s book "The Hotel Ione," and other various news clippings
of the time, the hotel catered to the working man. Most of their residents
worked all week in labor jobs and went home to their families on the weekends.
Many of the men who worked on Rancho Seco, stayed at their hotel during the
week as well.
It was around the time that Milly and Bill bought the hotel
that the rumors of the hotel being haunted started to make their rounds about
Amador County.My parents lived on
Marlette in town, and my mother remembers when the ghost stories started to
pick up steam in the late 1970s.A funny
tidbit to add to this story is that while I spoke to Milly on the phone, I
learned that it was my father (who owned a carpet store in Jackson) who laid
the carpet at their hotel in the late 1970s. So I guess in a way I have some
family history at this hotel, too!
It was while Milly and her husband were running the hotel
that they discovered the covered well in the middle of the building. According
to Milly, her husband was the first to inspect it, and discovered a very
well-made stone well going all the way down. There is also a drain at the bottom
that goes to the creek.Bill noticed something was stuck at the bottom, so they called the Fire Department
to come out. With the use of a grappling hook they were able to pull out an old
antique hobby horse which more than likely dated back to the late 1800’s or
early 1900’s. Milly claimed in the Amador Progress News (Ione Valley Echo)
dated back in June 25, 1980 that shortly after opening the well, supernatural
events started occurring.
ad for TV show featuring Ione Hotel, 1980
Because the well was at the ground level, Bill decided to add
stones to build a traditional well from the ground level up equipped with a
hanging bucket, wheel and rope. At that point the layout of the hotel was very
much different than it is today. The big staircase going up to the second level
was set further back inside the hotel and the well was situated just to the
left of the stairs. If you visit the hotel today, you will notice the well is
set back in the dining room, and the new staircase is way up front near the
front door of the lobby. So unless you know how the hotel was back then, it
might be hard for you to wrap your head around the old layout.
During the 1980’s “Ripley’s Believe it or Not!” came to film
segments about the ghost stories swirling around town about the hotel, as well
as local news crews. Even the television show “That’s Incredible!” hosted by
Ted Bateman came to town to film for several days. It really wasn’t until the
Jones’ came to the hotel that the property got so much exposure for its alleged
hauntings, and the ghost stories have continued to spread since then as well.
After Bill suffered from a severe back injury in 1984, Milly hired
a friend of theirs, Morgan to run the hotel and saloon for them. By July 1,
1984 they sold the hotel to Loretta Tillery.
While Loretta Tillery owned the hotel, another news crew with television journalist Jonathan Mumm came to film a short segment about the hotel being haunted. You can watch the
video here from Youtube.
As you can see the layout of the upstairs was also
different, which means the room numbers were in different places as well. This
is also an important thing to remember as we get further into the blog with the
legends and lore.
In 1988, while Loretta Tillery and three other co-owners: Jay McCarthy,
Jerry Cassesi and Bonnie Aparicio were in the middle of completely renovating
the hotel, and were just about to sell the property to new owners the last week
of June, the hotel caught fire. The stone hotel built painstakingly
by the Tonzi family in 1910, that stood for nearly 78 years was completely
gutted on Father’s Day, June 19, 1988.
Fire of 1988
According to my interview with Milly, it was on Father’s
Day, one of the families living in the hotel at the time decided to go across
the street to get hot chocolate but they left their young child alone in the
room along with a baby sleeping in a crib. Milly's recollection was that the young child had found a cigarette lighter and was playing with it. When the parents looked up at the
hotel window they saw the curtains on fire. They rushed in and got their
children, but the fire gutted the entire hotel. The newspapers claimed that a young child was playing with matches when the fire started.
According to the Amador Dispatch dated June 22, 1988, it
states the fire took place on Sunday at around 10 a.m. Not only did the hotel
burn but also the offices of Ione Realty and the newly opened restaurant the
Pasta House which had just celebrated their grand opening two nights earlier.
“It took us four years
to get this far,” stated Loretta Tillery, mentioning her recent
construction in the hotel. “All
renovations were done except one room!”
Fire that gutted the Ione Hotel 1988.
According to Carole Perry at Century 21, the owners were in
the process of selling the hotel for $350,000 to excited buyers. Once learning
about the fire, the buyers were truly devastated.The fire reached temperatures of up to 3000
degrees and crews from all over the county and other nearby areas came to help
in the rescue effort, to no avail. Even some of the boys at Preston and
volunteer firefighters from Mule Creek State Prison joined in the effort.Out of 60 firefighters who fought the blaze,
only two were injured. According to records, the struggle to extinguish the
fire had to do with a lack of water available. A distribution valve was not
operating properly thus not allowing the right volume of water to be accessible
to the fire crews.
In all, 23 people who were living at the hotel were homeless
(12 of which were children). After it was all said and done, the owners of the hotel
expressed their deepest gratitude to everyone who helped fight the fire and
published their letter in the Amador Dispatch on June 24, 1988. The hotel sat for years empty, lifeless and gutted.
A New Chapter
Then in the mid 1990’s new owners Dorothy and Tom Shone
purchased the property and put all their blood, sweat and tears into completely
reestablishing the Ione Hotel, and bringing it back to life again.
In later years, the hotel was sold again to Mahmood Ghani,
and now it is ran by the new proprietors Steve and Cindy Burke. The Burke family has definitely done a fantastic job with bringing the Ione Hotel back to its original grandeur. It is so lovely that I am sure even the Tonzi family would be proud! It was a pleasure visiting the hotel recently and speaking
to Cindy. She was very gracious and allowed me access to the upstairs to roam
around and even let me peek down the well in the middle of her restaurant, while
she entertained her patrons eating dinner! The hotel looks even more beautiful than
I remembered from the 1990’s when I last visited. The dark mahogany wood
throughout the entire building is something dreamy, like a step back in time to
another era.
Cindy was more than hospitable and answered many questions. When
asked about the haunted aspect of the hotel she explained that she herself has
not had any supernatural experiences there and believes there is an explanation
for most things and stated, “even if
someone dies in a place it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s now haunted.” Alejandro,
a member of staff who met us upstairs and let us in some of the rooms to
photograph said he hasn’t had anything paranormal happen. However, he did say
if there is anything other-worldly hanging out there, “if they want to party, let them party, just don’t bother me.”
All in all, I would say that the hotel is in great hands, and
I can see that the Burke’s truly love the hotel and it shows. It is apparent
that they are doing a fine job carrying on in the footsteps of their predecessors
before them, including the founders of the stone hotel, the Tonzi family.
Urban Legends, Local
Folklore & Ghost Stories
So now to the part some of you have been waiting for….the “other
side” of the Ione Hotel. In the recent years there have been a lot of paranormal investigators and websites that mention the hotel's haunted history and well, let's just say, much of it isn't paranormal at all. Well, let’s go down the line and address some of the
urban legends and lore (or ghost stories) of the hotel and then I will either
confirm or debunk them for you. Ready? Let’s go!
·The
Black Rose
Said to have been a prostitute in the late
1800’s that committed suicide in her room. Stories include that there is a mark
in one of the rooms that will not wash away or if painted it comes back. I could not find one single account in any of the old newspapers of the area mentioning any sort of incident at the hotel involving a prostitute who committed suicide, so it looks like this is just another fabricated story. According to the new owners, Cindy Burke, she knows
nothing of this story. Even former owner, Milly Jones stated the only thing she
had heard was that the door to George Williams’ room (which was at that time
#4) had a dark knot in the wood grain that some people had mentioned, but it
was not anything supernatural. For the
record, there were NO prostitutes who killed themselves in the hotel at any time,
so this legend is debunked!
·Mary
Phelps
This story is tricky, and the reason I say
this is because I am not one to dismiss someone’s personal experiences. If
Milly Jones claims that she had an encounter with an entity and the name Mary
Phelps came up, I am not going to say she didn’t. As the story went, (and you can read it in Milly’s Book on Amazon) the entity identified herself as Mary
Phelps and that her grandson died in a fire there.Again, she claims a family member of the
person came and confirmed it. However, there were no fires in this hotel that
took the lives of anyone at any time. So again, I will not dismiss this experience,
but I can say that no one died in a fire
at this hotel at any time and you can feel free to search the Amador County
Library’s newspaper archives too, for your own verification of this.
Room # 12 ( possibly where room #4 used to be)
·George
Williams
Now, George Williams is a chap that did
exist, and he did die at the hotel. This is actually a true story. George lived
in room # 4, which is not the same as the # 4 at the hotel today. Remember
after the fire in 1988, the layout was changed dramatically when it was rebuilt
on the inside. So walls are in places they weren’t before, and rooms have been
renumbered. Remember earlier I mentioned that the staircase was set further
back before? Well, according to my calculations where George’s room was (#4) I
believe it is where or close to where Room # 12 sits now. Again, give or take a
few feet. It is definitely on that side of the hotel though.
According to Milly, there were plenty of
people back in the 1970’s who remembered George well, and confirmed he died of
a heart attack in his room at the hotel. Bill Ketchum was quoted in the
newspaper back in 1980 talking about this very thing. Also, Milly told me that
one of her neighbors, an elderly lady, admitted that both she and another lady
had helped George get up to his room on the night that he died. He was very
drunk, so they guided him up the stairs, and plopped him down on his bed. They
even went so far as to take his shoes off and cover him up with a blanket
before shutting the door behind him.
Although he died of a heart attack it sounds to me like he passed in his
sleep, and since he was so drunk, let’s hope he didn’t feel a thing! George is buried at the old Catholic Cemetery
in town.
George Williams' Grave (J. Rubio)
·The Well
Okay, so now we are onto the well. So there
has been some misinformation about the origins of the well, so I wanted to
clear this up with you first. I have heard from several people that the story going around for years was that this was an ancient Miwok Indian well, and that because of this the well could not be touched and the hotel had to be built around it. That is completely false!
This well does NOT date back to the Miwok Indians.
I am not sure who started this rumor years ago, but they obviously didn’t look into the
customs and living traditions of Native Americans. The Miwok (coastal and inland) were not known for digging wells.
Also, the well is only 50-100 yards from the creek. The creeks, rivers and
streams were the water source they would use to begin with. Some tribes of
Native Americans in the plains and especially desert areas like Arizona are
known for digging aqueducts or trenches but not the type of well that we are
talking about here.
Looking down the well
So for the record, this well, was hand
built with stone all the way to the bottom, and even Milly Jones recalled her husband noticing the stonework all the way down when he first opened the cover of the well back in the late 1970's. She also mentioned to me that it has a drain at the bottom which flows out to the creek.
This was a very well constructed well-water system for that time period and it mimics the wells
found in Europe.
So now we know this was a “caucasian” hand-built well, probably
constructed around the time the saddlery shop and barber shop were situated on
those lots in mid 1800's. According to Milly, there were three original wells in Ione and one
of the other wells is located in the basement of a business just across the
street.
Another thing to mention is that I scoured through the archives of the newspapers in Amador County and found no trace of evidence that anyone fell down this well, or died in it at any point in time. (A lot of people try to insinuate a child fell in and died).
·Phantom
Odor
According to Milly’s book there was a
strange odor that would appear in the lobby on Saturday mornings and would last about 15
minutes and then dissipate. Later on, it was quoted in an online article that
later owner Mahmood Ghani complained of the same thing, and the article went so
far as to claim he hired someone to perform an exorcism to rid the hotel of the
stink, as funny as that sounds!
Well, the new proprietors have had no such issues whatsoever and Cindy told me
when she moved in, the grease traps looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in
years. The hotel was in such a poor state, they had a lot of cleaning and
restoring to do, and have never had any issue with any phantom smells.After speaking to Milly, I think I figured
out the cause of the phantom smell that plagued the hotel at certain
times.
Well, back in the 1970’s the
plumbing and the drainage systems in Ione weren’t always the best, plus on a
Saturday, the busiest day of the week, there was a lot of showers running and
toilets being flushed all at once, which Milly and I believe that could have
caused a back-up in the sewer or drainage system and if the vents weren’t
working right, a smell could have temporarily backed up into the hotel for a
few minutes. That is the most likely scenario.
·Haunted
Room #13
In all my research I have not found any credible stories relating to room #13, only recent online articles mentioning it. I will say though it is in the same general area near where
room #4 originally was (although I still think room #12 is more closely
situated to the original room #4). You
must remember the layout of the hotel was much different back then, so the
rooms are not in the exact spot they once were, and it is even possible that
half of room #12 and half of room #13 are in the same spot where the original
room #4 was due to the change of the construction plans and layout when new walls and doorways were put up after the fire in 1988. According to Jonathan Mumm, the same news reporter in the Youtube video above, he stated that Tom Shone had told him that he renumbered room # 4 to room # 13 after they remodeled the hotel in 1995. He claimed that he changed the room to # 13 to be spookier. Again, George's room was originally very narrow (and you can see it by the Youtube video above), and some of the rooms you find there today seem a bit wider now, because of the construction and rebuild after the fire of 1988.
If you would like to read more about the alleged hauntings at the hotel, you will have to read Milly Jones’ book "The Hotel Ione" on Amazon, as I don’t delve
too deep into the paranormal, I prefer to dig for the factual history of a
location and share that instead.
I hope that you enjoyed this step back
into the past to learn the history of this beautiful hotel and I hope that the
current owners continue to preserve, protect and share this history with the
world. In ending, let me quote something
that Amador County Historian Larry Cenotto once wrote back in 1995, when he was
giving advice to the new owners Dorothy and Tom Shone, “The writer encourages them to ascertain and promote its real history
–that is interesting enough for anyone.”
