Almost every hotel in New York has experienced a death; therefore, it is no surprise that most hotels in New York have had reports of spectral activity.
In 1934, the Hopewell Hotel on the Upper East Side was well-known among the Broadway set. Its small size and au courant design made it an elegant enclave—and it was considerably more affordable than The Waldorf-Astoria or The St. Regis (where the Bloody Mary was invented in the King Cole Bar that very same year). Performers desiring decent accommodation and a friendly atmosphere kept the hotel going during the Depression. (It was also helpful that the hotel’s owner tended to turn a blind eye to room sharing. A room filled with too many guests was better than one with no guests at all.)
In June of that year, a would-be actress named Antoinette Hemmings moved into a room in the Hopewell called the Orchid Suite, which she shared with a theatrical secretary named Betty Spooner. Though Antoinette had done many chorus roles, she had greater aspirations. It looked like she was on the verge of her first big break when she auditioned for the role of Hope Harcourt in the new Cole Porter musical, Anything Goes. A summer cold and a sudden attack of laryngitis derailed Antoinette’s dreams on the day of her final, critical audition.
Antoinette was crushed to miss such a massive opportunity. She was determined to get noticed some other way. She returned to the Hopewell and wrote a long note of instruction to Betty, including the name of the closest hospital and the phone number of a friendly newspaper reporter who covered the theater beat. After dressing herself in her diaphanous, pink, feather-edged dressing gown, she took a handful of sleeping pills, and washed them down with champagne…timing the entire event carefully to coincide with Betty’s return from work.
Unfortunately for Antoinette, the normally timely Betty was delayed. Instead of finding the elegant but still very much alive Antoinette draped elegantly over the bed, ready to be carried off to the hospital in her pink gown…she found the very dead body of Antoinette by the door. She had apparently realized in her last moments of consciousness that Betty was not going to be able to save her and made an attempt to get help.
In 1974, a guest in the Orchid Suite reported that a young woman in a pink gown knocked on his door. She asked if Mr. Cole Porter had called for her. The man was about to ask her who she was or why the longdead Cole Porter would have called her when he said she “vanished before my very eyes, like a lifting fog.”
—FROM 81 BIG APPLE GHOST TALES, CHAPTER 8, “HOTEL GHOSTS: THE GUESTS WHO NEVER CHECK OUT”
PUNCH IN A VELVET GLOVE
It should have been one of the best weeks of Scarlett’s life.
Mrs. Amberson was more or less out of Scarlett’s hair entirely. She had forgotten all about the book, and was spending the majority of her time running around the city doing what she called “social PR” for the show. She sent Scarlett in her place to watch and help with costumes. This meant that Scarlett had a full six hours a day to hang out with Spencer and watch Eric.
Theoretically, all perfect.
Like the good actors they were, Spencer and Eric kept right on going as everyone’s favorite lovable idiots, playing to the crowd. If there was any weird feeling from the night at the party, they weren’t talking about it, weren’t showing it. As for how they treated her, however, each had his own unique method of torture.
Spencer had barely spoken a word to her in a week. He didn’t come down to her room. He closed his door when he was at home. When they went home at night, he put on his headphones, if he waited for her at all.
Eric spiced things up by adding the element of uncertainty. It seemed clear that the discovery had rattled him a little, and his response was to lay very low. He kept his communication to subtle glances, brushes in the hallway, an incredibly covert hand squeeze during a run-through of Polonius’s death scene. The major event of the week took place in the costume closet—the tight little space behind the stage with the exposed insulation. Scarlett had gone back to get Ophelia’s crazy drowning outfit to rough it up (the term was distress) a little. Eric had swung in behind her, pulled her behind the rack, given her a long, closed-mouth kiss, then grabbed a hat and run right out.
Which was great…but what did you do with that? That wasn’t a date—it was an ambush.
By Friday morning, after a sleepless night, Scarlett decided she could take it no more. She planted herself on the floor outside of the bathroom door while Spencer was getting ready for work. If he wanted to ignore her, he would have to step over her.
Spencer finally emerged in his work clothes. He didn’t see her at first because he was toweling off his head.
“Remember me?” she asked. She stretched herself wide, blocking his way as best she could. “I’m your sister. The one you used to like.”
“Come on, Scarlett,” he grumbled. “I don’t have time.”
“This has to stop. Please.”