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Photography: The Shelburne Hotel

One of the highlights of our recent trip was spending a night in the longest continuously operating hotel in Washington State, The Shelburne Hotel. After a few difficult days and missed connections, this place waited for us like a refuge.

It was our third time visiting and my first time staying in the most haunted room. You can read about our earlier experiences here:

An overturned truck on the freeway delayed our arrival, and we checked in 20 minutes before the small bar closed. I had been hoping to write in the bar drinking a cocktail called the Bee’s Knees, but instead only scribbled a few poetry lines on a napkin while drinking the renamed cocktail, The Bee Sting. How perfectly fitting for this trip.

The house has two attic bedrooms, both said to be haunted by a spirit named Nina. After our encounter in Room 6, we had been looking forward to what might happen in Room 5. However, after all the stuff the trip had thrown at us, we both felt pretty emotionally drained and just wanted to sleep before making the 10 hour drive home the next day.

The little nook my daughter was going to sleep in had a door in it (photo below) looking way too much like a Coraline door, so we ended up sleeping together in the main bed and blocking that door with the extra pillows.

The room, like most the house, has an old feeling and is filled with quirky things. I put white noise on my phone and collapsed almost immediately, too tired to really take it all in. Around 2 a.m. I woke because my white noise stopped. I looked around the room and saw nothing, but I heard what could only be described as a low moan. It wasn’t coming from my daughter, and I tried to tell my brain it was something outside…maybe a truck? It got louder.

“I can’t do it tonight,” I said out loud to the room. “I’m too sad and tired.”

The sound instantly stopped and the white noise turned back on. I went right back to sleep. It was probably a dream, but I like to think Nina was taking pity on me. The next morning I took a bath in the clawfoot bathtub and took a few photos outside in the beautiful garden.

This is the last photos from our trip, but I have some beach and camping photos coming your way in the next few days. Let me know if you have a favorite photo among these and have a fantastic weekend.

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  • These photos were taken with an Olympus OM-D and edited with ON1 Photo RAW.
  • For booking information, visit the Historic Shelburne Hotel

33 thoughts on “Photography: The Shelburne Hotel”

  5. What a brilliant place – just love the bar area and I’d happily spend hours there with a beer and a book. And yay for the spirits who seem to enjoy being around the visitors and appreciate being acknowledged. We have a spirit (Marie) here at Hamptonne Country Life Museum who is part of the furniture – she can be grumpy and needs to be spoken to nicely.

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    • It’s really a nice place! My mom lives about 20 minutes from the hotel and sometimes stops in for a drink or a meal. I wish I could spend an entire night just sitting there.

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    • It’s very spooky and old! I’ve stayed in three rooms now and had an experience in each. It’s in Seaview, which I think is about three hours from Seattle, it’s very near where my mom lives. They do special events around Halloween, including seances with the ghosts of the house, which your daughters might love.

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      • I just checked the maps: no wonder it’s spooky! I interviewed in Ilwaco on a Sunday morning decades ago and thought I had entered some Twilight Zone episode as I rolled through some of the densest fog I’ve seen in my life! (that includes San Fran, the foothills of the Cascades, and the plains of eastern Washington) The pasty, nervous interviewer didn’t help matters.

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  12. Reportorially, I like all of them. Artistically, #’s 2,3,4,10,11,13,16,19,21, which is still quite a few, now isn’t it? Thanks for the Washington memories, Bridgette! I’m looking forward to visiting my part of the state, Spokane a places north, next year. I’m hoping that ’27 or ’28 brings an extensive trip around the Puget Sound and the coast, including the San Juan Islands.

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