The ghost of Howard Hughes in Palm Springs
This is a real ghost story. It begins in the bar of the Triada Hotel in Palm Springs, California. The best ghost stories are always told in a bar, largely because there is booze involved and no one cares if you are telling the truth or if you are lying through your big fat teeth. That is if you still have any teeth left after telling big fat lies all your life, you lying bozo. This particular story is about the ghost of Howard Hughes chasing Marilyn Monroe around room 233 in the Triada, which surely sounds like BS but of course I always say you need a photo to prove the story, and this time I do. Trust me on this. Would I ever lie to you?
Before we arrive in Palm Springs, let’s step back a moment and cast a glance at other apparitions, spirits and other ephemera found in other locations I have encountered in my trips around the world. My favourite ghost story was told to me just outside of the kitchen at the historic Hat Creek Ranch in the Cariboo region of British Columbia. I always love it when people in the tourism business tell you ghost stories when they don’t really want to do so for one reason or another, mainly because they may get fired for doing so. Why? Perhaps the hotel or resort owner doesn’t think guests will want to sleep in a room where an apparition might drop by for a visit overnight and give you a heart attack. Bad for business, you see. Dead people don’t pay their bills.
That was not the case at Hat Creek Ranch. One of the ranch employees, an animator posing as a horse and carriage ticket agent from the 1850’s for the benefit of visitors, wanted to tell me the story but admitted he didn’t have visual proof. He saw the incident happen himself but a video camera was not available at the time. A ghost, which several other people apparently witnessed, emerged from the kitchen and emanated enough energy to blow a picnic table 30 feet across the lawn. Boy, I sure wish I was there to shoot video of that. You could sell that footage and get rich. I have a video clip of him telling me the story but a video clip of a guide talking about seeing a ghost is not the same thing as seeing the ghost yourself, is it? No need to answer that, so let’s move on.
The Triada Hotel is located in the former “Movie Colony” district of Palm Springs, California. I was there on a press trip, mainly to write about family attractions in the Palm Springs area for Canadian newspapers. Boy, did I feel foolish when we got there. It turns out that the town is mostly gay, with a gay mayor and a gay city council. I think they let heterosexuals like me live there because the gays are so open minded, but I don’t know if they allow them to vote. Evidently heterosexual people are known as “breeders” and they do bizarre things like have children, often just for fun. Since the world is overpopulated, I can see the point the gays may have, but it did make me feel like a distinct minority and especially foolish for planning to write about family holiday options. Personally, I blame the Palm Springs Tourism Board for not doing their homework.
Apparently strange things often happen in the old Movie Colony district of Palm Springs, and especially in the past before the district went downhill before its recent transformation into a hip design arts location. This is the neighbourhood where 1950’s Hollywood movie stars came to escape the attention of the media in Los Angeles, especially the sleazy photographers now known as paparazzi who will follow people home and take surreptitious photos of your bicuspids if you aren’t careful and don’t keep the blinds closed. If you are famous, sleazy, forget to wear your underwear in public, or have been recently arrested, the Hollywood paparazzi will sure be there to take your picture and sell it to a sleazy magazine. You have been warned.
Let’s be honest here and admit the Movie Colony is where the stars actually came to party and escape attention because there were few paparazzi around at the time and it was too far for the sleazy photo-swine to drive to Palm Springs, and I’m not sure if there was air conditioning in cars those days. The old neighbourhood, now deprived of aging movie stars but suddenly hip, was being re-branded as the Uptown Design District when I arrived to make my mark. Right around the corner from the Triada hotel, movie aficionados with a map can wander through the Movie Colony where Howard Hughes hid out when he was in town and you can see where Bob Hope holidayed at 1011 El Alameda and Frank Sinatra partied at 1145 Via Colusa. The houses are surprisingly modest, which either means movie stars didn’t get paid as much in the old days or they were too cheap to blow their dough on expensive mansions. The ranch style house where Old Blue Eyes used to hang out was very modest but at least it had a Porsche in the driveway. I was tempted to ring the bell and take a photo but it could be the current resident was armed so I didn’t take the risk.
The newly refurbished Triada Hotel finds itself at the heart of the action in the Design District. The building was originally built by the wife of 1950s movie star Alan Ladd, who you may have forgotten because the 1950s are a long time ago but like all movie stars he made a lot of money or enough for his wife to build a hotel. In his case, instead of Ladd blowing it all on women and booze, his wife had gotten her mitts on his money and invested wisely. The Triada had gone downhill or maybe it was that the heart of downtown Palm Springs had moved south, but the hotel had been recently bought, totally rebuilt and lovingly refurbished. With its whitewashed adobe walls, palm trees and swimming pool the pretty little boutique hotel looked like the perfect setting for a Hotel California video. You know, the Eagles song: “You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave….”
But you can’t check in to any hotel first thing in the morning before they have had a chance to change the sheets and disguise what transgressions had transpired the night before, so in advance of my assignments to visit any family attractions the Tourism Board had arranged a quick tour of the downtown area. My guide was Reggie Cameron, who apparently knew everybody in town and everybody knew Reggie, which certainly turned out to be the case and proved quite the door opener. I must admit I had been flatfooted and caught unawares by the fact that the town was a gay haven. Normally I do my research in advance, but googling “Palm Springs family attractions” had not provided any advance warnings about the town’s demographics.
San Francisco where I used to live many years ago may be “gay friendly” but in Palm Springs gay may now be “gay mandatory.” Our first stop was Lulu’s California Bistro, a modern restaurant glistening with glass and chandeliers. I snuck a quick peek to see if Liberace was hanging out, or his ghost. Ultra chic. We wandered around the corner to Arenas Road, described by Reggie as the heart of the gay community. He took me into a couple of gay bars, trying to shock me I assume, but it was too early in the day for drinking or dancing. No one paid us any attention and the bars were mostly old men too busy chatting to pay any attention to visiting travel writers from Canada on assignment to write about family attractions.
Reggie and I popped into several cafes and restaurants and stores, all gay owned and operated and it was obvious that the 1950s retro design theme had been adopted everywhere. The town fathers (if “fathers”) is the right word) were turning back the clock. Sammy Davis and Franck Sinatra would approve. My guess is that is that if any town is full of gay people then there will be many fashion designers in the crowd. As far as Palm Springs being re-invented as a tourist destination, the design was working. Far better being retro than fake Bavarian, I think.
By late afternoon it was safe to return to the Triada, bedsheets having been replaced or whatever it is they do with hotel rooms when there is nobody in them. Checking in, we were surprised to learn the hotel had just re-opened the day before and we were the first guests. No one had informed me in advance of this event, although the Palm Springs Tourism Board had mentioned the hotel was being “refurbished.” Also, no one had informed the staff that the first guest would be a travel writer from Canada, which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the situation.
Should the staff be forewarned about the fact that a review in the newspaper would be forthcoming there might be a chance of a bottle of champagne on ice left in the room. As we all know, the first rule of journalism is “never pay for your own drinks.” But we were in luck. To celebrate the opening of the hotel, the concierge introduced us to the bartender who introduced us to a cocktail of his own design and all was well with the world.
Having enjoyed the libation, I took the opportunity to mention to the bartender the fact that I was in town for an assignment, not necessarily to visit half the gay-owned establishments downtown because I had already done that, but to visit some family attractions if there were any, just making small talk in the hope of a second libation being offered. Apparently no one had told the bartender that it was against the rules to mention any ghosts to guests or travel writers, because in the recitation of the names of all the famous movie stars and rich people who had stayed at the Triada in its old glory days he happened to mention both Howard Hughes and Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn, in fact, practically lived at the Triada because she was hounded and followed all the time in Los Angeles and she liked to escape to the desert. Howard, for his part, “liked” Marilyn and liked to follow her to Palm Springs when she was escaping Tinseltown. None of this was known to me but I nodded at all the famous names anyway, some of which I actually remembered.
Somewhere along the line the subject of ghosts came about. I don’t remember how that happened. I am not in the custom of inquiring from the staff of hotels or resorts where I stay if there are any ghostly apparitions lingering about the premises that I should look out for. There is a market for stories like that but I wasn’t in the habit of writing them, mostly because when I go to bed at night it is for sleeping, and worrying that a ghost might wander into the room and tap me on the shoulder is not conducive to restfulness.
“Howard Hughes used to be Marilyn Monroe’s boyfriend?” I asked. “I never heard of that.”
The bartender was not sure if romance had played a big role in their relationship. It may be that there were other factors at play, like Hughes being one of the richest men in the world and Monroe being a sexy movie star, but we are beginning to digress. Yes, Hughes used to follow Monroe to Palm Springs and stay in the Triada and Monroe made room 233 her home away from home. Hughes was a frequent visitor to her room, although this was not public knowledge at the time due to the paparazzi problem. Also, admitted the bartender, it was not public knowledge that the ghost of Hughes could often be spotted lingering in room 233 because, if so, it might be that no one would want to book the room, which would be bad for business. On the other hand, if I wanted to write about ghosts, it might also be good for business. Who knew? It was hard to say.
“How do you know there is a ghost in room 233?” I asked, like journalists are often known to do when presented with information that appears to be BS. “Who told you that?”
“When the hotel was being refurbished the workers noticed it and told the chambermaids, who told me,” he said triumphantly, trumping my cynicism with his bravado. “I’ve even see the ghost myself. I even took a photograph.”
“Oh, come on now, you are pulling my leg,” I replied indignantly. “You can’t take a photograph of a ghost. No one is going to believe that.”
“Sure you can,” he replied, pulling out his camera from behind the bar. “I have it here on a memory chip. I just took it yesterday. I’ll make you a copy on the printer.”
So he did. After all, as I always say, you can’t tell an unbelievable story unless you have the photo as proof that you aren’t lying. The image is quite clear, a fat-bellied man leaning over the bed, but who is to say that the ghost is of Howard Hughes? It definitely was taken in room 233 but it could have been any fat old geezer. No matter what, though, I must admit it is the first time I have ever seen a photo of a ghost. I took a photo of the photo but promised the bartender I would never write a story about it, so you certainly won’t be hearing anything from me about the ghost of Howard Hughes in Room 233 the Triada Hotel, and please don’t go around telling anyone that I have been to half the gay bars in Palm Springs because that’s not true either. It was only a couple.