THE TARTAN

It all began on the night of January 12th. My family and I were laying in the over-layered hotel bed in a state of DEEP boredom. It was our last night (so we thought) staying in the tundras on Minnesota, so we didn’t want it to go to waste. We had heard recent talk about The Grand Kahler Hotel, which was built in 1921. My family and I just so happened to be staying at the hotel branched off from The Grand Kahler, instead named Kahler Inn & Suites. Given, this was my mom’s second stay here as part of her stem cell transplant (peep my last article for info), I had heard a lot of notions made about the OG Kahler hotel. My mom and eldest sister continued to inform me that, apparently, the hotel gave them nothing but the creeps. So,  naturally I decided to conduct my own research. I first began by typing in “The Grand Kahler haunted” in Google and what I found immediately put me in a state of shook.

    “4th ‘Most Haunted’ in The U.S.” uMmMm… excuse me? This then led to one of my greatest findings. If you like Brach candy, this next part should intrigue you. In 1977, Helen BRACH visited and stayed at the Kahler hotel, while there for a checkup at the Mayo Clinic. Brach proceeded to her appointment, paid the bill then checked out. She was last seen at the gift shop within the clinic, which was later revealed as the last place she was ever seen. Seven years pass, and Helen Brach was eventually pronounced legally dead. Furthermore, come to find out that the top (11th) floor used to be an OR room as apart of the Mayo Clinic and even worse,the basement was a morgue. You’re intrigued now, aren’t you? I hope so, but I am continuing regardless.

    So the moment finally comes and we are walking across the street to enter this replica of The Shining. The atmosphere was creepy right from the start as we went straight for the elevators. Keep in mind, my brother-in-law was filming our adventure from the second we walked through the front doors. We wanted to make sure we had evidence if anything suspicious happened. Our first approach was obviously the top floor, as it now is a renovated pool room. In case you didn’t know, water is a medium for spirits…. Coincidence? I think not. Well, to our unfortunate luck the elevators would not even let us press any floor past 9. We decided to just go there and see what we could find. To our (not very) surprise, the halls are CREEPY. Let me just tell you that not once did I ever feel alone in that building. We looked around and it felt as these halls were never ending rows of dark brown doors. The walls were crisp 50s style, only about two windows on each hall covered in layers of curtains, quite a distance from one another. The worst part was that there were 2 full size mirrors on the wall, both a rose gold tint… odd. We took photos in these mirrors specifically with flash to see if we could pick up any unusual activity.

    Continuing this ghost hunt on a mission to find our girl Helen and see what spirits really reside here, we come to realize all emergency exits/ doors to stairwells were NO REENTRY! Meaning they would lock behind you. The 9th floor elevator wouldn’t even take us the the 11th floor, but only the 10th? We decided to go anyway. We see pretty much an identical set up as the ninth floor but this time, we found a staircase to the top floor. We began fangirling and as we begin walking, we get to the door of the pool room and a sudden wave hits me. I began sweating profusely and became very lightheaded, as if I was going to pass out. Will felt the same. We took a moment to regain our real motives here and continued to the door. It was locked and we tried about everything to get through. No such luck.

We then decided we were not leaving this building until we saw the top floor. We go to the lobby where Will proceeds to ask the front desk woman how to get to the pool room. She gave us instructions, no questions asked.. She was the real MVP for that. We get back to the door until we accepted the fact that we needed an actual hotel room key. Just as we were losing faith, our miracle appeared right in front of us, literally. We walk out and to our surprise, we pass a couple with their two little grandkids…. All in their swimsuits. You can already imagine the smirks we had on our face. We approach this adorable family and ask if we could use them to get into the pool room. Will and I fronted as siblings that had just checked in that earlier evening and heard much about the pool  but forgot our key to get in. Of course they said yes (they were the nicest people).

Finally, the moment we’d been waiting for. We enter the pool room… let me just tell you, this was the eeriest pool room I’d ever seen. Aside from beautiful, it was barely lighted with dim bulbs, the room was giant. All. Windows. You could see the city around you. We walked towards the pool and then towards the deep end where you look up and see this unique sky dome with a direct view of the red neon lighted “Grand Kahler” sign. It was huge, yet very odd. I then began to take my phone out for the first time and naturally take a snapchat video of this view. Note, as stated Will was taking videos the WHOLE time! For my fellow snapchat users, we know that you can set up your ‘memories’ to automatically save to your camera roll… well, I have that. So I left the video on my screen with plans to post it when I had time. We quickly left after getting our evidence with a slight relief to be leaving. We get back to our hotel come to find every. Video. Was. gone. How coincidental is that? Both phones, all films were gone… even from recently deleted.

Will and I plan to book a room on the 11th floor sometime this summer, we will keep you updated if that ever happens… But for now I want you to ponder about the real ghost adventure I’ve been on. The end.

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Here are some photos of the building and one of my personal photos featuring a dot (who I believe to be Helen) on my leg. Enjoy…