The Ghosts of the Omni Parker House: Where did Mr. Parker’s ghost go?

The Omni Parker House is one of three romantic historic hotels with haunted 10th floors. (The other two are The Skirvin Hilton in Oklahoma City and The Drake in Chicago.) However, the Omni Parker House may have the most active 10th floor of them all.

Even better, the Omni Parker House is very open about its restless spirits. The concierges keep a “Ghostly Encounters” handout handy for your reading pleasure if you care —or should I say, “dare”— to read it. In some cases, floor numbers are mentioned, in others specific room numbers are. Of the eight stories, half of them are about paranormal activity on the 10th floor.

When I wrote about how to conjure the spirit of Charles Dickens in the haunted mirror at the Omni Parker House for The Feminine Macabre, I dug out the “Ghostly Encounters” sheet to refresh my memory about all of their ghost stories. My favorite is the very last one.

The Apparition in Room 1012 at the Omni Parker House

Here’s how the story is written on the sheet:

A mother and a daughter were spending the night in Room 1012. The daughter awoke around daybreak to find a gentleman dressed in period garments of the latter 1800s standing at the end of her bed. The gentleman sported a large grin as if he was asking, “Are you enjoying your stay?” When she smiled back the gentleman gracefully disappeared. The woman was amazed to find the portrait of her nightly visitor hanging in the dining room when she went down to breakfast. It was the portrait of Harvey Parker.

Harvey Parker Ghost Sightings

As part of my research for my article in The Feminine Macabre, I also did a little quick Googling to see what other Omni Parker House ghost story info I might dig up. That’s how I came across Unpacked: A blog by Omni Hotels and Resorts. In 2016, they did a Haunted Hotels series. One of the hotels they featured was “Boston’s Omni Parker House.”

The post started with an excerpt from a 1992 Boston Globe interview with John Brehm, a longtime bellman, who said he first heard about the ghost of Harvey Parker when he started working at the hotel in 1941.

“They used to say he roamed the halls on the tenth floor annex. There were many stories, but one in particular happened around 1950. An elderly woman guest insisted she saw an apparition outside room 1078. At first it was a misty apparition in the air, then it turned toward her. She said it was a heavy set older man with a black mustache. He just looked at her, then faded away. She came downstairs, a bit jittery, and security went up to the tenth floor. They checked it out, but reported they could find nothing.”

But it was the next paragraph in the Unpacked’s blog post that particularly intrigued me:

To those who knew Harvey Parker, such sightings — which have not been reported for two decades now — could hardly come as a shock. A perfectionist who kept his hands in every detail of his restaurant and hotel operations, he played the ultimate host to ordinary folks and world-famous guests. A host, it would seem, who could never really bring himself to leave.

Does Harvey Parker’s ghost still haunt the Omni Parker House?

Is it a matter that he hasn’t been spotted at all, or that he has but no one has come forward to report seeing him?

I don’t know.

But it also makes me wonder about something I came across while researching whether the Guinness Book of World Records ever really did proclaim Pluckley the most haunted village. (Which they did in the 1989 edition, but never after that. They’ve since removed such categories because there’s no way to scientifically verify how many ghosts haunt a location —or whether ghosts even exist at all.)

Anyway, on the same page as the Pluckley info, there was a category next to it for “Most durable ghosts.”

It stated:

“Ghosts are not immortal and seem to deteriorate after 400 years. The most outstanding exception to their normal ‘half-life’ would be the ghosts of Roman soldiers thrice reported still marching through the cellars of the Treasurer’s House, York Minster, after nearly 19 centuries.”

Before that, I’d never heard that ghosts, like people, expire after a certain amount of time. But do they?

Again, I don’t know. (Heck, I’m still trying to figure out if they’re real or not!)

However, say that was true. Say they did expire after 400 years. Harvey Parker died in 1884. He’s only 136-years-old in ghost years. He should have at least another 200-250 years left.

Unless he expired early? Or perhaps followed someone home?

Or is he still there, quietly and anonymously watching, unnoticed?

Check-In

What do you think: are ghosts immortal or do you think they have expiration dates?

And if you ever stayed at the Omni Parker House and experienced paranormal activity, let me know!