The Hotel Captain Cook’s Haunted Bathroom: A Case of a Possessive Potty Poltergeist

November 19 is World Toilet Day. It’s not one of the days the Skeleton Crew and I track on our Weird Holidays & Observances page. So how did it come to my attention? It showed up on my iPhone’s calendar of all places.

I’m not sure how it got there. If it was something I had to do to put it there, I don’t remember doing it.

I’m chalking it up to kismet, because it’s the reason I’m finally writing about one of the four spookiest ghost stories from the Ghost Tours of Anchorage: The Last Stall on the Left. (Which was actually my favorite ghost story of them all.)

It takes place in one of the Hotel Captain Cook’s public women’s restrooms. (A perfect story for World Toilet Day, right?)

Where’s Your Restroom?

We stayed at the Hotel Captain Cook as part of the land tour of our Alaskan cruise. We arrived the day before the tour started. We stayed across the street at the less expensive Voyager Inn the first night.

We had to check out of the Voyager at noon. Since it was too early to check in to the Hotel Captain Cook, we checked our luggage with the concierge.

While we were there, I asked if she could tell me how far the Ghost Tours of Anchorage was from the hotel. I wanted to take it that night.

As she marked the meet up spot on a map, she said, “I’ve done it. It’s really interesting. You’ll even get to come back through the hotel.”

“You have a ghost here?” I asked, excited. Amazingly I hadn’t done my haunted hotel due diligence before we left. (Don’t revoke my paranormal tourist card!)

“Supposedly the women’s bathroom is. But I’ve never seen anything. And I use it all the time.” She nodded in the direction of the signs which pointed to the public restrooms on the next level down.

“So none of the rooms are haunted?”

“Not that I know of,” she said, shaking her head. “But the bathroom…Well, like I said. I’ve never experienced anything, but they’ll definitely fill you in about it on the tour.”

That’s all she’d say. I couldn’t get anything else out of her. I was dying to know more.

Since my husband had to take a work call, guess where’s the first place I went to explore?

The Bathroom

From the outside, it looked harmless enough. Normal. Nothing spooky or paranormal.

But when I stepped through the doors…wow.

Very posh. Wasn’t expecting to find such a grand, elegantly decorated bathroom.

Other than thinking it was pretty nice looking, I didn’t get a sense of foreboding or anything. But I snapped pictures just in case. You never know what might appear upon later review, right?

In this case, I was happy I took a photo of the stalls from the angle that I did. Not because it later revealed anything ghostly or paranormal. But it did confirm something I’d learn on the tour…

The Hotel’s Towers

To my delight, the hotel’s ghost story was the second stop on the tour. (I was happy I didn’t have to wait until the end to hear one of the stories I was most curious about.)

Anyway, our guide, Richard, gave us a little history about the Hotel Captain Cook’s creation before we went in. It was built by Walter J. Hickel, a former Alaska governor.

Today it has three towers, which houses everything from its 546 rooms and suites to restaurants, shops and an athletic club. But it all started with the first tower opening in 1965.

I’m not sure if they always planned to add on more towers or not, but they did. The second went up in 1972. The third in 1978.

It was the night of the second tower’s grand opening that tragedy befell the Hotel Captain Cook.

The Suicide

Richard explained that an angry young woman decided to take her own life following the hotel’s second tower grand opening festivities.

I don’t recall, and I’m not even sure Richard knew, if she was upset with the hotel for some reason, or someone connected with it. All I remember him saying was she was upset.

Well obviously she wasn’t happy since she shot herself.

I can’t remember if he said her body wasn’t found until the next morning or at two a.m. Or if she shot herself at two a.m.

Maybe those details don’t really matter. The point is, she committed suicide in the women’s restroom of Tower Two and now it seems her spirit haunts the bathroom.

Rumor has it that the ghost, often described by those who have seen her as a “woman in white” (though there’s no indication she died while wearing white), is often spotted in or near that bathroom.

However, she’s particularly possessive of the last stall on the left.

Activity in the Last Stall on the Left

Over the years, women using the bathroom, but especially ones using that stall in particular, have reported varying levels of paranormal activity in the bathroom. On the mild end, there was feelings of uneasiness or feelings of being watched.

Ramping it up a little bit, some women reported feeling sick after a visit to the Hotel Captain Cook’s loo. Some reportedly even fainted afterwards.

In fact, Richard warned us women to be nice when we entered the ghost’s domain. (Because he gave all of us curious ladies a chance to go explore the last stall on the left.)

Apparently the ghost doesn’t take kindly to strong personalities. Richard said it wasn’t uncommon on his tours over the years for women with big personalities to go in making a ruckus only to come out and end up feeling sick or to faint later.

I wasn’t too sure about all of that (but I wasn’t about to act up to test the theory).

On the more aggressive end, the ghost has done things like violently shaking the stall walls and even grabbing toilet users by their ankles.

I don’t know about you, but I’d be glad to be on the toilet if the walls started shaking. Even if I was only there to do number 1, I’m pretty sure that’d squeak out a number 2. And forget being grabbed by my ankles. I’m not sure I’d even bother with toilet paper in a mad scramble to evacuate the premises.

It was actually a woman who experienced the ankle grab and the shaking walls who was the catalyst for why the last stall on the left is permanently out of use.

How To Appease an Angry Ghost

The woman was personal friends with a Hickel family member in charge of hotel operations at the time of her experience.

The Operations Manager decided enough was enough. She didn’t know if there was any truth to any of the ghost stories, but something had to be done. So she started paying visits to the ghost.

From time to time she’d go down (and perhaps even still does to this day) and talk with her. Fill her in on hotel happenings and such.

It seemed to appease the spirit. Guests reporting spooky incidents dropped. But they still happened.

The Operations Manager decided to accommodate both the ghost and guests alike by ordering that the stall’s door would always remain closed.

That didn’t always happen though. Was the ghost opening it? Like how she is said to sometimes turn on and off the lights?

Or did the cleaning people sometimes forget to shut it back up?

How to make sure the stall stayed closed? The Operations Manager had an idea…

Permanently Locked

Richard told us the door was now permanently bolted shut.

That’s why I was glad I had the initial photos that I did of the bathroom. After hearing that door is always closed, I wanted to check and see if I could tell if it was shut when I’d visited it earlier that day.

Yep.

So of course I had to see if it was in fact permanently bolted closed.

Again, yep.

One Lingering Question

Okay, maybe more than one. I took an over the door shot of the actual stall itself. I couldn’t help but notice what was in the bowl.

I’m assuming it’s toilet bowl cleaner.

Which it probably is. Which makes me wonder: how often does that stall get cleaned? How do they do it? Crawl under the door? Balance on the toilet next to it and hang over?

How do they decide who the unlucky soul is who will clean it? Or is it a brave soul who volunteers for the task?

The fact the cleaner color was green also struck me as funny. Images of Slimer ran through my head.

Because, like I said, I’m only assuming that’s toilet bowl cleaner…

Boo-k The Hotel Captain Cook

Boo-k from Expedia or Hotels.com.