Spirits in the Night: The Hotel Saranac has it's Stories

Paranormal Activity Recorded at the Last of the Grand Hotels in Saranac Lake

SARANAC LAKE, N.Y. – Goblins, ghosts and other spirits of the night all promise to be wandering the streets of Saranac Lake on Halloween night. Of course, most will be children dressed in costume for the occasion.

But deep in the bowels of the Hotel Saranac, there may be a sighting of a distinguished man dressed in a black suit with tails and top hat. People will tell you the man is Howard Littell. And, no, he’s not in costume.

Saranac Lake’s high school once stood on the grounds where the Hotel Saranac currently is located and the dearly departed Littell was the superintendent of schools for close to 35 years. Littell was known for roaming the high school’s hallways and keeping the students in line.
The high school moved in 1926 and the Hotel Saranac was built on that land the following year. Littell moved on with the new high school, but apparently his spirit didn’t; people have claimed to have seen him wandering the halls of the hotel, perhaps looking to keep a stray student in line.
A ghost tale? Maybe. But Damon Jacobs and his team from the Adirondack Park Paranormal Society (A.P.P.S.) will tell you otherwise. The A.P.P.S. team did a paranormal investigation of the Hotel Saranac over two days and its recently released findings are, well, a little spooky.

Apparitions detected on photos taken during the investigation, electronic voice phenomenon picked up on recorders and personal interactions with spirits during the team’s two nights inside the Hotel led to this conclusion:

“The Hotel Saranac does, in this team’s professional opinion, contain spiritual energy.”

None of this should be surprising to people familiar with Saranac Lake. Long-known for its treatment of tuberculosis from the late 1800s to the middle of the 20th century, the village has had its share of ghost stories associated with people who were treated there.

The Hotel Saranac was among the many grand hotels populating Saranac Lake during the time when people came from around the country to be treated for tuberculosis. Now, it is the only one left and is in the midst of extensive renovations by the Roedel Companies. When completed, the Hotel Saranac will be restored to its full glory.

The Roedel Companies invited A.P.P.S. to do the investigation. Fred B. Roedel III, managing member and chief financial officer of the Roedel Companies, has made a home in the area and is fully aware of the ghost stories of Saranac Lake and the paranormal activity reported inside the Hotel Saranac.

“We thought it would be great to bring those stories to life,” Roedel said. “We love the character it adds to a hotel that already has great character.”
Susan Murphy-Goff said the two days back inside the Hotel Saranac as part of the A.P.P.S. team was like a homecoming. She worked at the hotel for five years and experienced frequent paranormal activity, including brushes with the spirit of the cat believed to belong to Emily Balsam, a long-term resident who died in her room in 1983.

“It was kind of exciting because it reinforced what I heard and saw back then,” Murphy-Goff said. “Now we have physical evidence to back it up.”
Every floor seems to have a story, from the sightings near the ballroom on the second floor of Frances Peroni, who taught there when the hotel was owned by Paul Smith College, to the scratching of Emily Balsam’s cat on the third floor. There is the little girl who supposedly walks the halls of the fourth floor, singing that can be heard on the sixth floor and, of course, signs that Howard Littell is still roaming the basement of the building.
Jacobs, whose team also puts on a haunted house at the Saranac Lake train depot, said the Hotel Saranac is haunted, but that’s not a bad thing. In the final comments of their report, Jacobs and the A.P.P.S team said “the energy is not harmful or dangerous to staff or guest.”

“They just want to be recognized,” Murphy-Goff said. “They want to reclaim the last moments before they died.”

Jacobs and his team are eager to return when the Hotel Saranac’s doors re-open, excited at the possibilities of re-connecting with the spirits they encountered during their initial investigation. “I think (the paranormal activity) will be much more settled because the hotel will back to the way it was,” Jacobs said.

Even the spirits are sure to be impressed with the new look of the Hotel Saranac.