Spooky Experience at a Haunted Hotel

My wife and I took our newly 21 year old daughter to Deadwood & Rapid City last weekend for her birthday celebration. Deadwood was awesome. Gambled & drank too much, ate WAY too much crab at the buffet and generally had a pretty good time. Deadwood is such a fun, relatively close (4.5 hr) drive to Billings and we try to get down there every couple of years for a quick getaway. (P.S. Enter 103.7 The Hawks Destination Relaxation contest and if you win, we'll pay $600 for your own getaway.)

We stayed two nights in Deadwood and then wrapped up our stay at the historic Alex Johnson Hotel in the heart of downtown Rapid City. This old hotel is supposedly one of the most haunted buildings in South Dakota. SyFy's Ghost Hunters even came to check it out a few years ago.

Room 812 is supposedly the most haunted. Luck of the draw, we were assigned room 818. I did my best to get my wife and kid spooked out, rehashing the alleged sightings and the scary tales of creepiness that have supposedly taken place in the hotel. We then go out for dinner and drinks and come back to go to bed.

I fell asleep/pass out immediately (too many rooftop bar cocktails). I woke up once or twice in the middle of the night but didn't see or hear anything supernatural. In the morning, my wife starts telling me about some guy who came into our daughter's room last night! Our room was a two-bedroom suite, but it had two entry doors - both numbered 818 - with a bathroom connecting the two bedroom areas.

For some reason, the front desk had mistakenly given this gentleman (and his dog) a key to our room. And he walked right in around 10:30 pm.  The next morning, after some pretty serious confusion with the front desk, the issue was resolved and they ended up discounting a portion of our room rate. My daughter had just finished changing clothes when he marched right into the room. If he had walked in on her naked, I would have been raising holy hell at the front desk.

So, no. We didn't see any ghosts. But we left Rapid City feeling pretty spooked.