Claremont Resort & Club

The Claremont is the enormous white resort on the hill above the Berkeley–Oakland line — locals call it the castle on the hill — and the ghost guests keep asking about isn't a frightening one. She's a girl, maybe six years old.

The story goes that she sits on the edge of the bed and gently touches a sleeper's arm, the way a child wakes a parent on a quiet morning. At night, people on the fourth floor report hearing her giggle somewhere down the hall. Historic Hotels of America, which put the Claremont on its list of the most haunted hotels in the country, described it the same way: "she has visited them at night and gently reached out as if to say 'hello.'"

Nobody can say who she is. The accounts tie her to a single room on the fourth floor — usually given as 422, though some coverage points to 442 — and that whole floor is the named hot spot. Flickering lights. Televisions switching on by themselves. The smell of smoke in rooms where no one is allowed to smoke. Elevators that move between floors with no one aboard and no button pressed — a former employee of several years backed that one up. One couple in the active room said the night sounded like an active construction zone; the next day they were told both rooms beside theirs had been empty.

The building has the bones for a story. The site held an English-style castle built in the 1870s, until a wildfire burned it down on July 14, 1901. The resort that replaced it opened in 1915.

Here's the strange part. The hotel runs its own Halloween tour, and it doesn't lead with the girl at all — it leads with a woman in a high-necked Victorian dress, said to have died of a broken heart after her daughter eloped. "We think she just doesn't want to leave her castle on the hill," the guide says.

Two ghosts, same building. The hotel keeps the woman. The guests keep finding the child.