When I was twelve, I found a hotel.

Ramona Hotel, circa 1908

This is a photo of the hotel in it’s infancy. Eventually two annexes would be added to it’s rear, one in 1940, and one in 1956, which if combined would be a good deal larger than the original building shown here. Condemned as a fire hazard in 1981, and finally torn down in 1996.

The town I grew up in is on the north side of what is known as Little Traverse Bay, on lake Michigan…which is accompanied by a sister city directly across from it, on the south side of the bay. The view of each city from the other is quite exquisite, particularly at night, and draws a lot of tourism to the area…tourism that happened to peak almost a century ago, before all but dying off with the Great Depression (it wasn’t until the early 1990s that it began to flourish once again as an industry). In it’s prime, however, there were a number of these massive victorian hotels in the area, most of which succumbed to fire…but the few in-town ones that survived were generally gutted, renovated, and put to use in other ways. One, however, was completely abandoned to rot after it closed.

It was built more or less in the middle of nowhere…along a stretch of shoreline that was largely uninhabited due to the relatively "newer" highway’s course farther inland, and the abandonment of the old windy lower shore road to the cyclists and sight-seers. I had always been able to see the old hotel from across the water, whenever I was grocery or clothing shopping with my mother in the southern city, but I had never actually known what it was until I stumbled upon it by accident in a moment of brave boundary-pushing exploration.

From the southern coastal city, my town was easily visible; a small scattering of dark man-made shapes leaning up against the water. Between the town and the beachy crook of the bay’s western elbow, there was nothing to be seen but an endless stream of forest lining the lake front…nothing, save one odd and enormous building. Now, it wasn’t the fact that this single structure easily dwarfed all of the buildings from the nearby town that made it stand out, nor the fact that it was surrounded by nothing but wilderness…it was the the fact that the roof of this odd monolith was painted bright blood red, and the entire area seemed to radiate a lonesome isolated quality, even from all the way across the water. Stranger still, at night, when the small gray shapes of the harbor exchanged themselves for darkness and twinkling lights, the old hotel exchanged it’s bloody roof for darkness, and darkness only. Seeing it always from a great distance, I wasn’t quite prepared for the degree of degradation and disrepair that the building would reveal from up-close…and my initial impression of it will forever be seared into my memory.

I do not recall if it was my intention to find the building when I set out that day, or if I simply made an on-the-spot decision to continue on down the road past my previous boundary…but once I reached the ancient moss-covered stone basins that lurked in the forest and accommodated the creek, for one reason or another I decided to continue on down the windy road, and into unfamiliar territory.

The sidewalk and houses ended near the stone ruins, but the road that continued on was narrow and bore little traffic. I made my way carefully, full of the excitement and wonder that comes with pressing out beyond one’s previously staked boundaries, and well before I expected to see, well, anything at all of interest, the dark woods surrounding the road opened up into a field as the road hooked a sharp 90 degree left turn. Going straight, however, was somewhat possible, but generally out of the question, as the strange driveway that continued on in that direction was blocked by a single hanging chain with a NO TRESPASSING sign dangling from it slightly off center. This I saw first, and came to a complete stop at, before I even noticed the beast that the odd gate concealed.

The driveway was gray cement, much different from the black asphalt of the road, and it looked like it hadn’t seen the wheels of a vehicle in many years. Deep cracks ran through it in all places, and large patches of tall grass grew straight up from the cracks. The white wooden posts which held the chain were modest enough, and as I sat on my bike seat and peered down the old forgotten driveway, my eyes finally noticed what lurked behind it. The roof of the hotel, you see, was so tall that it exceeded even the tops of the trees…but when at last I broke my concentration from the shapes towards the end of the old driveway, and looked up, past the patch of green that had previously been my ceiling on the world, the enormous ghostly spire of the hotel’s main tower loomed down at me. Empty. Hollow. Hideous. The windows were black holes, and dark stains ran down from their sills like loathsome mascara tears. Everything about it seemed wrong; from the broken driveway, to the way the trees seemed to hide the bulk of the structure, and I was somewhat mortified by the overall sense of magnificent decay that loomed before me.

I left my bike at the gate, and climbed sheepishly over the chain. Each step I made down the long driveway threatened to buckle beneath me, as though strolling under water through a nightmare…but my curiosity, never the less, compelled me forward. I passed under the first grove of trees that had originally blocked my view, and paused to gape at the entire monstrosity. It sprawled upwards and outwards, endlessly, like a vast wooden castle; small peaks and spires lining the sinister red roof at odd sinking angles. Trees grew thickly on the left side of it, and branches collided with the fourth story windows…a great gaping hole in the side of the building, masked by the shade of the imposing tree cover. Never in my life have I seen a haunted building in a horror movie that has ever even come close to the kind of intrinsic terror that the old Ramona possessed in it’s sheer size and eccentric existence.

The grounds in which it resided were just as terribly wrong as the building itself; once lush gardens now overrun with vines and growth; smaller buildings, here and there, with plywood doors and broken windows; and a great stone fountain, still gushing water, at the end of the drive…providing the only ambient noise around. Near the building itself, in the tall woods, I could make out the shape of an old rusty water tower, with a piece of metal hanging down from the center of it. The whole area bore the atmosphere of Ms. Havisham’s mansion grounds in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations,

though at the time I had yet to discover that wonderful tale.

I approached the fountain first, as the cracked cement driveway eroded completely into earth around it, and I peered inside. Unlike other fountains in town, there were no pennies at the bottom of this one…only a black-moss bottom, with streaks of baby blue along the sides where the original stone bowl could still be seen. The spring water shot straight up the center of it, from a pipe, in a large bubbling plume, and spilled over one of the sides of the fountain to the ground, where it oozed off into the thriving brush.

The fountain was as far as I desired to go that day, and I quickly ran back to my bicycle and pedaled home, awe struck. I would forever carry with me the desire to seek out and appreciate such places; the hallowed ground of grandiose decay and ruin; places and things once valued and useful, but at present all but forgotten…the last sinking remnants of joy from ages gone by.

Colored postcard, circa 1941