The Pink Lady of Grove Park Inn
Pink is one of my favorite colors - I have pink pillows and pink dresses and even pink alcohol. But one pink thing I haven’t claimed yet? A pink ghost. We’ve heard of white ladies (like Resurrection Mary), grey ladies, and even green ladies. But, when I read about the playful ghost that inhabits Room 545, I knew I had to dedicate a blog post to her and her story.
At the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina there is a guest who is decades late to her check-out. But, before we get to her..let’s start at how the Grove Park Inn came to be. In the early 20th century, health tourism was quite popular and thought to cure an impressive amount of grievances. One of these places was the rolling mountains of Western North Carolina, and one of these tourists was Edwin Wiley Grove.
Grove fell in love with Asheville and decided it could be a spot for tourists. So, he decided to build the Grove Park Inn. The Grove Park Inn was one of the most luxurious hotels of the age and opened its door in 1913. Shortly thereafter, it became a sought-after vacation spot. It hosted the likes of Harry Houdini and F. Scott Fitzgerald and, much more recently, former US President Obama.
Fast forward a few years, it is 1920 and the woman who would become the pink Lady is visiting the hotel. Although the Pink Lady’s identity has faded with the past, it is said she was a young woman who fell to her death from a balcony on the fifth floor. How did she manage to fall from the fifth floor? Like every good haunting, there are multiple explanations. Some say she was a scorned lover, others say she was a young socialite who accidentally slipped and fell while enjoying the evening.
Most sightings report her emanating a pink mist or, in some cases, donning a luxurious pink ball gown. Sometimes, she is simply a mist and not a full-bodied apparition.
The Pink Lady seems to appear most readily to children and enjoys playing and comforting them. She is also allegedly a bit of a prankster and enjoys turning on and off devices, lights, and even air conditioners. Some encounters even report being woken up by the young woman as she is tickling their feet!
Interestingly, one of the most infamous tales comes from a doctor staying at the inn. His children were so overjoyed at the attention of the young lady in the pink ball gown, who they thought was a hotel employee, that the doctor felt compelled to thank the staff. As he was checking out, he mentioned the woman and his children’s affection for her and received a blank stare from the staff. Of course, there was no employee in a pink ball gown...but some knew that there was a ghost.
So, now the blog and the podcast have featured white ladies, grey ladies, green ladies, and pink ladies...are there any other colorful ghosts I’m missing?
Let me know!