27/06/2021
I’m going to introduce you to the small town of Holly Michigan.
A town nestled quietly off of the railway to flint Michigan, this small town has ghostly frights aplenty. This was one of the many towns constructed to transport goods to the upper part of the wild frontier that was the Great Lake state.
The hotel was built for travelers to find respite on the long journey north. Built in 1891, it was originally called the Hirst Hotel.
The first proprietor of the hotel was John Hirst. With more than 25 trains passing through Holly daily, there were many passengers and freighters brought into the village. The hotel is a Queen Anne style structure, with three-stories of scaled, red brick, and a hip-roof. In 1913, after a small fire which damaged the original porch, the present Tuscan-style column porch was added to the north side. The octagonal corner tower is perhaps the most architecturally distinct part of the hotel. The inside was redecorated to a Victorian style after the first fire. In the early 1900s, “the Holly Hotel was the hub of social activity”. Travelers, salesmen, and social groups alike used the public meet ing rooms while stopped in Holly. On Sundays, there was a formal dinner at the hotel typically preceded by a show at the opera house one block south the the Holly Hotel.
Carry Nation paid the historic hotel a visit in 1908, invading the hotel and clubbing the patrons, very upset about Holly not upholding the law as Oakland County was “dry” at the time. In the 1980s, the Holly Hotel began to celebrate Ms. Nation’s visit in an annual celebration of food, reenactment, and specials on alcoholic beverages. Many events led to the decline of the use of the hotel in the mid-1900s, such as the Great Depression, World Wars I and II, and the elimination of train travel through the town for passenger trains. The Holly Hotel survived, though, unlike many of the businesses around it, like the opera house down the block.
January 1978, there was another fire in the hotel, this time almost making it impossible for any of the original structure to remain standing; there was talk of demolishing the hotel. But through the half a million dollars in damages and two years of renovations, the Holly Hotel was restored. All parts of the hotel that could be saved were saved: the original staircase railing can now be seen behind the bar.
In 1989, a professor parapsychologist and ghost hunter named Norman Gauthier visited the Holly Hotel and deemed it “loaded with spirits”. As of the 1990s, the Ghost Hunters of Southern Michigan have been making annual trips to “ghost hunt”. Examples of “sightings” are the materialization of Hirst, music drifting through the hotel with no one playing, moving objects, and a mysterious Indian spirit hovering in the dining room.
Many Michiganders who’ve stayed in this frightful horror hotel have claimed to see the spectral guests who never seemed to check out.
