When Sunday’s Columbian covered the passing of some venerable businesses, Pat Jollota offered her thoughts as a chronicler of local history.
Erin Middlewood’s story was sparked by the closure of the landmark known informally as “the Quay.” The restaurant and hotel shut its doors on Saturday, which happened to be Halloween.
It was an appropriate time for Jollota to discuss another aspect of the Quay. That would be the ghostly aspect: specifically, the lady of Room 160.
That’s the title of a segment of “Darkness Next Door,” Jollota’s collection of Clark County ghost stories.
In her 2002 book, Jollota wrote about a woman who had been killed in the room in 1975. (The victim’s husband was arrested, but the jury acquitted him, Jollota wrote.) Over the years, staffers and hotel guests reported seeing a mysterious woman who appears suddenly in Room 160 and then vanishes.
That story has become a staple when Jollota does presentations this time of year.
“I talk about ghosts every year around Halloween, and their favorite is the ghost in the Quay,” Jollota said. Regardless of what corporate name was on the sign, “It’s a place they know and can quickly identify with. They can walk by and look at Room 160.”
Jollota actually walked around the place herself on Thursday, taking photos. One of these days, Jollota might do a sequel to another one of her books, “Vanishing Vancouver.”
“For a future ‘Vanishing Vancouver,’ those photos would be good to have.”
Jollota never did identify the Quay in her ghost book, by the way. She referred to it as a river-front hotel. The manager was not excited about his hotel being viewed as a haunted house.
” ‘We don’t need that notoriety,’ is what he said. I wanted to take a picture of it, and that was not going to happen.”
Looking back at it now, the Quay probably passed up a marketing opportunity.
“At other hotels,” Jollota noted, “people will ask for a particular room if they know it’s haunted.”
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
