The Haunting Georgian Hotel

Posted: 07.26.2024 | Updated: 07.26.2024

Seemingly plucked from Miami, this art-deco, gaudy blue hotel is a striking edifice in the grey physicality of the inevitable sprawl of the concrete jungle known as Santa Monica. The hotel is, without a doubt, funky and even a bit whimsical, yet somehow seems perfectly at home amidst the palm trees and Pacific surf that is so stereotypical of California.The Georgian Hotel was built in 1933, designed to be an intimate hideaway for Los Angeles’s high society. At the time the hotel was developed, it was snuggled in a heavily wooded shoreline of the quaint and little-known seaside community of Santa Monica. Of course, with the inevitable flow of time, the trees in which the hotel nestled were soon cut down in the name of progress.Affectation would give way to strip malls, and the Hollywood elite would make room for the paparazzi and would-be surfers who flocked to the ocean. A bit of the Georgian Hotel’s glamour faded. But the ghosts that haunt this building will remind you of the hotel’s former glory and its insidious past. 

We Got Fun and Games

 During Prohibition, the Georgian was home to one of Los Angeles’ first speakeasies and soon became the meeting place for many of the movers and shakers in the up-and-coming Hollywood scene. Rarely are the wealthy and the famous deprived of their vices, and the Georgian was the place that fulfilled their desires and whims. Celebrities like Clark Gable and Carole Lombard would visit here on weekends away from the clamoring public. This blue hotel that straddled the sea became a haven for the elite.The exclusive, secluded location was the main reason for the hotel’s popularity and success. In short, it was a good place to hide, and you could be inconspicuous in plain sight. But make no mistake, this hotel was a lavish place to stay. The hotel was considered one of the most modern facilities of the time, featuring a beauty parlor, barbershop, playground, and dining room, in addition to its most popular feature, the Speakeasy, which was awash with alcohol.The oceanfront veranda provided a vantage point for notorious figures, including Bugsy Siegel, a mobster who was instrumental in the development of the Vegas Strip, and Fatty Arbuckle, a silent film actor who was arrested for the rape and murder of an actress. After three trials, Arbuckle was found not guilty, but he turned to alcohol to drown the reality of his career tanking, and he found it waiting for him with open arms at the Georgian.Prohibition finally ended in December 1933, but the Georgian continued its popularity with the jet-setters and Hollywood’s “A” listers. But not all secrets can remain hidden, and soon, Santa Monica began to become popular and expand in an unforeseen way. In the 1950s, Los Angeles began to develop into a major metropolitan city. It was during this decade that the Georgian was refurbished and became an elegant addition to the glamor of Hollywood. 

The Georgian Hotel Today

 Today, this once-grand hotel is surrounded by an encroaching urban tide. For this reason, many entertainers still seek shelter in the Georgian. Hollywood celebrities such as director and writer Oliver Stone, Robert DeNiro, and Arnold Schwarzenegger are still frequent guests, possibly feeling the appeal of the ambiance of old Hollywood when actors were larger than life, and movies were shown in theatres and not on Netflix. According to local legend, the hotel continues to hold a few rooms for several other ghostly guests, whether they be famous or infamous.In the hotel’s aptly named Speakeasy Restaurant, both staff and visitors have reported many strange, unexplained phenomena over the years. It has been said many times that when the restaurant is completely empty, employees have heard loud sighs and gasps and have been startled by a disembodied voice that greets them with a cheery “Good Morning.” At other times, the sounds of running footsteps are heard throughout the restaurant when no one is there, and a number of transparent, full-bodied apparitions have been seen throughout the property.So, perhaps if you stop to have a beverage or two at the Speakeasy, you’ll be sitting beside the ghosts of Hollywood’s Golden Age who snuck in for a drink when such libations were illegal. Many of these actors and actresses cannot bear to leave their old lives behind and linger still in a pantomime of their former grandeur before they succumb to death. But here, at the Georgian, they are known to give a fright, not an autograph.Even today, employees of the Georgian Hotel claim to hear disembodied voices talking in the darkness of an empty room. Loud sighs of longing have been heard in the rooms and on the veranda. The residual sound of murder may even have been imprinted into the very fabric of the hotel; the eerie sound of a female gasping, seemingly struggling for breath, has been reported in the restaurant over the years. It seems the hotel has kept a few of its secrets.One hotel guest claims that after taking a shower, he found his suitcase empty, the covers on the bed turned down, and the television on.A front desk clerk reported that a call came in from a room while working an overnight shift. The clerk only heard the sound of someone giggling. It turns out nobody was checked into that room. Could this have been the phantom laughter of a spectral starlet, still perpetually young and ingenious in the City of Angels long after the spotlight faded? 

Haunted San Diego

 Admittedly, most people are thronging to the Georgian Hotel today in hopes of seeing Leonardo DiCaprio or Harry Styles, more so than anxiously awaiting a glimpse of the ghost of Fatty Arbuckle.To learn more about the famous afterlife's favorite haunts, keep reading our blog, and be sure to take a ghost tour with San Diego Ghosts!  Sources www.hauntedrooms.com www.legendsof America.com www.santamonica.com