Brookdale Lodge

The ghost of Brookdale Lodge is a little girl named Sarah Logan, said to have drowned in the creek that runs through the Brook Room, and guests always describe her the same way: a little girl in a white dress with blonde, curly hair. A Santa Cruz paranormal investigator first met her in the lodge bar after midnight, when the girl ran into the Brook Room, which turned out to be empty; past owners have described her as "very clear, like a whole person" in a 1940s-style formal dress near the fireplace and crossing the lobby, and the current owner says he has heard a little girl laughing and playing in the Brook Room area. In the Mermaid Room, visitors hear voices, the clinking of glasses and soft music when the room is empty, and the jukebox has been known to turn itself on and off; staff also report wet footprints around the pool, which has been dry for years. No record of Sarah Logan or of her death has been found. Judge James Harvey Logan built the first lodge here in the 1890s, and in the 1920s the property gained the feature it is still known for: a dining room built to straddle a live creek, designed by Horace Cotton and known as the Brook Room. The lodge was being run in 1922 by Dr. F. K. Camp, a Seventh-day Adventist physician and strict prohibitionist, which sat oddly with its later reputation as a Prohibition-era retreat, and it has closed and reopened repeatedly over the years.