The Groveland Hotel

Guests in Room 15 of the Groveland Hotel, known as Lyle's Room, report faucets turning themselves on and off, cosmetics left on the counter pushed to the floor (Lyle is said to dislike women's cosmetics and move them to the sink), lights switching off and on or dimming for people reading late, locked doors refusing to open, footsteps and banging on the door at night, and occasionally a tall, slender, bearded figure late at night; the hotel calls him a friendly ghost, and Room 15 is its most requested room. By the hotel's own account, Lyle, a miner and prospector who lived there for years, died peacefully in his sleep in 1927 and was found in his bed with a box of dynamite beneath it. The Groveland Hotel began as an adobe built in 1849 to serve Gold Rush miners on the road toward Yosemite, and a Queen Anne Victorian was added next door in 1914 to house San Francisco officials overseeing construction of the Hetch Hetchy dam; both buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places, and it still operates as a hotel.