The Smell of Stale Perfume: Do Prostitutes Haunt This Old Hotel?
At one time, this was a grand hotel, popular for its beauty and grandeur. Now its locally famous for its hauntings.
Built as the LaMar Hotel in 1891, it is located at 333 Grandville Avenue in Grand Rapids. The purpose of the structure was not simply to spend a night or two.....it was also a place where travelers could stop and pick up any needed groceries.
As the decades droned on, the ground floor of this three-story building contained the Horseshoe Bar and Blues Club. Beginning in the 1940s, it quickly became the place to go for entertainment and drinks up until the 1970s. But it wasn’t just a hotel, bar, club, restaurant, and grocer..... the third floor had a thriving business that kept traveling salesmen – and unhappy husbands – coming back. Former Club owner Frank LaMar Sr. ran a semi-secret prostitute business on Floor Number Three.
In fact, it’s believed that some of the former hookers haunt this building; the smell of old perfume can occasionally be detected by visitors who wander through. Other ghostly happenings include apparitions, cold spots, doors unlock & lock themselves, footsteps, odd handprints, items moving by themselves, lights that flicker, strange sounds.....you know, the usual stuff – usual enough to be boring to write about. But it’s the smell of stale perfume that makes the difference. It actually makes sense.
Aside from ghostly floozies that haunt the place, past owners believe there are two others: one of a man and another is a little girl who likes to play.
When the ‘Honest to Goodness’ tattoo business moved into the building in 2017, they discovered a secret room during the remodeling of the domed roof. The conclusion to the question: it must have been a secret place to stash booze during Prohibition as well as a place to crawl into and hide whenever the Feds came in to bust up the joint. A psychic was brought in to clear the space of any harmful beings; whether the cleansing was successful or not is still being determined.
Planning to visit? Make sure to get express permission from the owner.