Inside Othello’s ‘haunted’ Old Hotel

Editor’s Note: This October, NWPB is bringing you spooky stories from around the Northwest. Listen later this month for a feature story on the Old Hotel and its importance to rural art in the region.

Wandering through the Old Hotel Art Gallery in Othello, Washington, you can spot anything from jewelry to paintings of sandhill cranes to stained glass flowers to advent calendars. The shelves in each room are stacked with an eclectic collection of local arts and crafts.

But some say it’s home to more than just art. 

In the 1990s, Nancy Briggs directed the gallery. There’s one thing she said everyone just knew:  a ghost lived in the basement. 

“When we’d be working late at night, sometimes up until midnight or so, we heard that ghost. He never bothered us, but we always believed he or she was there,” she said.

Briggs and her coworkers always went downstairs in pairs. Briggs especially remembered the “dreadful old furnace” in the basement. It was eventually replaced, she said.

Although the employees had all heard stories of the ghost, they didn’t think about it much, Briggs said.

Nancy Briggs, left, a former director of the Old Hotel Art Gallery, shares a laugh with current director, Samantha Copas, at the Othello, Washington, gallery earlier this year. (Credit: Annie Warren / NWPB)

“But when there’s just two of you in here, and it’s just one o’clock in the morning, old buildings have a way of shifting a little,” she said.

That’s often when they’d hear sounds.

“I don’t think we were ever afraid of the ghost. In fact, I think the ghost was rather good company,” Briggs said.

In 2010, the Pacific Northwest Paranormal Investigators staked out the hotel, according to an article in The Othello Outlook. They gathered tapes and audio recordings. Their conclusion? The Old Hotel definitely has paranormal activity. Investigators said they had all sorts of “personal experiences,” from seeing strange shadows to “some impressive voice recordings.”

“All of this shows us there is definitely one or more presence here,” lead inquisitor Denise Ottosen told the newspaper. 

Before the gallery’s opening — on Halloween night in 1975 — the Old Hotel housed railroad workers. Later, it was rumored to be a brothel. The building’s history also includes a murder. 

“There’s myths and legends about this place,” said current director Samantha Copas.

The hotel was built in 1912. In 1974, the then-owner of the hotel, Benjamin Deodies Curry, shot 17-year-old Earl (sometimes reported as Errol) James Tucker, in a downstairs room. The teenager died from his wounds at the scene. Copas says why the shooting took place is still a mystery.

“After that, he went on the run, and the hotel was abandoned,” Copas said.

Curry was later located in Tacoma and captured by the FBI. He was convicted of second-degree murder and was released in the early 1980s, according to the Columbia Basin Herald.

Now, the hotel has a much sunnier future, Copas said. The Old Hotel Art Gallery hosts arts and crafts classes in the summer. 

It’s unclear if the friendly ghost attends.