Unraveling Rose Red: Piecing together the puzzle of history and “coincidence” in Rose Red.

Pinafore Lodge was constructed in 1876 on the slope of Mount Pinafore in Pennsylvania—called “Pinafore” for its curious shape and landscape, creating an apron-like appearance when covered in snow. Its builder and original owner, a wealthy Swiss emigrant by the name of Marti Lautens, saw the potential of the location for a mountainside resort—recognized, even before the advent of the popularity of skiing—that Americans would flock to the mountains for their natural beauty, restorative properties and amusement opportunities. He was correct.

For 60 years Pinafore Lodge reigned as the queen of Pennsylvania mountain retreats. Initially the wealthy came for the socializing, enjoying each other’s company in the enormous structure’s two ballrooms, four dining rooms, five recreation rooms (where various events and activities were held, typically gender-disparate in interest, but occasional lectures by famous physicians, writers and artists were attended by members of both sexes), two libraries, a cavernous gentleman’s club, two billiards rooms, a lavish theatre, a large gymnasium, a thoroughly-equipped beauty salon and many other attractions and amenities. After skiing became popular approximately a century ago, the lodge offered a range of slopes to satisfy skiers of all levels, and this brought further influxes of guests. In 1905 a sprawling addition of guest rooms was added to the original lodge complex, and their advertising boasted the Pinafore Lodge as “the largest and grandest resort in the country”. While I have been unable to substantiate those claims, Pinafore Lodge was clearly among the top of the tops for resort destinations at that time.

Shortly after construction on the addition commenced, Lautens began a two-year spiral into madness. The reasons for the sudden onset of psychosis in the 71 year old man are unclear; some suggest it was a progressive Howard Hughes-ian eccentricity-cum-dementia. Others suggest it was Alzheimer’s disease. Others still firmly believe that Lautens carried a dark secret that haunted him all his life, and finally drove him crazy. Whatever the cause, Lautens spent his last years in his mansion on the Pinafore property, carefully tended to by a nursing staff. He had no family to comfort him.

The “secret” theory is based on the mysterious circumstances of the death of Lautens’s wife Emiline in 1865, in Switzerland. She was an heiress to a considerable fortune, and when unable to produce children, Lautens stood to inherit her lot should she die. Despite her infertility she was an otherwise healthy and active woman, but during the autumn of 1864 she became ill. It started with small symptoms and rapidly progressed to become a violent and painful illness. She wasted away to a shadow of her former self and finally perished in January of 1865. By March of that year Lautens had left Switzerland for America and used part of his newfound wealth to purchase and build upon the land on Mount Pinafore. Suspicions abounded in Switzerland, but once he had emigrated the case went cold.

The “secret” he carried was not the fact that his wife died—or the way she died—in fact, he had a habit of divulging this in morbid detail to the (many) women guests he seduced in what could only be termed the strangest “pillow talk” any of them had ever experienced. Whether this was simply a perversion or the admissions of a guilty conscience, one can only speculate.

The “secret” he carried was, according to believers, that he poisoned his wife over the course of a few months, to hasten the death of a perfectly healthy woman whose merits were of more use to him when she was dead. The rumors abounded even among the construction crew, mostly immigrants themselves, and more than not from cultures wherein superstition was commonplace. It was rumored that Emiline’s ghost chased him across the Atlantic and settled with him on Mount Pinafore, where she set herself to the task of being a nuisance, pestering workers and generally trying to hinder the building of the investment made with her husband’s ill-gotten gain. The rumors continued after the opening of the lodge, when guests complained of seeing a woman who was “emaciated in appearance, with a pallor and posture suggesting she was far too ill to be vacationing” (R. L. Rogers, “The History of Pinafore Lodge”).

The ghost of Emiline seemed bound and determined to make a mess of Lautens’s well-laid plans for greater wealth through Pinafore Lodge. The dramatic events attributed to her included pushing a young woman over the edge of an unsafe portion of the slope, while she explored the outskirts of the property with her brother. Her brother swore that he looked away for a moment, looked back and saw a pale woman standing a few paces from his sister. As he cried out in surprise the woman vanished, and his sister lurched as if shoved, falling to her death as she tumbled down the steep mountainside. The stories continued even beyond Lautens’s lifespan—when the indoor pool was added in later years, Emiline was blamed for the sad drowning of an Olympic-hopeful swimmer who was on vacation at the resort with his new wife. In another tragic death, Emiline was said to have appeared on one of the ski slopes, startling a female skier and sending her sharply into a thick of trees, where she died on impact. In turn, the spirits of Emiline’s victims were said to haunt the mountainside, making mischief for unsuspecting guests and staff.

When Lautens died in 1907 his family sold the lodge to Edward Reese, a businessman from New York. Unfortunately the lodge did not provide as large a return on investment as Reese had hoped. The decline of Pinafore Lodge began with the onset of World War I. The lodge saw a slight resumption in activity during the “roaring 20s” and into the thirties, but the number of guests remained spotty at best through the late thirties and early 40s, as World War II occupied the lives of the American people. By the late forties, Reese had sold the lodge to a small conglomerate of businessmen, investment partners who completely revamped the Lodge’s image. Advertisements began to focus on the lodge’s potential as a family destination, and several of the resort’s “outdated” or “unnecessary” offerings, such as the second billiards room and library, were remodeled to provide attractions of interest to a younger audience. The theatre began to focus on pictures instead of plays. A portion of the grounds was converted into a small amusement park (open only during warmer months), with the addition of a carousel, bumper cars and carnival games, as well as a small playground for younger children. One of the two cross-country areas became home to a golf course when the snow melted. The recreation rooms housed dance lessons, cooking classes and other events especially attractive to the female visitors of the time. All these interventions served to make the lodge a prime destination again for nearly a decade, after which its popularity once again declined as the Vietnam War raged unabated into the seventies.

The lodge again changed ownership in 1974, sold to a couple (surname Ventner) from Vermont, the male of which was heir to a very successful dairy company. They began further remodeling and revamping the lodge into a sophisticated, romantic getaway destination. Their honeymoon rooms boasted all the stereotypical “romantic” amenities—heart-shaped baths, mirrored ceilings, red velvet and plush everything! Perhaps not everyone’s idea of sophistication, but for the time it had its allure.

The Ventners, when interviewed by local historian R. L. Rogers for his afore-quoted book, told tales of having seen Emiline fully embodied in guest rooms and wandering the grounds. She seemed particularly fond of appearing to children in the amusement area, perhaps expressing a maternal instinct she was unable to exercise in life. Less visual manifestations such as disembodied voices abounded, as well. Objects were regularly displaced, sometimes violently. Once when sitting down to a post-hours meal in the room service kitchen (a separate operation from the main kitchen, as no one kitchen or staff could cope with the strain of four dining rooms plus room service to all of the resort’s guest rooms!) the staff was shaken by the sudden shattering of a row of water glasses, which were set out to dry after having been washed.

The Ventners sold the lodge to a hopeful investor (who made a relative fortune on Wall Street) in 1990. The new owner, Matthew Coors, was thoroughly inexperienced with respect to the hospitality industry and had, as one far more interested in investments than romance, no experience even vacationing in a resort such as Pinafore Lodge (which had, if you recall, taken quite a romantic turn at the guidance of its previous owners). The lodge saw a steady decline in both visitors and the quality of service. Guests complained that rooms were often unclean upon check-in. Floorboards were coming up in older sections of the building; plaster and wallpaper were peeling in others. The meals were reportedly “inedible”. Chronically understaffed even for the limited number of guests, employee turnover rates were high. Employee reliability and responsibility were abysmal.

Finally, having accumulated massive debt trying to turn the place around, Coors closed the doors on Pinafore Lodge in 1999. Destitute and desperate, Coors committed suicide by shooting himself in early 2000. The lodge remained abandoned until the property was purchased by an investment group in 2003, whose plans included an all-new, fully-modern casino and ski resort.

Urban explorers who have trespassed on the property since the lodge’s closure have reported seeing Emiline, the swimmer, and other legendary spectral residents in and around the lodge. Paranormal investigators and psychics have claimed a demonic presence to be at work, appearing in Emiline’s form, and acting out a curse that Emiline uttered with her dying breath. Although this sounds terrifically dramatic, there is some truth to the story. In his demented state, especially as he lost rational faculties towards the end of his life, Lautens repeatedly uttered the phrase, “curse you, Marti, my death”. Though the phrase alone makes little sense, when coupled with the theory that Lautens murdered his wife, it packs a curiously powerful punch. Psychics have claimed, poetically, that instead of securing a living legacy through descendants, Emiline Lautens secured the legacy of vengeance, and that those who were tainted by her curse would spread the evil and everlasting hatred to their loved ones (shades of the Kinkarney curse, affecting entire family trees at one go). Emiline knew intimately that even the most trusted of friends or family can betray you; perhaps sending her curse to span the families of her victims was a way of punishing any who possessed this potential to hurt those who loved them.

I visited the lodge’s ruins myself in late 2003. The hike up to the property was immense, since the road was both blocked and partially overgrown. Stepping through the bramble and forest surrounding the property, a completely awe-inspiring scene appeared before my eyes. The place seemed impossibly large, a white mammoth perched on a mountainside, still and lifeless—the corpse of a happier place, when the hustle and bustle of life filled its now melancholy walls. I did not see Emiline, or any other ghosts, but the sight of the hulking, empty edifice was spooky enough. The lodge was put out of its misery in 2004, when it was completely demolished to make way for the new resort. Prior to the destruction the countless contents of the Pinafore Lodge were put on auction. Many an enthusiast of the supernatural purchased pieces at bargain-basement prices, hoping to carry home with them a little piece of haunted history—and perhaps the memory of Emiline Lautens herself.

Pinafore Lodge and its myriad legends fit into the puzzle of Rose Red through vanished Professor Carl Miller. Miller’s wife’s cousin, and beloved childhood companion, was none other than Matthew Coors. It would seem a tenuous connection, except for the fact that Miller and his wife had vacationed twice at the lodge (despite the unclean rooms and the disgusting food!) and Miller was reportedly very fond of Coors as a relation-in-law. But then, this “curse” is precisely the sort of thing that Miller would have scoffed at, if the testimony of Joyce and company can be taken as truth.

1 Comment »

1. [...] Bremen, like Pinafore Lodge, was a very popular resort destination in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It resided [...]

   Pingback by Unraveling Rose Red » The Curse: Hotel Bremen — February 28, 2009 @ 12:40 am

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