Hotel Del Monte was a luxury resort hotel from 1880 until 1942, when it was leased to the Navy to be used as a school to train electronic technicians during World War II. After the war, the building became the Naval Postgraduate School, the main building of which is called Herrmann Hall, and houses administrative offices and a hotel. Herrmann Hall is believed to be haunted by the ghost of a gray-bearded man in a suit named Charles Crocker. His apparition has been seen throughout the hotel, and many strange occurrences, such as moving objects, banging bread trays, shattering glasses, taps on employees’ shoulders, and the antique elevator moving by itself, are attributed to Mr. Crocker.
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Geographic Information
- Address:
- Cunningham Road
Monterey, California
United States
Get Directions » - GPS:
- 36.59717693006753, -121.87432181772158
- Nearest Towns:
- Monterey, CA (1.1 mi.)
Seaside, CA (1.6 mi.)
Sand City, CA (2.0 mi.)
Del Rey Oaks, CA (2.2 mi.)
Pacific Grove, CA (2.7 mi.)
Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA (4.0 mi.)
Del Monte Forest, CA (4.1 mi.)
Marina, CA (7.2 mi.)
Carmel Valley Village, CA (8.7 mi.)
Spreckels, CA (12.7 mi.)
Contact Information
- Web:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Del_Monte
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Disclaimer: The stories posted here are user-submitted and are, in the nature of "ghost stories," largely unverifiable. HauntedPlaces.org makes no claims that any of the statements posted here are factually accurate. The vast majority of information provided on this web site is anecdotal, and as such, should be viewed in the same light as local folklore and urban legends.
As a young female 18 I was stationed in the Navy at this Grand Hotel! At midnight exactly the elevator would run and the ball room on the second floor would have heavy and large furniture arrangements sounds but all was still! I felt a presence always in the long hallways! A man. Yes this is a haunted place!
When I was there I would always hear someone walking behind me in those hallways. But, when I would stop and look behind me nobody was there. But the oddest experience I had was walking down the hallway and heading what sounded like a group of people having a good time laughing and such in a room I was approaching. That didn’t sound weird. However, when I got just about to the door the sounds of laughter stopped. I looked into the room and nobody was there.
My wife and I just left there after a 3 night stay on the 18th through the 20th of this month. Our room was 411. I believe this was the West wing of the hotel. On our last night, around 11pm, the ceiling fan light came on by itself. This had not happened the whole weekend until our last night. My wife got up and turned it off only to get back in bed and have it come on three more times. Finally, I got up and I turned it off and just as I would sit on the bed it would come on again. This went on several more times. Now, I starting to think that maybe some apparition is within our midst. This time I thought I would be clever and put my finger over the light switch to keep this assumed apparition from turning it on and if it did try, maybe I would feel its presence. We’ll you guessed it. The light came on again. I am guessing now this apparition is having a good laugh at our expense since we were trying to go to sleep. Finally, I decided to turn the circuit breaker off to that light and that seemed to do the trick. However, we barely slept the rest of the night after this haunting. Only when we got home today and looked up to see if the Hotel was haunted did we find that others had similar or other unusual ghostly encounters.
The same thing happened to me, several nights in a row.
Just came back from staying in the west wing and had the same thing happen with the bathroom lights. Amongst other strange things….never staying there again. Was like staying in the hotel from the shining
Waiter in NPS Officers Club. I saw Mr. Crocker in the ballroom in 1976at 1000 at night. He was sitting at a table for 6, haggard and sad. I looked away, asked my working partner why this guy is here. He could not see him, i looked back and he was gone. I looked under tables…where did he go. Ahhh…a ghost I realized. I have more to the story.
I’ve had 3 paranormal experiences in Herrmann Hall. In the early 1990s my husband (a Naval Post Graduate School alum) and I used to stay weekends in Hermann Hall. On my first visit he was showing me around and we were in the grand ballroom when I saw a gray orb come out of the swinging doors to the kitchen, glide across the ballroom and disappear into the ceiling. The second experience happened when we had just left the ballroom and were walking through the parking lot to our car. All of a sudden I felt as if I’d been shot in the stomach. The sensation was so strong I thought I was going to fall down. Several stays later at the bookstore I picked up a ghosts of Monterey book and read that a man had been murdered on the premises in the 1880s – shot in the stomach. The third experience was about a year later. We got a room on the top floor. I felt uneasy in that room for some reason. That night I was awakened by something shaking the foot of our mattress, actually lifting it up and down violently. I was scared to death and tried to wake my husband but he wouldn’t wake up. In the morning I saw that the pictures in our room were crooked on the walls but nothing else seemed disturbed. When we went down for breakfast I asked the desk clerk “how big was the earthquake last night?” and she said “we didn’t have an earthquake”. To this day I can’t find an explanation for the experiences I had there.
This place is haunted. As a kid I have heard the story of the two lovers on their honeymoon. One was trapped in the stairwell during the fire and the other died then too.. When the building was rebuilt they rebuilt the stairwell farther over. Story has it the lovers are searching the two different stairs for each other. It is said you can hear them call for each other or crying.
Another story of the del monte is when charley chaplain was there on his honeymoon. It is said he still comes to that suite (now an officers quarters) and the bust of him keeps mysteriously getting moved or turned.
I was stationed at the dliflc and would spend weekends at the nps. One night I was coming back to the hotel room in Herman Hall and walking through the gardens I saw a really old lady in a nightgown walking through the fog (this was at around 3 am). It wasn’t really scary but I told the front desk clerk and she assured me everything was fine and that it was probably just an aparation, but it could have been just a 90 yo lady that likes to party
My husband and I were there this June 2018. We were there during the Graduation, but we were just visiting our son and his wife. We had gone down to the lobby to wait for our son to call. My Husband sat in one of the Throne Chairs close to the front desk, I went to sit by the fire, as I was cold. As I went to sit on the couch, I noticed an elderly woman sitting in one of the wing back chairs close to the fire opposite of me. I said good morning , then sat down. She said, ” I was just sitting here so that I wouldn’t frighten anyone” So I take a closer look to see if maybe she is disfigured, but just noticed that she was quite elderly, 90’s or close. So I said, “I am just sitting here to get warm, as I am freezing.” Then she says” but we have had some beautiful days” and I say “yes we have. Then I take my phone from my pocket and check for messages. I hear her talking to someone, I glance over and she has her head turned as if talking to someone beside her. I think at this time that maybe she is a little senile, and look back to my phone. Then I hear her talking again to someone, again no one there. At this time she gets up and walks toward the front of the room to leave. My husband comes over to me at this point and asks me “who were you talking to?” I tell him that there was a little old lady sitting in the chair, and that she just walked out. ” I tell him, you should of seen her she walked right in front of you” He says that he didn’t see anyone. So Later having lunch with our son, I relay the story to him. He then tells me that the Hotel is supposed to be haunted. So I guess I am unsure if I saw a lady or a ghost. The only reason I think it might of been a ghost is because she said that she was sitting here as not to frighten anyone. The chair that she was in was quite obscure from the room. You would of had to be close to the fireplace to see her.
I circled the chair that I saw the lady in, as you can see it is quite hidden. I sat on the couch across from it.
This place is definitely haunted. I’ve taken one ghost pic here myself by have seen two others. The best one I’ve seen might actually be the best ghost pic of ever seen of any kind. This pic was taken downstairs in Herman Hall right across from the NPS Trident Room. This is the purported ghost of the little girl which haunts the place. There are 4 documented spirits here, but the little girl frequents the downstairs halls. This is the creepiest ghost pic I’ve ever seen.
Second pic is also from downstairs at Herman Hall. You have to zoom in, but ghost is an irregularly shaped white orb, on the right side of the hallway. Look just slight left of the second door on the right side.
I was stationed in Monterey, CA during 2009-2010. Being 19 years old, my friends and I would stay at Hermann Hall almost every weekend; it was cheap, it was nice, and it wasn’t the barracks. I never saw an apparition, but just walking around the empty, large hotel at night was definitely creepy. There were so many hidden nooks and crannies, you could totally get lost in there. Once, i’d even found a staircase that led to nowhere.
One night, an ex boyfriend of mine started messing around with me by saying he could see a little girl in the corner of our hotel room. While I didn’t see her, and still to this day think he was goofing, I didn’t sleep a wink that night. We’d gone downstairs late at night so that he could smoke a cigarette, and the hallways were stark cold; colder than normal.
Suffice to say, this place is definitely haunted.
I used to work at Navy Federal Credit Union in Hermann Hall from 1989-1994. One day while having lunch in one of the small rooms where lunch was served, a paper on the bulletin just all of a sudden swung down and was hanging by one corner pushpin. It was if someone pulled out one of the two corner pushpins causing it to quickly swing down. It was very weird, I thought at the time, because there were no open windows or drafts. I thought it must have been a ghost and still think about it and tell the story almost 30 years later.
My team and I were stationed at the hotel for a couple of months. During that time a series of events took place, which is too long to detail here but all ending in an exercism in one of the upstairs rooms. I wasn’t a believer in the supernatural until this series of events took place. It is real and this hotel is the real deal.
I would love to hear some of the experiences you had. No one believes me when I recount my experience. But I know what I saw.
This comment is months late, but my teammate and I were with KD on the trip he mentioned in June 2018, listed above. We were all fortunate enough to get a tour of the hotel; it was classy and beautiful, but we just shouldn’t shake that “eerie” feeling the entire time. We asked the tour guide if he had had any previous “experiences” and he shared a few stories with us… Needless to say, between those stories and walking thru the hotel, my hair stood up on more than one occasion! I did not have my Digital SLR but the coworker had hers. She took quite a few photos; upon a quick review, she hasn’t found anything paranormal. However, she would like to sit down and review them more in detail and in depth. Another coworker visited and stayed overnight with his family. Alas, he and his daughter wandered all over the property, hoping to see another “guest or two”…but it was not meant to be. We all know, if you are looking for “them”, you probably won’t see “them”. The coworker did take a peek at a Guest Book that is maintained at the Front Desk, that I believe details various “encounters” over the years. I would love to read that the next time I am down there! Finally, as we are all fortunate to be in the area throughout the year, we’ve all had the opportunity to stay at the Gateway…but I think some of our imaginations are abit too “active”, so we’ve never taken the opportunity to do so. Me? I admit, altho I love reading stories, looking at pictures and touring the Gateway, I am too scared to stay. I admire those of you who are brave enough to do so! My hat is off to you! Thank you and I wish you all much luck in your ghost hunting…I will live vicariously through your pictures and stories!
IvorySalmon, I did not even know the Del-monte was supposedly haunted until i told my son who was stationed there. I would love to know if anyone else has see the elderly lady that i encountered.
I stayed in the west wing, third floor. Twice my living room light was turned on randomly during the night. On my last night, I fell asleep watching a movie on my iPad. I woke up suddenly to see a hand reaching across the screen. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well the remainder of the night.
I worked for the Admiral and his staff (Captain, Commander, Lt. Commander, etc.) during the early 80’s. There was an event that took all the staff including the clerical staff away from Hermann Hall (The Mezanine area). However, I was left to “man” the phones. While being in the offices alone, a number of things transpired in the many offices. One thing that stands out was that a silver tray/teapot set that was a decorative item on the middle of the Ensign’s large desk ended up on the floor. It appeared to be thrown or pushed off the desk. I was so scared I left till everyone returned.
I stayed here when I was a kid in the late 80s. We had left our room and when we came back, the beds were pulled away from the walls, our stuff was open and thrown all over the room but nothing was stolen.
I loved reading about your encounter with the elderly woman by the fireplace! I did not “see” her during my visit but I’m sure it would be absolutely fascinating. Stay well!
I would love to go back and read the journal of other encounters that people have experienced. I often think if this experience and Wonder why I could see her and my husband couldn’t.
I don’t remember when I stayed here. Think it was in 2014 as part of a multi-day trip in which I would explore Monterey, then go attend a friend’s wedding up in Saratoga. During my 3-day stay here, I felt increasingly uneasy and creeped out. I didn’t see a ghost or talk to an apparition, though it would have been neat if I did. I was in my room most of the time, as I hardly ever saw anyone in the lobby or roaming the halls. I think I might have been the only guest in my wing.
Most of the time, I wasn’t in my room but out exploring. For the times I was in my room, the lighting and the setup of the room, along with the copasetic but hospital-like bathroom, made me uneasy.
One afternoon, and one that would turn out to be my last afternoon, I came back to my room around 5 pm. I was there to rest a bit before heading back out for dinner. While I was sitting there in the quiet room, I heard the faint sound of music. I thought that was strange, to hear music when the entire NPS grounds has been void of activity for most of the time I’ve been here. I’ve only see a few cars and very few people. I poked my head out an open window to see where the music was coming from. I saw nothing obvious. No parked cars. No people milling about.
I did notice as I was near the window that a balcony door about 5 feet away was ajar. Strange, I thought. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t open the past two days. I tried to close the door but it took considerable effort. I was slamming it hard, afraid I would break it. I did get it closed but the whole incident left me uneasy. The obvious question was how can a door that took considerable effort to close be unlatched and ajar, seemingly by itself?
That evening, I slept with the TV on and the lights on, with the sheets over my head, trying not to get freaked out. The next morning, I checked out, determined not to spend another night here.
Later, when I was up in San Jose, getting ready to attend my friend’s wedding, I looked up the Del Mont and discovered that other guests have reports ghostly sightings or hauntings. My balcony door being open is one of the mischievous things the ghost likes to do.
The only other time I’ve felt this creeped out was when I stayed at the Queen Mary down in Long Beach, another hotel that is purported to be haunted. My more spiritual friends say that I must be more sensitive to energies. I try to laugh it off, being an engineer. But as I get older and experience more strange things like this, I cannot help but wonder if there are things we cannot see and truly explain through science.
In 2014 I stayed in east wing of Hermann Hall, at exactly 2am I was awaken when the overhead fan went off and the light turned on. I went and checked the switch and it was switched to on position. Not remembering the place has claims of haunting went to front desk and asked the young lady are the fans and lights on some timer and explained what happened. She just gave me this looked, which than I remembered the stories of place and told her never mind. We just had a mutual understanding of what happened.
My wife and I spent several nights here during the 20th 9/11 anniversary. Our room was on the second floor at the end facing the pool…At around 11:30pm and in bed I heard laughter in the hallway just outside our room…I thought nothing of it until I heard running and a child whimpering. I started to get up but then there was completed silence for several minutes. I asked my wife who slept through the noises if she heard anything and had heard voices in the hall but ignored it…