Adventure at the Washoe Club

We walked south from the Red Dog Saloon to the Washoe Club. I had no idea why, but I soon learned.

Beckoned to follow, I obeyed, tailing behind Kimberly Pettie, who had stopped to chat with some women at the end of the bar. Secretly, her cousin Shannon Kean had assigned me the task of staying with her and keeping her out of trouble.

Out the door and to the right, we finally walked up the stairs to the second and third floors of the club, where there had once been offices, a hospital, and small apartments. Immersed in darkness, Kim, Shannon, and I followed our guide Zack, who also led Jim Cleek and his daughter Lilly Mae Collins upstairs.

There we learned a little bit about the history of the mid-nineteenth-century building and some of its many occupants throughout the years. One is a little girl named Grizell, who a freight wagon ran over, leaving her on death’s doorstep in 1862.

She died from her injuries a few hours after the incident. And now, her spirit allegedly remains trapped in the building, on the second floor near the staircase leading up to the third floor.

Lily made first contact with her from our touring party. Lily said that the child was frightened by something at the top of the stairs and that she secrets herself under the staircase.

Upstairs is where most of the activity happened for us. There were rooms where Shannon felt joy and wished to dance and others where Kim came to near collapse from an oppressive heaviness.

In one room, near the middle of the building and towards the back, was the most activity we would have for the night. The room was heavy, filled with grief, and where I had to force my way to the back of the apartment despite nothing physically blocking my path.

While Kim squatted, fighting back against a desire to lay on the floor forces unseen, Shannon grew lightheaded and sad, almost coming to tears. Meanwhile, I developed pain in my left chest and arm.

As I debated exiting the room before I suffered a heart attack, I perceived the word “Go” as Kim heard “Get out.” The three of us obeyed, taking about five minutes to recover.

After lingering in a hallway that intersected the third floor, listening to knocking and voices, we started down the stairs for the exit. However, I saw movement at the base of the stairs, and Lily said she could feel Griselle in the same place.

As Jim led Kim and Shannon to the street level and outside, I stayed with Lily as she attempted to communicate with the little girl. Near the top of the stairs from which we had come a minute before, a light blue mist appeared, seeming to form into a shadow.

While I didn’t pick up on the command, Lily heard “get out,” as the mist turned to shadow, and perceptibly frightened, she scrambled by me in the stairwell with me now close behind as I had already started down. We stood on the boardwalk for a few minutes shaking off whatever it was that had affected our touring.

Having had enough, Lily was walked home by her father. As for me, a shot of whisky helped steady my nerves but did nothing for the general body fatigue I felt.