Spirits Here Since 1851

Every town has its ghosts, and sometimes they like to be seen or heard. Ours like to be seen and heard quite often. There have been sightings of George Leger walking around, inspecting his hotel. There are stories of a woman in white in room 2. Children are heard playing in the rooms and halls of this grand old building. Here we have compiled a collection of experiences from staff and guests alike.
Some submissions have been edited for clarity.
We are constantly adding more stories - if you have one of your own, please submit here.

June 2023 - Sounds of footsteps

My mom and I with my boxer dog decided to stay at the Hotel Leger on a Monday night in summer of 2023. It was a stop over to rest before our long wag back home. We checked ourselves in around 8:00 P.M. strangely we seemed to be the only ones there. We walked around awhile to check all the neat history out ,and put our items for the night in our room. Room#13. My mom instantly felt uneasy and started to feel sick to her stomach. We continued our walk around the premises we walked into the ballroom where there was an eerie feeling then outside to a door that I believe led to the basement area. I started to walk in and then stopped due to goosebumps and just a heaviness. We decided to go upstairs and rest for the night. When we walked past Room #9. We noticed a light under the door which we did not remember being on earlier then when we went to unlock our door both locks were locked and mom only locked the top deadbolt. We decided to read our books (since there are no T.V. s in the room) and just unwind. This is where things started getting very strange. We heard loud footsteps walking down the hall and the creaking of the floors as the steps got louder and closer to our door and just stopped directly in front of it. My dog perked up and stared at the door. My mom whispered someone's out there. I looked at the bottom of the door since they are old and gap at the bottom. There wasn't any foot shadows. I waited for the knob to turn but it didn't. We turned out the light and decided to get some sleep. Ten minutes goes by and we start hearing scratching noises coming from the floor. and then the wall. My dog jumped off the bed and started growling ,running around the room and even looking under the bed. I finally got him back up on the bed then he started acting strange again going to our legs and pawing them as if he didn't want them near the side of the bed. he has never done this before. We got him settled and started to fall asleep, all of a sudden my dog perks up again. We turned on the light and we are watching my dog growl and sniff the air then he starts ferociously barking while he looks as if he's watching something that my mom and I can't see. His eyes were fixated by my moms side of the bed, growling while watching him move with whatever he saw. Whatever it was walked from my moms side then slowly on my side stopping by my head. My dog instantly jumped on top of me and was growling and barking at something right by me. He covered his whole body over mine as he was in full protection mode. My mom was freaking out and I just froze in fear. I could feel a presence but could not see it. After a few minutes my dog had moved off me and the feeling went away. It was so creepy and mom wanted to leave but it was late and the car needed gas. We knew there wouldn't be anything open until the morning. We decided to stick it out. The whole night was pretty much like this the dog waking up growling. We left the light on and finally fell asleep. Around 2:30- 3:00 ish my dogs head perked up again and I could hear running back and forth down the hallway (sounded like kids) and doors opening and closing. I found it so rude that people would be checking in this late and letting their children run the halls. Morning came and we were beat. it was a long night. We packed our things and headed downstairs. The lady at the front desk asked how we enjoyed our stay. My mom and I looked at each other and I told her that the hotel is beautiful and full of character only we hardly slept. I told what had happened with my dog and I also told her that the people that checked in in the early morning hours had their children running up and down the halls which kept me up. She then asked me was it between the hours of 2:00 and 3:30? I said why yes it was. She said Hun, Do you know where you are? Confused I said yeah.. then she told me that those are the ghost kids that roam the halls at night, and you ladies were our only guests here. She then told us that the hotel is haunted with lots of activity since they are getting ready to renovate. It is wakening the spirits. Apparently two brothers recently purchased the hotel and plan to do a full restoration of it. My mom and I could not believe that this happened to us. I had heard that it was haunted but never fully investigated or thought we would experience something like this. I don't regret staying here however my mom will never go back. She was too spooked.

Melissa C. and Pauline S.

December 2004

We had heard about the ghosts and went out of our way to visit, but probably would have been too chicken to stay if we'd realized no other guests would be there. Your last staff person left around 8pm and we were alone there which made us really nervous. First, one of our party went into the bathroom to the left of the top of the stairs, and came out, and it locked. This may have been a coincidence. However, at about 4:00 in the morning, we awakened to hear a woman gently sobbing down the hall. The only other person who would have been there was the male caretaker. We couldn't locate the sound, but it seemed to be coming from below and towards room 3 & 4. Being scaredy cats, we packed up before dawn and left! We are returning specially to visit the hotel. I grew up in an actively haunted house, and I'm fascinated by the stories of your hotel.

- Lori J.

April 2006

My very first English teacher told me that every good story has a beginning, middle, and end. What follows is our story. I was travelling with three others; my daughter, our friend, and my sister, along with our little Chihuahua. Since we had four in our party, we were assigned room 1 and 2. Both rooms were beautiful, and we were very impressed with the lovely antique furnishings. After having a delicious dinner in the bar area we all decided to go to room 1, which was the room that my daughter and I decided to take for the night. As we were relaxing, we noticed a smell that seemed to come and go that we all agreed was the musty smell of old aftershave mingled with copper. We thought this odd, but nothing like what was to come as time went on. One of the first things that startled us was the Capri Sun that we watched my daughter set on the nightstand suddenly appear on the dresser across the room. Again we thought this odd, but we tried to explain it away. None of us were aware that the hotel had a reputation of being haunted, nor did any of us believe in the supernatural until that night. As we were sitting and talking, we noticed a large dark shadow move across the wall on the right side of the bed and disappear as it passed the window. This frightened us a great deal since there were four of us that had witnessed this happen. We tried to come up with a rational explanation, but none came to mind. It was about this time when we started hearing rapping coming from the inside of the antique chest that sat on the floor at the foot of the bed. My sister and I stood, getting ready to head to the chest when our dog started growling and snapping at the air on the edge of the bed. Slight apprehension started to set in, but we still tried to tell ourselves this wasn't the work of a ghost. Perhaps whatever inhabits room 1 decided this is a good time to make us believers. We sat back down, the girls sitting on the bed, and my sister on the conversational couch and I in the rocking chair. We felt the room temperature drop and the odd smell returned. I felt something I can only describe as cold and dry touch the back of my hand. I was just getting ready to tell my sister this latest event, when she sat up straight and told me something had just brushed across her chest. Both of us stood up to look around, our friend joining us and my daughter staying on the bed. As she was standing in front of the fireplace, she happened to look into the old mirror above it. We all saw what happened next: a piece of hair was lifted straight from her scalp and held in midair, as if by an unseen hand! The rapping on the chest started up again along with what we all heard as a low sigh or possibly a groan. IT was too much for us to fathom... four nonbelievers in a haunted room deciding whether to stay or go, when the lock on the front door disengaged. We all jumped in fright, and decided that was our sign to leave. As we were packing up, we couldn't find our dog's favorite rubber toy or the small plastic lid to his food. I decided to appeal to the spirit's mercy and asked for these items back. We all stood in the middle of the room, not knowing what to expect next when we heard the sound of rubber bouncing on wood. There in front of us was the rubber toy that we all searched the entire room for to no avail. I cautiously picked it up and we left the same night we checked in. We went to the bar where we told our story to the evening employees. Both were surprised at our experience, but so very understanding, offering another room or compensation. We decided to leave in spite of their best efforts. AS we pulled away from the Hotel Léger, our friend reached for her cell phone only to find the small plastic lid we had searched for in the room under the front seat of the car. We all managed a nervous chuckle, but we knew the lid was in room 1 where we set up his food. I don't want our experience to overshadow the wonderful service or the beauty of this old hotel. WE would like to thank each and every employee for making our brief stay very memorable. I supposed we also owe the spirit that dwells in room 1 a thank you as well... we all checked in nonbelievers and we left knowing there is another realm which perhaps at times crosses paths with our own.

- Traci P.

August 2007

After a nice dinner downstairs in the restaurant, my wife and I went upstairs to our room (7) for the evening. In the middle of the night, as my wife slept soundly, I woke up to the sound of footsteps inside our room, walking around the bed!!!! I looked up in the darkness, but did not see anything or anybody. Then a few seconds later, right outside my ear, I heard the sound of electricity buzzing, kind of like the sound of two wires arcing. I then shook my head and looked up but still saw nothing. I was laying on top of the bed so my legs were exposed because it was warm in the room. I felt something I can only describe as crumbs being sprinkles on my legs, almost like little electrical charges touching me. I looked up again to see nothing and pulled the sheet over my legs and that was it. The next morning, our window was opened and we were fairly certain it wasn't when we went to bed. Very interesting. I would like to stay in that room again to see what might happen next. Enjoyed our stay.

- F

I will never forget our night in room 7. My husband didn't mention that I also had an experience. Someone not of this world was pushing on my legs as I slept. I was frozen with fear. My husband thinks I was asleep, but I know otherwise. Something was pushing on my legs as I tried to sleep. It was the scariest feeling I've ever had. There was a ghost in our room - George's room - on the night of our stay!

- Kathy R.

January 2008

We stayed at the very creepy Hotel Léger this past December. We checked out three hours after we checked in. We had all taken about two weeks of vacation, road-tripping up and down the California coast, staying at the said-to-be most haunted hotels inside the most haunted rooms to celebrate my sister's 18th birthday. We really planned out which hotels were the most haunted according to online websites and forums. We barely came across Hotel Léger when looking online; only about a sentence or two was published on a website. Hotel Léger was one of our last stops in our haunted exhibition and no other hotel on our list convinced us that ghosts are real. Well, we were the only guests there that night and we had reserved rooms 2 & 7. We arrived pretty late, around 9 or 10pm and immediately felt that the whole surrounding area was very creepy, yet the hotel was very warm and nice inside the bar area. Once we had brought our luggage upstairs, we we noticed both of our rooms were pretty distant and we decided to switch out room 7 for room 1. We walked downstairs and had dinner, then we went back up and changed into our pajamas and decided to start playing with the Ouija board (which we brought with us this whole trip.) Ghost hunting and paranormal activity interests me and my sister, but our boyfriends who were with us don't exactly believe in it. We turned off all the lights and still nothing happened. Meanwhile, the entire time we were there, everyone had a really odd feeling about the entire situation of us being the only guests in the little town of Mokelumne Hill and the weird vibe the hotel was giving us. After being fed up and unconvinced that the hotel was really haunted, we went to try to play the Ouija board again, this time in room 1. We shut off the lights and had the fireplace going. We sat around the coffee table and started playing. It's known that if you take pictures of a haunted location with a digital camera, you can sometimes see "orbs," so we were snapping pictures the whole time. The board started working very slowly once we were in room 1. When my boyfriend started to put down the camera, that's when the board started moving more quickly. This is when it gets scary, within about 3 minutes of my sister and I playing, the board spelled "LAVE NOW" and a burst of fire rose up dramatically from the fireplace and stayed up for about a minute so two. Now, most people would say after reading this that it was probably a spark, or wood normally does that from time to time. NO, THIS WAS NOT LIKE THAT AT ALL. Yes, "leave" was misspelled, but of course we knew what it meant. We all toppled on each other to the loveseat closest to the wall in pure fear. One of the guys and I then heard the sound of a door upstairs closing, again no other guests were there that night. After a few seconds of realizing what just happened, my sister and I continued to use the Ouija board. With our hands shaking, we asked, "Was that you who made the fire go up?" It replied with "yes." We then asked, "Can you give us some time to pack our bags and leave?" Again, the board said "yes." So without hesitation, we all stuck together and first packed up our stuff in room 1, then went on to room 2 and gathered everything in there as well. We rushed downstairs and just in time, we saw the rest of the hotel staff getting ready to leave for the night. Very strange coincidence. Everyone was shaken, yet the hotel staff listened as if they'd heard the story before and it was nothing out of the ordinary for them. After realizing what had really happened, my sister and I were extremely upset we didn't stay longer, but we couldn't convince the guys to go back in. We ended up driving down a few miles to the closest town and the first normal hotel we saw, and went to check availability. With our luck, the hotel clerk told us that the hotel was haunted as well due to the paranormal investigators that use the conference room father investigating hotels like the Hotel Léger! So we went across the street and ended up staying at a shabby little motel. Me and my sister, as well as our mom, plan on coming and visiting the Hotel Léger again very soon. Unfortunately, the guys will never step foot in that town again, but my sister and I can't wait to go back and actually spend the whole night. Our mom is so excited and we all can't wait to see what else we experience from this very haunted hotel! It sounds like we had a bad time, but all in all, this is what we wanted to get our of our whole vacation, and we were very pleased to convince the boys that haunted places do exist. Can't wait to come back.

- Kali, Jenn, Rich, and Josh

October 2007

The following is from www.ghostsandstories.com

When my daughter Jennifer showed me pictures from a wedding she attended at the Hotel Léger a week before I was so intrigued by the photos of multiple orbs taken in the basement I just had to go there and see for myself. We packed up the tired 160k mile Toyota with our equipment and headed for Mokelumne Hill, Ca.

Jennifer, myself and our friend Danyelle Nunes were escorted on a tour of the hotel by the bartender after we finished and exceptionally good lunch at the hotel restaurant. Our first stop was the downstairs basement. It was once a dungeon and jail during the Gold Rush era and had a creepy feel to it. It was quite dark, downright black in some areas with the feeling of being surrounded by energy that seemed to feel somehow a mixture of good and bad.

We started taking photos with our digital cameras and got plenty of orb, different sizes and brightness. At one point I asked the spirits to come to me, which apparently they did according to a photo taken of me, orbs everywhere including on me! After 20 minutes or so in the basement we were taken to the upstairs area where there are 13 beautiful rooms that were available to us to take photos of. Each room is decorated in elegant time period furniture.

I became rather tired and overwhelmed, not being a spring chicken, with all the excitement and awe of the place. In a couple of rooms where I felt the heaviest energy my camera became blurred and would not take a picture no matter what I did and at the same time Danyelle’s camera shut down completely. In room 8 it was a different story. It practically invited Jennifer to stay awhile, intriguing her with what looked like a circle with a star inside showing on the camera display. She hung around in the room taking numerous pictures and giving into the “feel” of the room as she is very sensitive. She took photo after photo and kept calling to us that she was getting something very unusual. She was looking so transfixed at the wall behind the headboard which to Danyelle and myself looked like a plain old wall. She creeped us out the way she was staring so intently so I took a picture of her.

Later the photo of her downloaded onto out old 50 inch screen TV shows the area she was looking up at to be the full body of a lady and it was also reflected in the mirror. The figure is clearly visible from her head down to her toes, she is leaning forward with her hands on her thighs and seems to be listening to us. It gets even stranger. The sister of the bride from the previous week stayed in the room overnight and got a picture of the same lady that she took in the middle of the night. From what we are told she and her husband were badly frightened. Before leaving we went back to the basement for a few last minute photos and were greeted by an overpowering smell of cigar smoke. Was that possibly one of the men jailed there or Mr. Leger himself? The history of this hotel and town is fascinating and is luring us to return soon. We hope to entice the lady in room 8 to show herself and find out more about who she was. 

- Dana M.

July 2010

Hello, I would like to share a ghost encounter that I experienced several years ago at the Hotel Léger. I have family that lives in Moke Hill, and about 4 or 5 years ago we visited and my dad and I were walking by the hotel on the opposite side of the street. We heard a door open and looked up to see who was there. When we looked up, we realized that no one was there, only a pair of boots walking across the deck. The boots had opened the 2nd door from the left and traveled 3 doors over. Then the door opened and the boots went inside and the door closed. My dad and I looked at each other in astonishment and discussed what had happened. He saw the exact thing I had seen, so we knew it was real.

- Anders F.

August 2010

We stayed in room 2, Elizabeth’s room, where the questionable fire was that maybe have been her downfall. There are so many stories it’s hard to tell. The story begins with our tour. As we came down the stairs, I had a brief moment of nothingness followed by a trip and fall into the table next to the front door. I wasn’t hurt and no damage was done to the table or plants.

After the tour, my husband went back out on his own and filmed some more. In the photo he captured an orb. This surprised us. Maybe either someone assisted me to trip, or keep me from getting hurt, or keeping the table from being damaged. It all depends on perspective.

The other odd thing to occur was that I heard wings fluttering over the headboard when we went to bed. I sleep on the bathroom side of the bed where it started over my head, moved to my husband’s side, and then to the window and back again. This went on for hours, endless, so I know it wasn’t the air conditioning. I don’t know if the attic has evening winged visitors. But in the morning I did check for any bugs, both the headboard and the window. Nothing. We really enjoyed our stay.

Our next trip we want to go more into town to discover more of it’s secrets. Thank you for the pleasure.

August 2010

I was in the saloon one day while my friend was on an appraisal. We are locals from Valley Springs. I went to use the restroom and as I was exiting someone touched me and said “Hey man, you alright?” When I turned around there was nobody there. I left after that but now I want to stay the night.

- Matt N.

October 2010

I had one personal experience. Sometime after midnight, I was laying in bed with the lights on and my door open (I was in Mr. Leger’s room.) I dozed off and what seemed like a minute or two after dozing off, my bedroom door quietly closed and latched. I did not hear anyone retreating which, as you know you could easily hear and no one was there. Sounds rather mild but it did scare me. 

- Gloria A.

October 2012

We stayed at the Hotel Léger on our wedding night. We arrived at 11:15 at night, after a long drive. The manager was very hospitable. She gave us the key to our room (room 8) as well as the key to room 7, “George’s Room.” She explained to us that the hotel was nearly empty, and thought we might enjoy using the shower in room 7, since all we had was a tub. I knew about the ghost stories surrounding room 7, so we decided not to use the shower. We went upstairs and looked around, taking pictures in our room as well as in George’s. There were no strange “vibes,” no creepy feelings. I have felt nausea and dizziness … associated with ghostly energy in other haunted places, but not in this hotel. It was calm and peaceful. After soaking in the tub, we were convinced we would have an uneventful, good night’s sleep. It was hard to fall asleep. The bed was “antique” sized (as expected) and the room was stuffy because it was a hot night and the window wouldn’t open for us. We slept with just a sheet on us. The last thing I remember was saying, “I’m never going to be able to fall asleep.” Then we were both asleep. I was startled awake by three slow knocks on the headboard, directly above my head. Our headboard was free-standing in the middle of the room, and there was no mistaking the sound. It was not a wall. It echoed in the bed. Instead ofbeing afraid, I felt annoyed. I turned over and made a mental note to tell John about it in the morning, then fell back asleep. Then it happened again. Three slow, quiet knocks. I remember looking up at the headboard, thinking, “knock it off!” and I turned towards John and attempted to go back to sleep. Shortly after, it did it again. As I opened my eyes, I decided I should wake up John. That’s when I felt the sheet pull down around my backside, as if someone sat down on the bed right next to me, or they tucked in the sheet under mattress. I leaned towards John, determined to wake him up. I shook him as he lay on his back breathing hard, sound asleep. I realized I was not even touching him. I started to panic, and I pounded my fists on him and screamed so loud my throat hurt. He did not move. I decided I must be asleep, and when I looked back to where I had been lying, I saw myself lying there. I gasped and felt like I was jerked awake. I sat straight up in bed. I assume I awoke John, because he sat up, too. But his eyes were closed, and he fell back down. I tried to touch him, and I could not feel him. I felt like I was a ghost. I felt like I had to escape the place I had entered, back to consciousness. It was like being held underwater as you try to swim your way to the surface. I was terrified. It took all my energy as I tried desperately to wake up, to “come back” to reality. I believe I was being “held down” in the realm that ghost inhabit, experiencing their fear of not “existing” on our plane. I finally gave up. That was when she spoke to me. A calming female voice said a name, loud and clear. I repeated it. “Eva?” I was gently corrected. “No, Edie.” I repeated it. She said approvingly “yes!” Then she said a last name. I repeated it. She corrected me Three times, I repeated it wrong. I felt like a student that kept getting the wrong answer (I have no idea what the name was). She finally gave up on me, dismissed it as unimportant. She said in a happy, bubbly voice, “Well, your room is haunted by a ghosted named Edie, and she says hello!” Her voice trailed off at the end, and I woke as soon as there was silence. John woke at the same moment. It was about 4:30am he asked how I slept. I told him everything. He had no memory of anything except waking at that moment. I threw the sheet off me, and still felt something on me. I was lying on my back, and there was a pillowcase lying on my stomach. I grabbed the pillow from beneath my head. The pillowcase was off of it. That was unnerving. I fell back to sleep and slept soundly for 3 hours. John decided to stay awake; he said he felt compelled to keep unwanted visitors away from me. It worked but he paid a price. When we got up and around, John said he felt like he was in a fog. He looked disoriented and he said he felt nauseous and dizzy. He stared at a map for 10 minutes only to realize he couldn’t remember what he was starting at, or why. He was not himself. He actually worried me. He wasn’t finishing sentences, and he was forgetting words. He said, “We need to leave.” An hour or so down the road, he said he felt like a cloud was lifted and he felt his energy returning. He has never been affected by spiritual energy, but he was convinced the ghosts were attaching to him, or sapping his energy somehow. We looked at our pictures. There are orbs in almost every single one. Prior to this trip, orbs were never a part of my photography experiences (and I’m a photography nut). They are almost always surrounding John. Moving with him. And in one photo in the banquet room, a blue “thing” was on the far wall. We eliminated light refraction, but have no other explanation. We took a picture of the jail bars and a light seems to be pouring out from within over the bars. I researched experiences. One website said there was a ghost named “Edith” at the hotel. I’m guessing that was Edie. Another person said that they felt their sheets get tucked in, then they felt paralyzed. A skeptic dismissed that as “sleep paralysis”. Too close to my experience to dismiss. Still another person said they have experienced “out-of-body experiences” when ghosts were present (not at this hotel). It’s as if ghosts pull us into their world while we are in a vulnerable state of unconsciousness. They want us to visit them, instead of wasting their energy trying to get our attention on our plane. I am glad I had such a unique experience at the Hotel Leger, and I wouldn't trade that night for anything. But I think any curiosity about the spirit world is now more than satisfied.

- Amy G.

December 2013

We stayed in room 13 on Sunday night. I wanted to share what we captured on our recorders. In rooms 11 & 12 my husband caught what sounds like a child whistling, and a woman telling it to hush. There’s also a child yelling out “mommy’s room!” I think that was room 12. There were some not so friendly sports in room 8 and room 9. In room 8 we walked in, I caught “Oh shit…PEOPLE!” and in room 9 a man said “don’t…get out” and then he said some other expletives that were not nice. I don’t think there was anybody in room 13. I don’t believe the mean man was George Leger. We talked to him using our Ghost Box and he was pretty friendly and he sounded more French Canadian to me than German. I actually slowed down part of the recording and he says he’s lonely can he can’t die.

- Marcy and Quent J.

April 2015

Geez, I can’t remember how many years ago this was (maybe 8 or 9), but I can still remember everything. We stayed in two rooms – my cousins, my mother and I stayed in a room with a dresser between two beds (room 11) with white and blue sheets, while my aunt and uncle stayed in the room that connected to us (room 12). When we arrived, our small dogs were completely and utterly frightened to even go up the stairs. We picked them up and they tried desperately to wiggle out of our arms. We get to our rooms and situate ourselves, meanwhile my dog goes straight into the bathroom and begins to cry. We ran to check on him to find he had peed and was running around in circles. One might dismiss this as us not paying attention to him and he just needed to pee, but never had he ever done that before -even when staying inside of our house for hours and hours on end. We ate downstairs and while going back up the stairs I felt that someone (besides my family) was there staring at me. We took showers, and went to sleep. I remember clearly my cousin and I were sleeping in the same bed and in the middle of the night I heard someone get up and walk around the room. I thought this was my mother at first, but turned to find out she was still in bed. I dismissed this as just being sleepy, and laid back down. About ten minutes later, I believe, I felt my sheets slowly being pulled off towards my toes. I pulled the sheets back up, to only feel someone on the other end forcing them back down. I panicked and started screaming. My mother, in the bed on the other side of the dresser, jumped up and came to my side. No one was in the room beside my cousins, who were both asleep. It was just us and I cannot explain why it happened, but I know for a fact someone was messing with me. Now we are both asleep, and again throughout the night I heard odd things but was honestly so frightened I couldn’t even move. I just laid there in complete fear. When we all woke up around 6, we found that two of our pillows were missing. We searched under the beds and in any possible place we could. We felt obligated to go downstairs and tell the staff, who then came up to help us. They began to search in the other rooms, only to find that in a room down the hall, which was left unoccupied that night, had our pillows placed on the bed with a blanket of ours that we didn’t even notice was missing. As I was packing up, my sisters toy computer suddenly went off. This toy was not working at all the previous day (we thought the batteries were dead) but once we packed up, it turned on by itself and different programmed phrases went off. We had to take the toy apart in order to stop it. Our photos at home showed orbs and faces. This was the oddest thing that ever happened to me.

- Zoe G.