ThePalaceHotel

The Palace Hotel

Crawford County Illinois
Ghost Hunters Society

         We Investigated the Palace Hotel on June 25, 2004. The hotel is now a home to Chester and Karen Green in Palestine Illinois.

          The Palace Hotel was once a thriving place for people to to stop and rest for the night and was mostly used by railroad crews from the Illinois Central Railroad. The tired travelers entered the front door were the lobby and staircase were located just inside to meet them. The train track and depot are very close to the hotel and would have been a short walk for tired railroad operators to rest for the night and one railroder made it his final resting place under an old sugar maple in the back yard! Chester Green, the current owner of the Palace Hotel, said he has been told that a railroder sat down under the tree in the back yard one day and died there.

          It is unknown when the hotel was built but they believe it was in the time frame of 1896 to 1911. There are eight upstairs rooms that were used for people to stay in during the hotel days and they still have numbers above each of the doors. The single bathroom that was shared by all the guests of the hotel still has the original clawfoot bathtub and pedestal sink. A fireplace in its original condition can also still be seen in the room that was the former lobby. There is an old lime stone foundation that can be seen in the basement of the old hotel that resembles the foundation in the basement of the Fife Opera House. The opera house was built during the same time period as the Palace Hotel. The 4,800 square foot hotel faded out in the 1950s, when the railroad scaled back its operations and there was no longer a need for a hotel.   The building then became a boarding house were some people lived for many years. The current owners still rent a room to an occupant and live in the main part of the house.

          Although the the current onwers of house have not experienced any kind of paranormal activity, my team and I found the house to be active.   We picked up EMF spikes of 3.5 outside near the tree were the railroader was said to have died. Chester Green also captured an orb with his own camera right beside the tree! Our team did not locate any temperature drops in or around the building but we did capture several paranormal anomalies on our digital cameras. The stairway leading up to the second floor and the hallway on the second floor was most active part of the hotel. We plan on conducting a follow up investigation of the location soon.

The pictures of paranormal anomalies we captured are below.

Click on the links to view the pictures!