By Dawn Isbell Wilson
I wrote this song to round out my Halloween trilogy. This was inspired by a recent story I read about The Chelsea Hotel. I was actually looking to write a story about the haunted Cecil Hotel in San Francisco. I pivoted to The Chelsea because of its deep connection with writers, painters, photographers, poets, and musicians. And, of course, because of the reports of haunted rooms, hallways and elevators.
The Chelsea Hotel is considered by some to be one of the most haunted places in all of New York City. Many notable artists, including writers like Mark Twain and Arthur Miller, artists like Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol, and musicians like Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan, and many others, have stayed there over the decades since first opened its doors. According to eyewitness accounts, spirits of deceased residents still roam the hotel's halls to this day.
The first ghostly appearance was said to have been a woman named Mary who hanged herself on the fifth floor. No one knows her last name or the exact circumstances of her suicide, but she is tied to the tragedy of the Titanic. Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died at the Chelsea Hotel in 1953 at just 38 years old. Perhaps the most tragic and disturbing event in the hotel's history was the 1978 murder of Nancy Spungen, the girlfriend of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious.
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