The Fourth-Floor Light: A Ghost Story of Hotel Sorrento

Seattle, 1911. The rain had a way of making even the brightest lamps flicker, turning the new Hotel Sorrento into something from another century. Its Italian Renaissance façade gleamed in the mist, a jewel among the young city’s hills. Inside, guests whispered about literary soirées, champagne toasts, and the occasional strange chill that crept through the corridors after midnight.

The hotel’s most notable visitor was Alice B. Toklas, who arrived with a small entourage from Paris. She had come to visit old friends and escape the noise of Gertrude Stein’s salon for a while. Alice occupied a suite on the fourth floor, Room 408, overlooking Madison Street — a room she adored for its quiet and the soft hum of the rain.

But one morning, Alice vanished. Her trunk remained open, perfume bottles neatly lined on the dresser, a book of Stein’s poems lying face down as if she had meant to return any moment. No one ever found out what happened. Some said she left for San Francisco. Others whispered that she never left the Sorrento at all.

The Ghost Returns

Decades later, guests began to speak of a woman in a long gray dress, her hair pinned in the fashion of another time. She appeared in mirrors, in the reflection of elevator doors, or standing by the fourth-floor window, staring into the fog. Staff reported that her perfume — violets and tobacco — would fill empty rooms, and the lights would flicker just before she appeared.

One night in the 1970s, a housekeeper named Marjorie was closing up when she saw the woman gliding down the hallway. Thinking it was a guest, she called out — but the woman turned, smiled faintly, and vanished, leaving the scent of violets in her wake. The room at the end of the hall, 408, was found unlocked, though no one had been checked in.

To this day, visitors claim to feel cold spots near that same room. Bartenders have seen glasses slide an inch across the polished wood bar when no one was near. The elevator sometimes stops on the fourth floor without being called.

And every so often, a guest reports hearing faint jazz music echoing from the past — a phantom soirée that never ends.

The Last Entry

When the hotel underwent renovations in the 1980s, workers found something strange behind a wall panel on the fourth floor: a small notebook, water-stained but legible. Inside were Alice’s handwriting — lines of poetry, recipes, and one chilling final entry:

“The rain has not stopped. I hear voices in the corridor, though I am quite alone. The mirror shows another face — not mine, but one smiling back at me.”

They sealed the notebook in glass and placed it in the hotel’s archive. But guests say, when the night is still and the rain falls like it did in 1911, you can see her shadow at the window — waiting, always waiting, for a friend who never came.

Followup:
Why ghosts are thought to linger in the Sorrento Hotel?

Why the Alice B. Toklas hauntings began in the 1980s?
The Sorrento Hotel in Seattle underwent a major renovation in the early 1980s after being purchased by the Malone family. The $4.5 million project, completed in 1981, aimed to restore the hotel's original elegance and charm, which included uncovering hidden Honduran mahogany paneling in the Fireside Room and updating its style.