Latest / Cleaning Business Life / EP 236 | I Think It Walked Right Through Me: The Haunted History of Gurley Street Grill

Transcript

EP 236 | I Think It Walked Right Through Me: The Haunted History of Gurley Street Grill · Cleaning Business Life

1:07
SPEAKER_00: If you keep telling yourself you'll finally get serious about your cleaning business when things calm down, I need you to hear me.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: Things are not going to magically calm down ever unless you do something.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: The clients will keep calling, employees will keep needing answers, fires will keep popping up.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: And if your business doesn't have the structure, every new opportunity will feel like one more thing that you have to carry.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: That is exactly what the Structure Scale and Profit Cleaning Business Academy is designed to change.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: Over 400 businesses have gone through the program.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: This scholarship isn't for the person with the saddest story or the most perfect application.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: It's for the cleaning business owner who is ready to stop winging it, start implementing, and build a company that can actually support the life that you want.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: You do not need to have everything figured out before you apply.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: That's the whole damn point.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Applications close on Veterans Day, November 11th, and the recipient will be announced on Black Friday.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Stop deciding for me that you won't be chosen.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: Fill out the application.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Tell me where you are, where you want to go, and why you're ready to do the work.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: Talk to you soon.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone, Shannon Miller here from Cleaning Business Life, and this is a continuation of Haunted Ghost Stories for this year's lineup.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: Something passed through me.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: The haunted history of the girly street girl.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: There are places that earn a haunted reputation because somebody wrote a book about them, a ghost hunting show visited them, or a tour guide has repeatedly the same story for years and years.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: And then there are places you believe that may be haunted because something happened to you there.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: So this one is personal.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: The Curly Street Grill in downtown Prescott is one of those places for me.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: I have been upstairs in that building many, many times.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: I have attended chamber meetings there.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: I have used the private rooms for ordinary business gatherings.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: I even helped with the catered event there.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: I was never walking through the building with a ghost hunting equipment.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: I was not holding an EMF meter asking spirits to knock or looking for something paranormal to happen.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have a seance.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: I was simply living my life.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: But those upstairs floors have never felt completely ordinary to me.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of creepy, actually.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: The bathroom always carried a strange feeling.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: Water turned on without me turning it on.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: And one evening while I was helping with a catered event in the upstairs kitchen slash little bar area, there was so much activity that I felt as someone walked directly through me.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: It's a very unsettling feeling.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: I've only experienced that unmistakable sensation in two locations.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: The curly street girl was one of them.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: So today we're going upstairs, above the burgers, the drinks, the conversations, into the rooms with a history that Prescott has never completely settled.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: Was the building once connected to prostitution?
4:54
SPEAKER_00: Are the brothel stories documented history, local legend, or some combination of both?
5:01
SPEAKER_00: And whatever happened in those rooms, did everyone who entered them eventually leave?
5:07
SPEAKER_00: This is the haunted history of the Gurley Street Girl, downtown Prescott, before the girl.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: Today, Gurley Street Girl sits at 230 West Gurley Street, right in the historic center of Prescott, Arizona.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: It is the kind of restaurant where locals meet for lunch, mmm, yummy, pistachio salad.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Business groups gather upstairs, families celebrate birthdays, and visitors stop after walking around the Courthouse Square and Whiskey Row.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: The building itself is known as the Mulveyan Building.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: But the structure standing there today is not the first building to occupy that address.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: Before 1900, a one-story wooden saloon stood on the property.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: It was known as the Mulvolin Saloon.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: Then on July 14, 1900, Prescott's Great Fire tore through downtown.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: The fire destroyed most of Whiskey Row and many of the surrounding businesses, including the original saloon on this site.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: Prescott began rebuilding almost immediately.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: The current Mulvullen building was completed in August of 1901, making it one of the earliest buildings constructed after the fire.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: Here is one of my favorite and most creepiest details.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: Some of the old bricks reportedly were reused during the rebuilding.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: Gurley Street Grill says you can still spot charred bricks inside the restaurant.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: I've seen them.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: Think about that for a moment.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: Parts of the building that burned in 1900 may still be embedded in the walls of the building.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: People enter today.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: And you can see them inside because I've been in there.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: If you believe objects and buildings can retain energy, that detail opens an interesting question.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: When people rebuilt the Molevolin building, did they bring back more than brick and mortar out of the ashes?
7:06
SPEAKER_00: Something to think about.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: Then we get to the part of the history that I have heard repeatedly since living in Prescott.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: I have been told again and again that the upstairs of the Gurley Street Girl once operated as a brothel.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: I want to be careful with the wording because local history has layers.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: Some facts survive in property records, newspapers, and city directories.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Other stories are passed down through business owners, employees, tour guides, and longtime residents.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the official record and local memory do not line up perfectly.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: What can be confirmed is that the building began as a saloon and that the upstairs contained furnished rooms.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: Gurley Street Girls' own history said those rooms were rented by the hour or by the day.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: By the hour or by the day.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: Something to think about.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: That does not prove by itself that the upstairs was legally or formally operated as a brothel.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: But it certainly explains why that story has followed the building for so long.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: This was an early 20th century saloon in a rough territorial town only a short distance from Prescott's known red light district.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: We talked about that in another podcast.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: The phase rented by the hour leaves plenty of room for interpretation, at least it does for me.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: There does not appear to be a surviving formal record identifying the upstairs of the Gurley Street Girl as a brothel.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: What we do know is that the building operated as a saloon and upstairs contained furnished rooms, and all those rooms were reportedly rented by the hour or by the day.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: Combined with its proximity to Prescott's documented red light district, it is easy to understand how the story began and why it has remained part of the building's local history.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: So throughout this episode, I am treating the brothel story as local legend, supported by some very suggestive historical details.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm not presenting it as proven fact, but I will also say this: when you stand upstairs in those old rooms, the story does not feel difficult to imagine.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: The upstairs rooms are no longer rented as lodging, thank goodness.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: Today they are private banquet and meeting spaces.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: I've been up there hundreds of times.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: People hold parties there, organizations gather there.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: I attended several chamber meetings upstairs over the years.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: Even last Christmas, I was there.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: You can describe when you go upstairs, it's at a 90-degree pitch, so you want to be careful that you don't run up and down the stairs very fast because you could fall.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, the flooring and the doors feel different from the restaurant down below.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: And it's just a different vibe.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: I was not alone in a locked abandoned building at midnight.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: I was attending an event with other people nearby.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: So I was it was packed up there.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: The building was open and functioning.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: Nothing about the occasion was supposed to be frightening, but it was a little harrowing.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: The strange things happened during these little moments when I stepped away from everyone else, made the hair on my arms stand up.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: Whenever I went into the upstairs bathroom, I could feel a weird vibe.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: Immediately, still to this day, I can still feel the vibe when I go up to the top layer of this building.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: I realize that it is not a scientific description, but sometimes the room simply feels different.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: You become more alert before you can identify anything specific that caused the reaction.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: Then there was the water.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: The water turned on without me turning it on and turned off and then it turned on, and I didn't have anything to do with it.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: You know when you used to have those shows, the blooper shows, and they're like, are you testing me?
11:10
SPEAKER_00: Is are you just looking for my reaction?
11:11
SPEAKER_00: It was kind of like that.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: And this did happen during an event, right?
11:16
SPEAKER_00: So there nobody was turning on and off the water.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't doing it.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't trying to communicate with anything, I wasn't asking for a sign, it wasn't a seance.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: I was using the bathroom and something involving the water without me causing it to happen.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: So old plumbing can be temperamental.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: Water pressure, fluctuation, fixtures can loosen up.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: The older buildings make sounds that newer buildings do not.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: Very true, especially on the East Coast.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: And I understand all that.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: But an explanation offered later does not change what that moment feels like when you're standing alone in the room that makes you uneasy.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: And the water turns on all by itself.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't one of those newer faucets, it just turned on.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: The most active experience happened when I was helping out with someone who I was doing a favor for at a catered event.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: The building has an upstairs kitchenette and bar area, and I was there working, helping out.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: So I had a practical reason for being there.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: I normally had been from, you know, customer facing.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: This time I was actually involved in helping.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: I was helping with food, event tasks, moving through the kitchen and bar, paying attention to what needed to be prepared and served.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: My mind was not focused on ghosts, paranormal activity, or any of the other wild things, but there was a lot of activity in that area.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: I could feel it.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: Again, all of the hair on my arms would stand up.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: Things would turn on without me turning them on.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: I would put a glass one place and it would not be in the same place when I went back.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't an isolated moment that I noticed later.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: The activity kept calling my attention back to that one specific area of the upstairs Girly Street Girl.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: It's just, it's uncanny, right?
13:03
SPEAKER_00: And then I felt what seemed like a person walking directly through me.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: And this is a weird sensation if you've not ever had that happen.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: Not someone rushing past me or a breeze from an open window because they weren't open.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: It felt like a person moving through me where I stood and where I was standing, right?
13:21
SPEAKER_00: Like right through my body.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: Like it's talking about it now gives me goosebumps, but it's a very unsettling feeling when something passes through you.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, I feel that it was coming from one side of the bar to the other, and I just got in the way.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, I just had a lot of heaviness and sick to my stomach feeling.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: And it happened quickly.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: So I knew that something had occurred.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: And my body reacted before my brain had time to create an explanation, and no one else felt it on that evening because I kind of poked around and asked.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: So I stood there for a moment trying to figure out what I had just experienced, but it was like every weird sci-fi movie you've ever seen, right?
14:05
SPEAKER_00: That gets a little silent and then just like walking through something.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: I've been in old buildings, I've walked through historic properties on many, many occasions.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: I've heard unsettling sounds and felt uncomfortable in multiple rooms without declaring them haunted.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: But the sensation of something passing through my body has happened to me in only two places here in this location.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: The Curly Street Girl is one of them.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: The PalaStation is another.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: I'll talk about that on another day.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: And this is why I cannot file this experience away with a loose hinge or unpredictable plumbing, even though it still is unsettling when I go there today.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: I try to go to the bathroom, then I'm not by myself.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: The Curly Street Girls Haunted Reputation is not something I created.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: It actually had had experiences like that before me.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: In 2001, the Charlotte Holmes Museum Archive published an article.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: The building has also remained a stop in Prescott Haunted's history storytelling, and we would just revisit that too, just this year.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: The title of the 2001 article matters because it shows the stories about ghosts in the building were circulating at least a quarter of a century ago.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: They did not begin with my bathroom, door, my faucet, or the night of the party.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: The building had more than a century of owners, employees, tenants, customers, upstairs guests.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: It began with the saloon, survived prohibition under changing uses, and continued operating while Prescott grew around it.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: The upstairs rooms remained part of the building long after the original purpose disappeared.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: Prostitution.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: Brothel.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: And if the brothel story is true, even in part, those rooms would have witnessed private encounters that rarely appeared in respectable public records.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: Women who worked in territorial red light districts were often documented only by census.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: They were given labels, arrests, property transactions, or someone else's moral judgment.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: Basically, that's what they got.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: Their personal histories were easily lost, and that makes it tempting to assign every female apparition to an unnamed sex worker, but I do not want to manufacture a ghost simply because the setting makes the story convenient.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: I do not know who or what I encountered upstairs.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: And I'm wondering if it would happen if I went there today.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: It could also be a woman connected to the rooms.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: It could have been a former guest, it could have been a worker or owner.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: I didn't dig to see who had died and not died in the building.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: It could have been a paranormal investigation called residual energy, an event or emotion replayed without any awareness of the people present.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that happens in some of these older buildings.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Or it could have been carried by the water, the equipment and the physical sensation that have three completely unrelated explanations.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: History requires leaving all the possibilities open.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: There is another reason I wanted to tell the story on cleaning business life.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: Not to mention the fact that it was just creepy and unsettling.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: Cleaners experience buildings differently from almost everyone.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: Customers see their homes while they are living in them.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: Restaurant guests see dining rooms filled with conversation, hopefully conversation.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: Hotel guests see lobbies and hallways while employees and travelers are moving around them.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: Cleaners are often there before everyone arrives or after everyone leaves.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: We work in bathrooms, bedrooms, hallways, and back rooms alone.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: We know when we turn off a faucet, at least I do.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: We remember which doors are closed.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: We notice when an object is no longer where we left it because our work depends on paying attention to those details.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: That does not mean every unexplained noise is paranormal.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: Cleaning professionals also understand buildings.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: We hear pipes knock, HVAC systems start, ice makers dump, wood expand, appliance cycle, and old doors moving inside uneven frames.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: But perhaps cleaners also notice unusual activity because we spend so much time inside quiet spaces where small changes are impossible to miss.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: Woo! Right?
18:47
SPEAKER_00: If you own a cleaning company, I would love to know whether or not one of your technicians has ever had an experience in a client's home or business that you could not explain.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: Those stories may eventually become an episode of their own.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: I cannot prove Girly Street Girl is haunted.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: I cannot prove it is the upstairs rooms operated as a brothel.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: I can tell you that this is a story I have heard repeatedly.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: That the building's own history confirms that rooms were rented by the hour or by the day, and that the property sits close to Prescott's historic red light district.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: I can also tell you what happened to me.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: The upstairs bathroom always carried a strange feeling, still does.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: Water turned on without me turning it on.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Things in the upstairs kitchen and bar area turned on during a catered event.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: And while I was working there, I felt what seemed like a person walk directly through my body.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: Maybe every incident has an ordinary explanation.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: Could have been the wind.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: Maybe more than a century of local storytelling influenced how people interpreted old equipment and old plumbing.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: But the physical sensation from that evening remains different for me.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: It is one of only two times in my life when I have felt something pass through me and I still remember exactly where and when it happened.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Downstairs, Gurley Street Girl remains a busy Prescott restaurant.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: People order food, meet friends, and talk over drink every single day.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: Upstairs celebrations and business meetings continue in rooms that once welcomed a very different kind of guest.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: Most people climb those stairs will never experience anything unusual like what I experienced.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: But after what happened to me, I still wonder whether everyone who ever rented one of those rooms truly checked out.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed the haunted piece of Prescott's history, follow cleaning business life so you don't have to miss the next story in this series.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: We still have more haunted hotels, saloons, and the unexplained encounters to explore.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: And if you've ever experienced something you could not explain while cleaning a home or business, send me your story.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm always interested in listening and hearing them.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Tell me where you were, what happened, and whether anyone else experienced it too.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep building a business and a life you actually want to participate in.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: And if you happen to attend a meeting upstairs at the Girlie Street Grill, pay attention when you close the bathroom door at the end.