The Commodore Hotel got new life in 2007 – even from the afterlife.
LINDEN, Tenn. (WKRN) — Since 2007, the historic Commodore Hotel & Cafe has offered visitors to rural Perry County a glimpse into the past with modern accommodations.
But that’s not all guests of the hotel can experience.
According to owners Michael and Kathy Dumont, strange occurrences have been happening ever since they restored the property.
“We saw this hotel in the middle of downtown Linden, and it was becoming dilapidated and looked like it was headed for the wrecking ball,” Kathy said.
Shortly after, they opened the restored and renovated hotel to the public. The rebirth of the 1939 historic hotel also provided much-needed rejuvenation for downtown Linden, which also meant more visitors.
The increase in visitors soon led to tales of spooky sightings.
“Back in 2008, I remember a self-professed mildly psychic guest tell us, ‘You have a little girl who likes to play in the hallway,'” Kathy told News 2.
Soon after, more guests started to talk about the little girl in the hotel hallway.
“I kept seeing that little girl and thought to myself, ‘Who is she?’” said Taylor Byrd, whose mother is the General Manager of the Commodore Hotel.
None of the employees at the time had a daughter, according to Byrd, and there frequently wasn’t a guest with a daughter staying as well.
Byrd described the girl as blonde, wearing a blue dress and her hair in pigtails tied with pink ribbons. “When I first saw her, I was standing in the lobby, and she peeked behind this doorway. I turned back around, and she wasn’t there.”
After seeing the little girl multiple times, Taylor said she wanted to play with her.
“I remember her dragging me up the stairs. She’s running up and down the hallway looking into all the rooms, and I’m like, ‘What are you doing?'” Haley Byrd, Taylor’s mother, said.
Taylor then told her mother she was “looking for the little girl” before walking into another room. Once inside, Haley said her daughter pointed at a chair in the corner and asked if she could play.
“I was like, ‘No, no. Let’s go,’” Haley said.
Taylor isn’t the only person who has seen the little girl.
“The crazy thing that was so mind-blowing about this story was I overheard Taylor telling the story to some guests one day, and I about fell over because the way she described the little girl was exactly how this man described her to me when he stayed here,” Kathy Dumont said, adding she got chills recalling the story.
According to Kathy, a man staying at the hotel about 10 years prior said he once stayed at the hotel when he was a child and saw a girl matching the description of the ghostly figure.
His grandmother became visibly shaken when he told her he was looking for the little girl in the hallway who liked to play. According to Kathy, the man’s grandmother said, “There’s no little girl here.”
Multiple guests have seen the little girl with the ribbons in her hair to this day. As recently as 2022, a guest at the hotel said he’d seen a little girl in a dress playing in the hallway.
“He had a look of shock on his face when we were telling the story, because he thought it was just a little girl and that it was just bad parenting going on because it was, like, 12:30 at night,” Kathy said.
Who the little girl is remains a mystery to the Dumonts, much like the complete history of the Commodore Hotel. “We tried to research it as much as we could; there wasn’t a lot of written history and not a lot of photographs,” Kathy said.
There was reportedly a fire on the block where the Commodore is located in 1929, but no one died from it, according to Kathy, and she hasn’t heard of any small children passing away from mysterious or suspicious causes in that area.
Whether or not the little girl really loved her time at the Commodore Hotel in its past, she remains a dedicated visitor to this day.