Old Gilroy Hotel

The Old Gilroy Hotel is one of the most frequently retold paranormal locations in South Bay California folklore. Local tradition associates the building with two figures: a young woman in her early twenties and a small girl. The woman is most often described at the top of the stairway leading to the former guest rooms; the girl is typically reported in the hallway and occasionally seen looking out of upper-story windows toward Monterey Road.

A second cluster of reports concerns the building's electrical systems. Local accounts describe an electric piano that produced sounds without being plugged in, lights cycling on and off, and the recurring sensation of doors rattling as though someone were locked inside an upper room. A former employee report describes being touched briefly on the back of the neck while alone in the building.

The lore attributes the apparitions to a 19th-century violent crime on the upper floor of the then-operating hotel, in which a young woman and a child were attacked and killed by a male guest. The specific identification of victims, perpetrator, and date is not corroborated in primary historical sources accessible to HauntBound research; the account survives primarily in Gilroy oral tradition and in California paranormal compilations. Visitors should treat the violent-crime narrative as folkloric rather than as documented historical record.