Manresa Castle is unpretentious change of pace

PORT TOWNSEND — Room decor, service, location — often you choose a hotel for these features. But sometimes you seek out a place more for its unique aura or historical quirkiness.

The latter drew me to Manresa Castle during a recent trip to Port Townsend. I'd long been curious about this former private mansion and Jesuit seminary, which since 1968 has been one of the town's more unusual hotels.

I'd heard it was an architectural anachronism, an imposing, sprawling 40-room structure that sticks out amidst the Victorian gingerbread B&B inns, waterfront motels and restored brick hostelries that house most Port Townsend tourists.

I also heard Manresa Castle is haunted. Yes, haunted — as in ghosts wafting around, scaring visitors out of their gourds.

The reports of supernatural activity have never been confirmed. But they're persistent and colorful enough to have attracted syndicated ghost-hunter TV shows such as "Real Scary Stories" and "Sightings" to film episodes at Manresa Castle.

There is also a mystery-fantasy game you can play, via the Internet, called "The Kindred of Manresa Castle." And if you want to hold an astrology or palm-reading conference on the Olympic Peninsula, this seems to be the place.

All I wanted, personally, was a reasonably priced room and a dollop of atmosphere.

Though it has a few drawbacks, Manresa Castle offers both. The tariff is moderate, especially for a no-frills, standard accommodation. (Jacuzzi, water view and tower suites are costlier.) And I easily secured a weekend reservation in peak season.

As for the atmosphere, that starts at the door of this curious, lemony-beige stucco hotel, with its peaked turret and tall, arched windows. You enter via a lobby paneled in dark wood, adjacent to a small, formal parlor. Intriguing old photos on display show the building as it looked when erected in 1892, as a private residence for the family of Charles Eisenbeis, a Prussian-born businessman who was Port Townsend's first mayor. His home was so large and grandly appointed, the locals termed it a "castle."

Eisenbeis died in 1902, and his mansion was largely vacant until 1928, when the Jesuits purchased it and renamed it Manresa Castle (after a Spanish town where St. Ignatius Loyola founded the Jesuit order). They expanded it into a seminary, using more modest building materials and covering the original brick exterior with stucco.

And the ghosts? According to legend, a Jesuit priest hanged himself in the castle's circular attic. Today, the two rooms nearest to that fateful loft (Rooms 302 and 306) are said to be haunted — though there's no official record of such a suicide.

I wasn't able to book a third-floor room, where a few spooked guests years ago complained of weird sounds and strange odors.

My stay at Manresa Castle was less exotic — though not entirely what I expected. First, the hotel is not perched on the bluff above Port Townsend (as I'd thought), or within an easy walk to downtown. It is, rather, about a mile south of the town center, just off a very busy major artery.

Also, don't let the word "castle" mislead you. The place is big and old, all right, but my standard room was nothing fancy. The promised "antique" furnishings were a bit rickety, the paint job drab, the bathroom clean but basic. I had a view of the back parking lot. And the coffee-shop-style continental breakfast was barely worth the trip to the cave-like dining room, in what used to be the castle's chapel.

But if you're not anticipating something more elegant, Manresa Castle can be a diverting break from the B&B circuit. The hotel is unpretentious and family-friendly. There is a highly rated restaurant on the premises, which serves continental cuisine with a flourish. And there's a dark, cozy lounge, with a nifty bar from the Savoy Hotel in San Francisco.

If you're dying to run into an apparition during your stay, you may be disappointed. But just as I was leaving Manresa Castle, I heard eerie moaning noises emanating from a third-story window. I listened awhile, and decided it was just kids having a little fun. But then again ...

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