Brookdale spirit still spooks ghost hunter

More than two decades ago — before she was a well-recognized ghost hunter — Maryanne Porter had her first run-in with Sarah Logan, the lost soul who haunts the Brookdale Lodge.
At time, Porter, 46, was relaxing with friends in the Brookdale Lodge bar, a bit after midnight.
“All of a sudden I was distracted because there was this little girl wandering around the bar. I thought this is weird. Who is she looking for?” said Porter, who now operates a team of eight paranormal seekers called the Ghost Hunters.
She was further startled when the seemingly lost girl blew in the woman’s hair sitting next to her, and the person distractedly brushed at her head.
“I asked the girl if she was okay and she stared at me like a deer in the headlights,” remembered Porter. “I ran to report to an employee that there was a lost little girl in the bar.”
Porter reported that the girl had fled into the Brook Room — a Bavarian-style hall with a creek running through it. The startled worker said the door was locked but he went and got the key. Lo and behold the room was empty.
It was only later that Porter heard the story about how little Sarah, thought to be the niece of the first lodge owner, Superior Court Judge James Harvey Logan, had drowned in the creek that ran through the Brook Room at the age of 10, in 1892.
“It was on the creepy side for me,” said Porter.
Destroyed by a fire in 2009, the Brook Room now sits vacant, and is planned to be a part of the second phase of the Lodge’s restoration by Santa Cruz hotelier Pravin Patel.
The disturbing event did, however, point Porter in a direction that comes naturally to her.
“I’ve always been a little weird, even as a child I had pictures of monsters and ghosts in my room,” she said. “I developed more and more interest in the paranormal.”
Porter began researching paranormal activities in the county with her non-profit team called Ghost Hunters.
Quite unexpectedly, Arcadia Publishing asked her write “Haunted Santa Cruz, California,” a historical examination of local paranormal phenomenon.
As part of her research, Porter explored hauntings at the Boulder Creek Cemetery, where this week police discovered a double suicide, the Cremer House and the one-car crash near Scotts Creek Road.
Porter is currently researching a book based on the life of former Santa Cruz Police Chief Amos Lunt, who became hangman at San Quentin and ended up being taken to the “Lunacy Commission” and sent to the asylum for the insane at Napa.
Lunt was quite convinced he was being haunted by the 13 men who he had hung.
Porter is currently interviewing convicted serial killers to see if those men are haunted by their victims.
Porter and her team continue to explore private homes and businesses in search of ghostly activity using sophisticated electrical technology.
“A ghost sounds ‘watery,’” she said. “Being a ghost has a lot to do with their belief system in life, and how they died.”