At first glance the photograph looks ordinary. It shows the wood-paneled Tea Court of the Heathman Hotel at 1001 SW Broadway. There are paintings by Andy Warhol. A crystal chandelier from the American embassy in Czechoslovakia. A big, blazing fireplace. Flowers, plants, chairs, and sofas. There's the grand piano where Sting and Wyn-ton Marsalis and Arlo Guthrie sit and play for hours when they stay here.

In the photograph it's September 21, 2001, and the hotel's previous owners are officially passing the keys to the new owners. Near the fireplace, just outside the circle of people, a soft, glowing figure stands beside a chair. It's nothing you'd notice at first, but it's there.

"A guy took this picture," says Jeff Jobe, the hotel's general manager, "and the ghost was there. We've tried to reason it away, but we can't. Those lamps in the photo only have thirty-watt bulbs in them."

Charles Barkley stays here, signing his name "Billy Crystal." Billy Crystal stays here, signing as "Charles Barkley." For satirist David Sedaris, the Heathman is a second home, the only place he'd want to live in the United States outside of New York City. Jeff says, "At some point in the history of the hotel, this became the place for authors to stay. It's just the buzz." In fact so many famous writers stay here, the hotel's library has collected some three thousand signed first editions.

It's easy to see why guests keep coming back—and why some guests have never left.

Larry Adams, the hotel's director of operations, can tell you the maids are a little squeamish about cleaning Rooms 803 and 703. If a guest is going to complain, chances are they're booked in 803 or one of the rooms directly below it. People return to 803 or 703 to find the bottles of water half drunk. Desks are moved. Beds are mussed. Towels used. Cups and glasses are turned over. The television is turned on or a chair is moved. Of course, they complain.

But when Larry or Jeff check the key card system, it shows no one has entered the room since the last time the guest left. "There's no way to fudge the system," Jeff says. "You just can't get in."

In September 1999, the psychic Char, author of Questions from Earth, Answers from Heaven, stayed in Room 703. Another psychic, Echo Bodiene, stayed in the room for a week to dialogue with the spirit. The two women agree it's the spirit of a man who jumped from Room 803, committing suicide and now haunting each room he looked into on his way down.

Larry says the man was scarred or deformed in some way. "People made fun of the way he looked, and he was tired of it," he says, adding the suicide took place not long after the hotel opened in 1927.