Which GOP VP Hopeful Owns A Haunted Hotel?

Republican vice presidential contender Rob Portman may be the only potential Mitt Romney running mate who truly has a skeleton in the closet: at his “haunted hotel” that is. Rob Portman’s family owns a hotel which holds not only the distinction of being the oldest hotel in Ohio but one which is also widely regarded as haunted by Lebanon residents and visitors.

The Portman haunted hotel, The Golden Lamb, boasts multiple rooms named after important historical figures and an apparent infestation of ghosts and spirits which frighten employees so much they are afraid to venture onto the top floor of the Ohio hotel, Yahoo News reports. The hauntings reportedly occur much more frequently in top of Rob Portman’s hotel.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe room is allegedly one of the most haunted guest rooms in the Golden Lamb Hotel owned by the Portman family. Supposedly the Ohio ghosts enjoy playing with the collection of old-fashioned and, some say, “creepy,” dolls also housed in the haunted hotel room.

The Golden Lamb hotel opened in 1802 when original owner Jonas Seaman garnered a license to operate a “house of public entertainment,” and, although the facility has changed hands over the decades, it has never closed.

“I won’t go upstairs, I won’t go downstairs, I won’t go in the tunnels, nothing. No, thank you. Everybody knows, they don’t ask me any more because I’m not going,” a Golden Lamb hotel waitress told Yahoo News reporter Chris Moody who spent a night Rob Portman’s haunted hotel.

The waitress also showed the reporter a scar on her hand which she said happened when a porcelain sink fell and cut her after jesting about the legitimacy of the ghost stories which allegedly occur at The Golden Lamb. Rob Portman notes he has never seen any ghosts at the hotel, but, when he was a child, his mother told him stories about hearing chains and ghosts walking down the hallway at night. The vice presidential hopeful smiled broadly and simply concluded, “You never know.”