By Mike Takeuchi
I always joke that clowns scare me. Maybe it comes from that old Seinfeld episode where Kramer reveals such, I don't know. But they really don't. In fact, for a long stretch of my younger childhood, I was happily a clown during Halloween. Complete with a homemade outfit stitched by my mom, I loved it...that is until a friend's older brother started calling my brother Darren "clown" and me "clown junior". After that, those costumes were soon retired perhaps out of an early fear of being type-casted.
This clown wasn't even a real human being and it wasn't very big, but it scared the crap out of me. It wasn't in the shape of some lamp or even a painting on the wall that had eyes that followed you wherever you went. It was a rather innocuous six-inch Christmas ornament that my wife Munch had for the last two decades.
With its cherubic smile painted on a white pasty face, jester hat, and dress that was straight out of the Renaissance, this Harlequin ornament was not a bad looking article in the artistic sense. But for whatever reason, each time I would see it I would feel this twinge like I was watching a creepy part of a horror film.
For our first few Christmases together, I would tolerate it by not saying anything to my wife when she put it on the Christmas tree. After a day or two, when she wasn't looking, I would move it to a part of the tree that was either facing the window or at least to a spot where I couldn't see it (something I confessed indirectly while she read this story).
But after a couple of years went by, I came clean and told my wife the truth.
After a while, it became a running joke.
"You better behave, or I'm going to bring the clown out," she would warn.
It probably worked because I never consciously crossed her again. In return, the clown would stay in its box on Christmas.
After years of this, Munch decided that we needed to do something about our friend that was akin to a proper burial. While I did threaten to bury the clown at sea, I could never follow through because I knew that she was semi-fond of it and besides, I believed that even creepy things that have been part of one’s life for two decades deserve some kind of proper sendoff.
So Munch came up with an idea. On Thanksgiving we would go up to our favorite city, San Francisco for the Thanksgiving weekend and stay at our usual "haunt" the Queen Anne Hotel. In regards to referring to it as a "haunt", there are two actual meanings. One is we love this hotel. Perfectly situated in Pacific Heights, near Japantown and close to many other things, it is a very comfortable, clean hotel that has the friendliest staff. Besides, in addition to a continental breakfast, cookies and sherry are served during Happy Hour. I mean, what could beat that?
The other reason for the term is that the Queen Anne Hotel is reportedly haunted by a woman named Mary Lake. Ms. Mary was apparently the founder of a girl's finishing school and died shortly after opening sometime in the late 1800's. It was later believed to be a gentlemen's club and even a few have said it carried some sort of astrological club. If the walls could talk though, it was probably in the voice of Ms. Mary-who has reportedly been seen there in full-fledged ghostness or in the shape of some bright orbs that appeared in some people's photos.
The decor has a Victorian style with red as the dominant color that doesn't dismiss the possibility of a resident spirit. The old elevator creeks and groans and often opens and closes seemingly of its own volition.
Even though we are often on the fourth floor, we opt to take the stairs. The fourth floor, which is the top, has an old church pulpit near the stairs along with a two and a half foot high Victorian style doll which looks very creepy. For the first few times we stayed there, I would point her/it to face the wall. After I grew more comfortable with her there, I just did it out of habit and to make my wife laugh. Apparently someone agrees with me as they wrote about it as well. Just Google “creepy doll Queen Anne Hotel San Francisco” and there it/she is on About.com
Of course, each morning the doll would be facing forward courtesy of either Mary Lake or the hotel staff.
Each time we have stayed there, we had hoped in vain that Mary Lake would make an appearance. The closest possible encounter occurred during one of our arrivals in our room on the fourth floor (the level where Ms. Mary reportedly frequents the most and where suite 410 is named after her) room, I jokingly said "Helloooooo!" in a hopeful voice, only to be responded to in a same way that was either a weird coincidence from someone down in the street, or it was actually the spirit of said ghost. While I have had only one semi-supernatural experience at the Sunnyvale Toys R' Us (which is another story altogether), I prefer to think of this as the latter, while my more grounded wife thinks it was probably the former. The only thing is when we looked down on the street a very short time later, there was nobody there.
Regardless, we agreed that it would be the perfect time and place to take our little friend as the hotel would be decorated up with Christmas ornaments. The plan would be to wait for a time when the main foyer, complete with not one, but two fireplaces would be unoccupied. We would then hang said clown on the giant Christmas tree in the center of the room.
The entire week before the trip, I kept reminding myself to not forget the clown. The night before we left for the Bay, I put the clown near the car keys to ensure that I wouldn't forget it. The next day, we loaded the car up and began our journey by going to the neighborhood 7-Eleven to get some provisions.
As we pulled out of the driveway, Munch grabbed me gently by the arm and looked at me.
"We forgot the clown."
"Shit."
So we drove back home and retrieved our precious cargo and put him/it into the car for transport to his "final destination." After a night in Santa Clara, and then a wonderful hike through Muir Woods in our own version of Black Friday, we arrived at the hotel to find the friendly manager Michael and Bonnie there to greet us at our favorite hotel on the planet.
The reason we started a tradition of staying at the Queen Anne around the holidays is that they really do it up right. The reception room has a complete diorama of a winter scene, with numerous stockings with each employee's name stitched on them hanging above. Inside the main room, the tree dominates the center. But there are also varying figures of Santa Claus and Father Christmas dotted around the room. In the far room which houses the second fireplace, a very scary two-foot high mechanical Santa holds sentry. Moving its arms and head while the motor groans, I imagine that old Karen Black TV movie from 1975, "The Trilogy of Terror" where a small voodoo statue comes alive to terrorize her.
Heading up to our room 403 (the Mary Lake Suite is 410 by the way), we settled in to rest and refresh. After a nice dinner at Suzu, we came back to an empty hotel lobby and sitting room. With Christmas music piped in and the sounds of the mechanical Santa Claus figures whirring throughout the room, the place had a very "Shining" type of feeling. A cold chill hit me that Munch didn't feel and I wondered aloud if it was Mary. After being assured that nobody else (human or otherwise) was in the room, we looked at the tree and then each other.
It was time to complete our mission and get rid of that effing clown.
We then climbed the four flights of stairs in the main hallway to our room, located and grabbed our clown and headed back down. After a brief tour around the room to ensure that nobody else was indeed in the room much like Red did when looking for the box Andy left him along that rock wall in "The Shawshank Redemption", Munch walked up and put the clown on the tree. Facing the back room to avoid attracting any unwanted staff attention for the hotel's newest and inadvertent ornament, it seemed right at home amongst the other decorations of similar style.
For some reason, as I looked at it on the tree, the expression on the clown seemed to have changed because it didn't look as scary as I thought it did before. In fact, it took on a warm quality that seemed to say that it was really happy to be there.
"I think it feels like it belongs here," I said to my rolling-eyed wife as I took a few photos for posterity. "And I don't get the same feeling I did when it was in our house."
"You know, we could always take it back home with us if you think you'll miss it," she said smirking.
I declined. After all, that no-longer-creepy harlequin clown had found its proper home.
And who am I to take someone or something out of the environment it belongs in?
