Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio has been mentioned as one of the more likely possible vice presidential running mates for Mitt Romney. It turns out that his family owns the oldest hotel in the state, the Golden Lamb Inn in Lebanon, Ohio (a little ways northeast of Cincinnati on I-71 toward Columbus).

The hotel is not just rumored but downright promoted as supposedly haunted by multiple spooks. Earlier this week Yahoo News political reporter Chris Moody published a moderately amusing account of his disappointingly uneventful night in the hotel’s Harriet Beecher Stowe room.

You might not think ghosts would add to a hotel’s appeal, but a lot of people are attracted by the idea, and the desk clerk who check him in assured Moody that “We haven’t had a casualty yet.” That’s assuming, as Moody points out, that you don’t count the three three guests known to have died there (but not lately).

I’m vaguely reminded of some entertaining reviews I saw for the Cassadaga Hotel located in a community of spiritualists near Orange City Florida. One reviewer described feeling a ghostly hand on her leg in the middle of the night. Her roommate was so terrified by her own experiences that she broke down weeping. The review concluded, “I can’t wait to go back!”

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