Findings Report
A reasoned account of the site, methods, observations, classification, determination, and relevant limitations.
PS / PC—04
Hotels & Historic Properties
Public properties accumulate histories in use: arrivals and departures, inherited stories, altered rooms, repeated gestures, and communities of staff and guests who learn how a building is meant to be understood.
Why hospitality
Some properties invite a haunting before one is ever reported.
Hotels, inns, theaters, museums, restaurants, and historic houses are unusually rich sites of inquiry. Their private histories are continuously exposed to public interpretation. Guests arrive with expectations; staff inherit accounts from their predecessors; the building itself is asked to perform its age.
The purpose of certification is not to suppress that complexity. It is to distinguish carefully among architectural effect, communal narrative, recurrent anomaly, and evidence of independent agency—and to give the property an accurate, useful record of what was found.
A public assurance
The oldest-looking room in the hotel may be certified not haunted.
That determination is engaging because it is real: the property has submitted to an inquiry whose result it did not control.
What the property receives
A credential designed for public life.
Paper Certificate
An archival document bearing the property name, finding, classification, date, registry number, and term.
Optional Plaque
A more durable display object fabricated after the determination is issued and available as an additional commission.
Registry Record
A public verification page suitable for direct linking and access from a code placed beside the certificate.
Conduct on site
The audit must coexist with the life of the property.
Before fieldwork, the Society and property representative define access, occupied and restricted areas, staff participation, guest privacy, photography, operating hours, safety conditions, and the publication boundary of the final record.
Certification does not authorize theatrical disturbance, undisclosed recording, interference with guests, or the manufacture of phenomena. The Society does not invent folklore for a property or convert unverified tragedy into promotional copy.
Use of the finding
Interesting because it is accurate.
A property may display its credential and direct the public to its registry entry. It may describe itself using the exact determination and current registry status. The finding may be contextualized, but it may not be enlarged beyond what the audit established.
A Certified Not Haunted property remains free to tell its history and acknowledge its ghost-lore. A Certified Haunted property remains subject to the same evidentiary restraint. Neither determination is a license to misstate the record.
Preliminary review
Introduce a hotel, inn, or historic property.
The initial review establishes authority, access, suitability, and the probable scope of the commission before any audit is scheduled.
Application guidance