The 'Bates Motel' in Idaho...Possibly Haunted, Definitely Spooky

And now, a few words from management at the Bates Motel.

Rooms are available now. Really available.

No, this is not the building they used when filming "Psycho," the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock thriller about madness and murder at a creepy motel of the same name. It's not even the building they used when filming the "Psycho" remake (1998).

This Bates Motel is the real deal, a lodging at 2018 Sherman Ave. in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, with 13 rooms and a manager's unit arrayed around a ragged parking lot.

It sits along the gritty east end of Coeur d'Alene's main drag. A website devoted to "haunted places in Idaho" reports that "people have often reported 'creepy feelings' " in Rooms 1 and 3. The following warning is posted at the front desk:

"Party policy: No. Don't do it. Don't think about doin' it. And don't ask."

Yes, this Bates Motel is a tad spooky in its own right. But it has cable and Wi-Fi, and apparently somebody has been slashing prices. They go as low as $28 nightly in winter, up to $48 in summer. (There's no website, but the phone is [208] 667-1411.)

"It's been the Bates Motel for way longer than I've been here," said a man working the desk and phone on an afternoon in mid-June. He gave his name as Dusty Van, described himself as manager and co-owner, and said he'd been there for 10 years.

Last name?

"I don't have one. I've been Dusty since the fourth grade."

His customers, he said, are "mainly tourists in the summer. In the winter, it's maybe locals or transients who are here for a few days or whatever." The motel gets high marks on a few biker websites as well.

Dusty reported that the building began life as a barracks for officers at Farragut Naval Training Station about 30 miles north. After World War II, "they sold off the building, and it was moved down here to Coeur d'Alene," Dusty said. "And after a certain amount of time, it was bought by a gentleman named Randy Bates. He named it the Bates Motel."

A title search suggests that the transaction happened in 1990, long after the movie came out. Anyway, the motel makes the most of the connection.

At Halloween, "sometimes we'll do a haunted house," Dusty said. "Other times we'll just have mannequins and costumes. One year we had one dressed up as Mother. She sat in a rocking chair in the lobby."

As for the sign out front, which includes a stylized silhouette of Norman Bates' house in the movie, "there was one of those cheap horror movies made here," Dusty said. "And they're the ones who put the sign up. And when they left, they left the sign. And the rest is history. . . . We're playing it up unmercifully."

Cool. Anything else we should know?

"Yeah," said Dusty. "It's for sale."

What?

"The value is in the property," he said. "Three-hundred feet by about 100 feet on Sherman Avenue -- that's where the value is."

The motel building, priced at $625,000, hit the market in early June. But there's also a lot next door with a cottage, which you can have for $375,000 more.

And really, what's the point in running a Bates Motel if you can't live close and lend a hand?