Berkeley’s Claremont Resort: beautiful, stately, perhaps a bit run down. And, according to the San Antonio Spurs’ Jeff Ayres and Tim Duncan, haunted to the rafters.

The Spurs were in town last week to play the Warriors, and our spooky story starts with Ayres. Weary from a long travel day, he approached his hotel room only to hear the sound of a child coming from within. When Ayres tried his room key, the door wouldn’t open. He called the front desk for backup.

“They’re like, ‘We can get you a new key and send you up with security and make sure nobody’s there, because there shouldn’t be anybody in there.’ Then they’re like, ‘We’ll just get you a new room.’ It was the creepiest thing,” Ayres said. “I heard a couple of other guys heard babies in the hallway, kids running down the hallway. Creepy. I really heard voices and a baby in the room, and there wasn’t anybody in there. It was crazy.”

There you have it, folks. Creepy.

According to several … questionable … sources (realhaunts.com and a thread on Trip Advisor called “The Claremont Resort …Haunted?????“), the hotel is haunted by the ghost of a girl who died on the property when she was six years old. Her playful ghost is said to frequent room 422.

Tim Duncan corroborated Ayres’ tale of terror:

“I heard a baby in his room. There was somebody or something in his room, yeah. I definitely heard something. It wasn’t creepy, because I assumed it was really somebody in the room, and they gave him the wrong room. “But when they told me the story the next day about calling up there and no one in the room, it’s at that point you get chills. I totally agreed with him. There was a baby there, absolutely. I heard about the history of the place, and I’d rather not (stay there again).”

We can only imagine that further investigation would have revealed that the “ghost” was actually a sheet on a pulley and the monster was Gregg Popovich in a mask. After being unveiled, Popovich blamed “you meddling kids” and went on to coach the Spurs to a 99-90 victory over the Warriors.