The Remarkable Coincidence inside Room 3407

The hundreds of guestrooms at French Lick Springs Hotel all have framed vintage photos hanging from their walls.

The other throwback photos inside Room 3407: Folks enjoying
the hotel's bowling alley in 1990, and a pair of guests with their
dog at the French Lick Springs Hotel entrance.

Guests in their horse-drawn carriages in front of the hotel in the early 1900s, for example. Golfers wearing their skirts and knickers and berets. People dipping their own water from French Lick’s famed mineral springs. The photos are simply fun black-and-white snapshots offering a glimpse into what resort life looked like back in the day.

You never know what type of photo you’ll see hanging in your room. But about a month ago, hotel guest Sam Dowden discovered a photo in his guestroom he certainly didn’t expect to see. He saw himself.

First, a little backstory before we unravel this bizarre little coincidence. Sam’s first wife Nancy passed away several years ago, and then he was lucky enough to meet Pattie. The two of them eventually married, and Sam and Pattie now visit French Lick Springs Hotel about once a month. They were booked into Room 3407 when they came here over the Fourth of July last month.

When Sam went into the bathroom, he looked up at the photo on the wall between the shower and sink. “Jazz Festival 1958,” the nameplate below the photo reads.

“It just caught my eye,” Sam said. “And it surprised the dickens out of me to see it.”

It’s Sam and Nancy, sitting side by side in the crowd.

They’re among the dozens of folks in the crowd watching the jazz performance on stage. And though the photo was shot from an angle where you see mostly the backs of heads, Nancy stands out since she's facing to her right and her side profile is the only face you really see.

Sam knew without a doubt that it was her. (And he's the one seated to her right, in the first row of people you see at the bottom left of the picture.)

“I was leaning forward (at the moment the photo was taken) and it just got the back of my hat, because I’ve been wearing a hat forever. And it was definitely her,” said Sam, who was in his 20s at the time and recalls his first visits to French Lick from an even earlier age.

Sam and Pattie on one of their recent visits to French Lick
Springs Hotel. (He's still wearing his signature hat.)

Sam had no prior knowledge about Room 3407 and made no special requests to stay there before making the chance discovery. He and Pattie shared their story with the front desk when they were checking out, the staff at French Lick Springs Hotel is working on sending him a replica photo of the jazz band concert.

How’s that for luck? 443 rooms in the hotel, and Sam found the one with a personal connection.

“I thought it was pretty neat myself,” he said with a chuckle.