Even people who don’t believe in ghosts like a good ghost story. They’re creepy but fun, and the places ghosts are rumored to haunt wind up becoming tourist attractions. The rule applies to hotels, too, and there are plenty of them across the country with their own eerie tales of lost loves, bad killings, and spirits doomed to haunt the living.
1. Hotel Provincial (New Orleans, Louisiana)
Located in the city’s French Quarter, the Hotel Provincial dates back to before the Civil War. One of its buildings originally housed a medical hospital, and to this day people claim to see Confederate soldiers and doctors walking around or asking for help. One story talks of a ghost of a soldier from the 1930s who loved country music, and who will tune the room’s radio to the country station if it’s changed.
2. Stanley Hotel (Estes Park, Colorado)
Opened in 1909, this classic American hotel is best known for inspiring Stephen King’s
The Shining after he and his wife stayed there. There have been numerous reports of hauntings, including staff claiming to hear a party in the ballroom only to find it empty. Some also claim to have seen a man standing over their bed, and believe this ghost to be responsible for stealing some guests’ personal effects.
3. Hotel del Coronado (San Diego, California)
One of the city’s most popular hotels, the Hotel del Coronado is the site of many strange happenings, some related to the death of Kate Morgan at the turn of the century. Morgan checked in under an alias in November 1892, looking sick but claiming her brother, a doctor, was arriving later. No doctor ever came, and a few days later, she went into town and bought a gun. She was found dead outside the hotel the next morning.
4. Menger Hotel (San Antonio, Texas)
San Antonio’s Menger Hotel is one of the oldest in the state with tons of history, so it’s no surprise that it’s become a hot spot for reports of otherworldy sightings. Some claim to have seen President Teddy Roosevelt drinking at the bar; Roosevelt used the hotel as a recruiting place for Rough Riders. But it’s the ghost of Sallie White that’s proven to be the most popular. White was a maid there in the late 1800s, and she was attacked in the building by her husband and wound up dying days later. People say she can still be seen walking the halls, carrying linens for guests.
5. Sheraton Gunter Hotel (San Antonio, Texas)
Another south Texas landmark, the Gunter Hotel was built in 1909. In 1965, a young man using an alias checked in alone to room 636 but began spending time with an unidentified blonde woman. A few days later, a maid entered the room to find the man standing next to the bed covered in blood. He grabbed a bundle of sheets and ran out. Police came and found the woman’s blood everywhere and parts of her flesh in the toilet. The man was located at a nearby hospital, but he shot himself as police approached. The woman’s body was never found. People have since reported strange happenings in room 636, including sightings of the spirit and the woman’s sudden appearance in photographs in the room.
6. Bullock Hotel (Deadwood, South Dakota)
Sheriff and hotelier Seth Bullock is best known to modern audiences as one of the main characters on HBO’s “Deadwood,” but the man was real. Present-day visitors to the Bullock Hotel in South Dakota have reportedly seen Bullock himself walking through the building or heard a male voice call their names when no one else is present.
7. Crescent Hotel (Eureka Springs, Arkansas)
Opened in 1886, the Crescent Hotel looks a little creepy from the outside, with its old-style architecture. Originally built to capitalize on the popularity of Eureka Springs’ reputed “healing waters,” the hotel has had ups and downs over its long life, as well as quite a few brushes with the supernatural. One spirit, whom the staff have named Michael, is reportedly the ghost of one of the stone masons who built the hotel and who died in a fall on the second floor. As a result, room 218 is said to be the most haunted of all of them, and Michael reportedly loves to turn appliances off and on and pound on the walls.
8. Imperial Hotel (Cripple Creek, Colorado)
The Imperial Hotel opened at the turn of last century in part to house the miners and visitors who needed a place to stay after the 1896 fire wrecked most of the town. It’s rumored that George Long, the hotel’s former owner, haunts the building to this day and can be seen playing the slot machines and flirting with women. Night guards have reported hearing sounds from the casino floor at but found no one there.
9. Ghost City Inn (Jerome, Arizona)
Jerome is a tiny tourist town in the Arizona desert, and the Ghost City Inn is rumored to be the home of multiple spirits who haunt the building and its inhabitants. A female and male spirit have been spotted lurking in different rooms, and some guests have reported having their doors slam shut on their own.
10. Lumber Baron Inn (Denver, Colorado)
This elegant bead & breakfast was once the mansion home of lumber baron John Mouat. The inn was restored and reopened in the early 1990s, at which point people began to hear strange sounds like phantom footsteps. Some paranormal investigators claim to have made contact with the spirits of two women who were killed at the hotel in 1970: One girl was 17 who was raped and killed, and the other was her 18-year-old friend who came across the scene and was killed by the murderer. The case is still unsolved.
11. Skirvin Hotel (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma)
Constructed with oil money earned by W.B. Skirvin, this Oklahoma landmark was a popular speakeasy during Prohibition. Rumor has it that Skirvin had an affair with a maid who became pregnant and was subsequently confined to a room on the top floor to prevent the scandal from leaking out. After the baby was born, the woman became so depressed at her imprisonment that she took the child and jumped out the window. For decades, random guests reported an inability to sleep over the cries of a child coming from somewhere nearby. The hotel was closed in 1988 but recently reopened, and the maid’s spirit is alleged to still haunt its halls.
12. Tutwiler Hotel (Birmingham, Alabama)
The ghost of the titular Colonel Tutwiler is rumored to haunt this Southern hotel. After a string of occurences in which the bartender came to work to find the kitchen appliances running despite having been turned off the night before, the staff began to half-jokingly admonish the ghost of Tutwiler for messing up the kitchen and ask him to not do it again. Weirdly enough, that fixed things, though some people still say you can see the ghost of Tutwiler around the hotel.
13. Plains Hotel (Cheyenne, Wyoming)
Cheyenne’s Plains Hotel opened in 1911 with much fanfare and soon became known for catering to wealthy visitors in the oil and cattle industries. But a sinister event led to what many believe to be the hotel’s haunting. A bride and groom checked into the Plains Hotel on their honeymoon, and one evening the husband met a prostitute in the hotel bar and went back to her room, his wife watching the whole time. The wife took her husband’s gun and followed the couple to their room where she killed them both and then shot herself in the honeymoon suite. All three spirits are said to still linger in the hotel, and staff claim to have heard weeping and crying coming from the couple’s former room even when it’s empty.
14. The Inn at Merridun (Union, South Carolina)
The innkeepers at Merridun cheekily play along with their hotel’s ghostly past. Rumor goes that ten different ghosts or “energy forces” linger at the inn, leading to unusual happenings, freaky sightings, and minor issues like missing or moved possessions.
15. Ballastone Inn (Savannah, Georgia)
Before it was an inn, the Ballastone was the home of General Robert Anderson and his wife, Sarah. Robert fought in the Civil War, and the family lived there into the 1880s. People say you can still see Sarah’s ghost walking along the second floor, or using the elevator.
16. Sheridan Inn (Sheridan, Wyoming)
At one time operated by Buffalo Bill Cody, this inn near the northern border of Wyoming is now the home of Miss Kate, the ghost of a woman who worked at the hotel for 64 years in a variety of positions, including desk clerk and hostess. When Miss Kate died in 1968, her ashes were interred in the wall of her third-floor room, which is prone now to chills and erratic light behavior.
17. Buxton Inn (Granville, Ohio)
One of the most ghost-filled places in the state, Ohio’s Buxton Inn is known for its many hauntings. Reports of spirit sightings date back to the 1920s, when people saw what looked like Orrin Granger, the man who built the inn early in the 1800s. There’s also Bonnie, a former innkeeper who died in room 9 and reportedly haunts it to this day. Guests in the room claim to have seen a woman dressed in blue, which was Bonnie’s favorite color.
18. Laguna Vista (Eagle Nest, New Mexico)
This one’s another honeymoon of heartbreak. There are many spirits said to be stuck haunting the Laguna Vista, including a young bride whose husband went out on a hunting trip and never returned, forcing her to work as a saloon girl to suppoert herself. Some people say they’ve seen her spirit hanging around the building, looking for husband. Other ghostly occurences include a piano that plays when no one is around.
19. Glick Mansion Bed & Breakfast (Atchison, Kansas)
Billed as the most haunted town in Kansas, Atchison has its share of attractions rumored to be populated by spirits from beyond the grave. The Glick Mansion, home of one-time Kansas governor George Washington Glick (in office from 1883-1885), is a tourist destination that’s also on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s also the supposed home to a benevolent ghost that’s prone to open and close doors at random.
20. Lemp Mansion (St. Louis, Missouri)
The Lemp Mansion has seen several incarnations before its current status as a hotel. The Lemp family was a major name in breweries in St. Louis before Prohibition, but their family empire fell to ruin, divorce, and death by suicide. The building is considered one of the most haunted in the country, and the various members of the Lemp clan have been seen roaming the halls. People have also said they’ve seen candles light themselves, doors open on their own, and glasses flying off shelves to crash on the floor.
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