Hotel · Salem, Massachusetts
Hawthorne Hotel
Opened in 1925 on Washington Square, the Hawthorne Hotel made TripAdvisor's 2019 list of the country's scariest hotels, with one guest's review telling of crying and knocking outside the door at 3 a.m.
Haunted Hotels
22 hotels and inns in 9 states, each with the story of what happened there and a way to book a room.
Spookt counts a hotel as haunted when someone puts their name to its ghost story: the hotel itself, a guide who tells it on tour, or a newspaper that printed it. A rumor with no teller doesn’t make the list. Every stay here has its own researched page, and where the story points to one room, the stay’s card names it.
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Every Haunted Stay
22 stays · 9 states
The Northeast
Hotel · Salem, Massachusetts
Joshua Ward House
The Merchant hotel fills the Joshua Ward House, built on the foundation of witch-trial sheriff George Corwin's house. Popular tradition blames Corwin for making it Salem's most haunted, though the Salem Witch Museum counts that among the 'numerous myths' about him.
Inn · Salem, Massachusetts
The Salem Inn
Privateer captain Nathaniel West built the house that holds the Salem Inn's Room 17, which the inn calls its 'famous Haunted Room.' Guides say the staff swear to three ghosts: Katherine, a small child, and a black cat in the parlor.
Ask for Room 17, because the inn itself calls it its famous Haunted Room.
Hotel · Bretton Woods, New Hampshire
Mount Washington Hotel
Joseph Stickney died a year after his Mount Washington Hotel opened in 1902. His widow, who later married a French prince, is said to sit on the edge of her four-poster bed in Room 314.
Hotel · Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Welty House
Because of the tragic and gruesome events that occurred at the Welty House and on the property surrounding it, visitors claim to hear phantom gunshots, see apparitions of soldiers in full uniform, feel cold spots, and have eerie sensations while there.
The South
Hotel · New Orleans, Louisiana
Andrew Jackson Hotel
Andrew Jackson won the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815 and two months later was fined $1,000 for contempt of court in a federal courthouse on this site. New Orleans TV station FOX 8 calls the hotel one of the city's most haunted.
Hotel · New Orleans, Louisiana
Bourbon Orleans Hotel
The hotel's Orleans Ballroom dates to 1817, and from 1881, it was a convent of the Sisters of the Holy Family. The hotel tells of a lone dancer in the ballroom and a little girl rolling her ball down the sixth-floor halls.
Hotel · New Orleans, Louisiana
Hotel Monteleone
Sicilian cobbler Antonio Monteleone bought a hotel on Royal Street in 1886, and his family still runs it. The hotel says guests have seen a toddler named Maurice Begere near the room where he died.
Hotel · New Orleans, Louisiana
Hotel Provincial
Hotel Provincial says its land held a military hospital as early as 1722 and again during the Civil War. The travel guide Time Out reports that a Civil War soldier from those days is believed to haunt the hotel.
Hotel · Austin, Texas
The Driskill
Cattle baron Jesse Driskill opened his hotel in 1886, and ghost tour guide Monica Ballard tells of a guest who woke at 3 a.m. to find him at the window, puffing on a cigar.
Hotel · Austin, Texas
Omni Austin Hotel Downtown
The Omni stands where the Republic of Texas housed its president in 1839, and urban legend gives the hotel a ghost known only as Jack, a guest said to have jumped from a balcony.
The Midwest
Hotel · Chicago, Illinois
Congress Plaza Hotel
Opened in 1893 as the Auditorium Annex, the Congress is often called Chicago's most haunted hotel, and Room 441 is said to be the worst of it.
Hotel · Chicago, Illinois
The Drake Hotel
The Drake opened on New Year's Eve 1920, and Chicago's ghost guides place two women in it: the Lady in Red on the 10th floor and the Lady in Black on the eighth. She is said to be the never-identified killer in a 1944 murder, whom the New York Times described at the time as "a woman in a fur coat."
Hotel · Marquette, Michigan
Landmark Inn
The Landmark Inn is not only known for its historical significance but also for the tales of ghostly encounters that have been associated with the building.
The West
Hotel · San Francisco, California
Beacon Grand Hotel
The Beacon Grand opened in 1928 as the Sir Francis Drake, and an actor fell to his death from an eighth-floor window in 1965. Ghost tours say its most-reported ghost is a woman in a white evening gown.
Hotel · San Francisco, California
Fairmont San Francisco
The Fairmont was set to open on April 18, 1906, the morning the earthquake struck, and one of the two sisters who built it is said to return to check on her hotel.
Hotel · San Francisco, California
Queen Anne Hotel
The Queen Anne opened in 1890 as Miss Lake's School for Young Ladies, and its headmistress, Mary Lake, is said to haunt Room 410, her former office.
Hotel · San Francisco, California
San Remo Hotel
Bank of America founder A.P. Giannini paid for this North Beach hotel in 1906 to shelter earthquake victims, and guides say a brothel madam called the Painted Lady still haunts Room 33.
Hotel · San Francisco, California
Westin St. Francis
Actress Virginia Rappe fell fatally ill at silent-film star Fatty Arbuckle's 1921 party in rooms 1219 to 1221, and Al Jolson died in the same suite in 1950. Ghost tours say the 12th floor holds three ghosts.
Hotel · Seattle, Washington
Arctic Club Hotel
Congressman Marion Zioncheck died in a fall from his fifth-floor office window here in 1936. A Seattle police captain was later told the elevator stops on that floor by itself because of "the Zioncheck ghost."
Hotel · Seattle, Washington
Hotel Sorrento
The ghost of Alice B. Toklas is said to favor Room 408 of this 1909 hotel. She probably never set foot in the building while she was alive.
Hotel · Long Beach, Washington
Shelburne Hotel
Built in 1896, the Shelburne Hotel is the oldest continuously-operating hotel in Washington.
Haunted hotels by city guide: San Francisco, New Orleans, Salem, Chicago, Austin, Seattle
Quick Answers
The Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, bills itself as America’s Most Haunted Hotel, and it runs its own ghost tours every night. The Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana makes a smaller claim: it bills itself as one of America’s most haunted homes.
Some hotels sell their haunted rooms by name: the Stanley Hotel books Room 217 as the 217 Spirited Grand King, and the Crescent lists Michael’s Room, Room 218, on its guest rooms page. The Queen Mary sells Stateroom B340 on her own website as the B340 Suite. At the Driskill there’s no promise: the hotel doesn’t sell Room 525, where the legend of its two jilted brides is set, as a haunted room.
Yes. At the Bourbon Orleans Hotel, Room 644 was “believed to be the most haunted room in the hotel,” The Advocate, a Baton Rouge daily, reported in 2014. The Hotel Monteleone’s own website names one ghost, a toddler called Maurice Begere, and says guests report seeing him near the room where he died.
Yes. The Driskill, in Austin, topped the list of the 20 most haunted places in Texas that Yelp drew up in 2021 by searching visitors’ reviews for words like “haunted,” “spooky,” and “ghosts.” The Omni Austin Hotel Downtown has a ghost story of its own, about a guest known only as Jack, and the details change with the teller.
In Long Beach, the Queen Mary rents out staterooms themed to her ghosts, and her general manager said in 2018 that “the stateroom with the most infamous reputation is room B340.” The Hotel del Coronado says Kate Morgan, a guest found shot dead on its steps to the beach in 1892, turns up mostly in her old third-floor room. In San Francisco, Room 1219 at the Westin St. Francis is said to be the most haunted room in the hotel.
Yes. Tony Szabelski, a guide with the ghost tour company Chicago Hauntings, tells every tour group that if any place in Chicago is haunted, it’s the Congress Plaza Hotel. Choose Chicago, the group that markets the city to visitors, ranks the Drake a “strong second,” with a Lady in Red said to haunt its 10th floor.