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
5 stays · 3 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.
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.