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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8 stays · 2 states
Hotel · San Francisco, California
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
