Quick Answer: 14 Haunted Hotels You Can Book Tonight

• The Stanley Hotel (Estes Park, CO): the real hotel that inspired The Shining
• Hotel del Coronado (San Diego, CA): Kate Morgan’s Room 3327, unsolved since 1892
• The Queen Mary (Long Beach, CA): a retired ocean liner with nearly 50 recorded deaths aboard
• Hotel Jerome (Aspen, CO): the wet, vanishing boy of Room 310
• Jerome Grand Hotel (Jerome, AZ): a 1927 hospital turned hotel in Arizona’s actual ghost town
• Myrtles Plantation (St. Francisville, LA): often called America’s most documented haunted home
• Hotel Monteleone (New Orleans, LA): a family owned French Quarter landmark where a toddler ghost still visits
• Menger Hotel (San Antonio, TX): built next to the Alamo, with reported soldier ghosts to match
• 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa (Eureka Springs, AR): a fraudulent 1930s cancer hospital hiding under a luxury resort
• The Read House (Chattanooga, TN): Room 311 and its long-running Annalisa Netherly legend
• The Pfister Hotel (Milwaukee, WI): the hotel visiting MLB players keep saying is haunted
• Omni Mount Washington Resort (Bretton Woods, NH): the founder’s widow, Room 314
• Hay-Adams Hotel (Washington, DC): a Gilded Age death, two blocks from the White House
• Lizzie Borden House (Fall River, MA): sleep in the real 1892 crime scene

Jump to the full price & room comparison table ↓  |  Jump to FAQ ↓

The Stanley Hotel

Stephen King checked in for one quiet night in 1974 and left with the idea for The Shining.

F.O. Stanley, inventor of the Stanley Steamer car, opened this Colonial Revival hotel in 1909 as a mountain retreat for wealthy East Coast travelers. It sat on the National Register of Historic Places by 1977, and its more famous chapter began decades later, when Stephen King and his wife stayed there as nearly the only guests in the off season. That eerie emptiness became the seed for The Shining, and Room 217, King’s actual room, is now the most requested in the hotel. Staff and guests continue to report a piano playing on its own in the Music Room and children’s laughter echoing through hallways with no children in sight.

Built 1909Room 217Historic Hotels of America

Plan your visitLocated five miles from the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. Rooms run from about $150 to $400 a night depending on season, and both day and night ghost tours are offered separately from an overnight stay. Book Room 217 well ahead of Halloween, since it sells out first every year.

👻👻👻👻👻 Haunt rating: maximum. This is the property that built the whole genre.

Hotel del Coronado

A woman checked in alone on Thanksgiving 1892 and never checked out.

Kate Morgan arrived at this beachfront Victorian resort under a false name, saying she was waiting to meet a gentleman. He never showed. Five days later, her body was found on the steps leading to the beach, with a gunshot wound that was ultimately ruled a suicide, though questions about the case have never fully settled. Guests booked into her old room, now numbered 3327, report flickering lights, televisions switching on with no one near the remote, sudden cold spots, and the faint figure of a woman in a dark dress. The hotel’s own heritage department has published a full account of her story, and staff run a nightly ghost tour built around it.

Built 1888Room 3327Beachfront resort

Plan your visitRight on Coronado Beach, a short ferry ride from downtown San Diego. Standard rooms typically start around $400 a night in peak summer season. The hotel’s Haunted Happenings tour runs nightly at 7pm and covers Kate Morgan’s full story on site.

👻👻👻👻 Haunt rating: high. This is the story locals actually believe, not just repeat.

The Queen Mary

A retired ocean liner with a body count, now permanently docked and open for check in.

This Cunard ocean liner made 1,001 transatlantic crossings between 1936 and 1967, serving as a luxury liner and later a WWII troopship before the City of Long Beach purchased it as a floating hotel and museum. Over its decades in service, close to 50 deaths were recorded aboard, most from natural causes, but a few from shipboard accidents that fuel the ship’s reputation today. The most cited is 18 year old crewman John Pedder, crushed by a watertight door during a 1966 drill, whose figure is still reported near the engine room. Stateroom B340 and the old first class pool are considered the most active spots on board, with reports of splashing sounds in an empty pool and a shadow figure at the foot of the bed. The ship closed to overnight guests during the pandemic and reopened its staterooms in May 2023 after a city-funded restoration; it has operated continuously since, so it’s a safe, bookable stay today.

Launched 1936Room B340Reopened 2023

Plan your visitDocked at the Port of Long Beach, near the Aquarium of the Pacific. Rooms range widely by season, often from about $100 to $250 a night. Several paranormal tours run separately from a room booking, including a walk through the engine room.

👻👻👻👻 Haunt rating: high. A haunted hotel that used to be a haunted ship.

Hotel Jerome

A soaking wet little boy who was never actually registered at the hotel.

Opened in 1889 during Aspen’s silver mining boom, this landmark hotel has hosted guests from Hunter S. Thompson to visiting royalty. Its best known legend centers on Room 310: a guest once found a shivering, dripping wet boy standing in her room, and when she called the front desk, he had vanished, leaving only wet footprints behind. No children were registered at the hotel that night. The room sits directly above the site of the hotel’s original swimming pool, where local lore holds that a child drowned decades earlier.

Opened 1889Room 310Auberge Resorts property

Plan your visitIn downtown Aspen, walking distance to the ski gondola. Expect luxury pricing, often $400 to $800 a night in ski season, considerably less in the fall shoulder season.

👻👻👻 Haunt rating: moderate. Genuinely eerie, not full scale terrifying.

Jerome Grand Hotel

A hospital, in a real ghost town, that reopened decades later as a hotel.

Built in 1927 as Arizona’s most advanced hospital, this building once served the booming copper mining town of Jerome. When the mine’s ore ran out, the population collapsed from thousands to under a hundred residents, turning Jerome into an actual ghost town and leaving the hospital empty for decades before it reopened as a hotel in 1994. Guests and staff report labored breathing sounds with no visible source, the smell of cigar smoke drifting through empty hallways, and apparitions of a woman in white believed to be a former patient.

Built 1927Former hospitalReopened 1994

Plan your visitPerched on a mountainside in Jerome, about 45 minutes from Sedona. Rooms typically run $150 to $250 a night. The hotel’s restaurant, the Asylum, plays on the building’s history.

👻👻👻👻 Haunt rating: high. The building’s own history does most of the work.

Myrtles Plantation

A dozen rumored deaths in one house, and a piano nobody will admit to playing.

Built in 1796 by General David Bradford, this antebellum estate is frequently ranked as America’s most documented haunted home, thanks to over a century of consistent reports rather than a single viral legend. Guests describe a grand piano playing on its own and two little girls seen on the veranda. The house’s one verified murder is attorney William Drew Winter, shot outside on the front porch in 1871 in a case that was never solved. According to hotel legend he then staggered inside and died on the seventeenth step of the staircase, and guests report phantom footsteps stopping at that exact stair to this day — though period newspaper accounts suggest he likely died on the porch itself, and the staircase detail was added to the story later. The property now operates as a bed and breakfast with a full restaurant and nightly mystery tours.

Built 1796Nightly ghost toursNational Register listed

Plan your visitAbout 30 minutes north of Baton Rouge on scenic Highway 61. Rooms in the main house and outbuildings run roughly $150 to $250 a night, and the Friday and Saturday evening mystery tours require reservations.

👻👻👻👻👻 Haunt rating: maximum. The original “most haunted house in America.”

Hotel Monteleone

A toddler who died in the hotel still visits his mother, and staff say he’s a regular.

Opened in 1886 by Sicilian immigrant Antonio Monteleone, this French Quarter landmark is still family owned five generations later and holds the rare distinction of being an official Literary Landmark, having hosted Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and William Faulkner. Its most talked about story involves a toddler named Maurice Begere, who died at the hotel; his grieving parents kept returning in hopes of seeing him again, and guests today still report a small boy’s laughter and footsteps on the 14th floor. In 2003, a paranormal research team spent several days at the hotel and reported contact with more than a dozen presences, including former employees still going about their old duties.

Built 1886Literary LandmarkFamily owned

Plan your visitRight in the French Quarter, steps from Bourbon Street. Rooms typically run $250 to $450 a night. Don’t skip the Carousel Bar, a rotating bar that’s been spinning since 1949 and is worth a visit even if you’re not staying overnight.

👻👻👻 Haunt rating: moderate. Friendly hauntings, heavy on atmosphere.

Menger Hotel

Built next door to the Alamo, and the reported soldiers never quite left the plaza.

Opened in 1859, just 23 years after the Battle of the Alamo, the Menger is the oldest continuously operating hotel west of the Mississippi and sits directly across from the Alamo grounds. Teddy Roosevelt recruited his Rough Riders over drinks in the hotel bar before the Spanish American War, and his figure is among the dozens of reported presences here. Guests and staff describe heavy footsteps and the sound of old military boots on empty stairwells, a self playing piano, and a maid still tidying Room 217 decades after she worked there. None of the reported activity is considered threatening, which is part of why the hotel leans into its reputation rather than downplaying it.

Built 1859Room 217Next to the Alamo

Plan your visitDirectly on Alamo Plaza, walking distance to the River Walk. Rooms generally run $150 to $300 a night, making it one of the more affordable properties on this list for the history you get.

👻👻👻 Haunt rating: moderate. More historic than horrifying.

1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa

A grand 1886 resort that spent the 1930s as a fake cancer hospital, and the basement still knows it.

Built from hand carved limestone as a luxury summer resort, the Crescent later became a women’s college before the Great Depression forced it to close. In 1937, con man Norman Baker bought the building and reopened it as “Baker’s Cancer Curing Hospital,” treating desperate patients with a worthless tonic while claiming a cure that didn’t exist. Many of them died in what is now the hotel’s basement, once used as a working morgue with an autopsy table. Baker was eventually arrested for mail fraud, and in 2019 a construction crew even uncovered a stash of his old formula bottles and specimen jars on the property. Staff today report the smell of formaldehyde with no source and a nurse in an old fashioned uniform pushing a gurney down darkened hallways.

Built 1886Former “hospital”Historic Hotels of America

Plan your visitSet in the Ozark hill town of Eureka Springs, walkable to downtown shops and galleries. Rooms typically run $150 to $300 a night, and the hotel’s own paranormal tour walks guests through the old morgue.

👻👻👻👻 Haunt rating: high. The real backstory is worse than most horror scripts.

The Read House

Room 311 is booked on purpose by people who want to meet Annalisa.

The hotel traces back to the 1840s, when businessman Thomas Crutchfield built the original Crutchfield House on the site, though the current building dates to a 1926 rebuild after decades of decline and flood damage. Its best known legend belongs to Room 311, said to be haunted by Annalisa Netherly, a 1920s guest whose death is described in hotel lore as a violent one at the hands of a jealous lover. The room was restored to its 1920s appearance, complete with the original clawfoot tub, and the hotel now offers guided tours of it on request, alongside the option to book it for the night.

Rebuilt 1926Room 311Guided room tours

Plan your visitIn downtown Chattanooga, close to the Tennessee Aquarium. Rooms typically run $180 to $300 a night, and Room 311 specifically should be requested and booked well ahead of Halloween.

👻👻👻👻 Haunt rating: high. One of the most consistently reported rooms in the South.

The Pfister Hotel

Visiting Major League Baseball players keep saying this hotel is haunted, and it’s not just one or two of them.

Opened in 1893 as a “Grand Hotel of the West” by businessman Guido Pfister and his son Charles, this Romanesque Revival landmark now holds the largest hotel collection of Victorian art in the world. Its haunted reputation, though, comes mostly from a steady stream of visiting Major League Baseball players who stay there for road games against the Brewers. Reports span decades: Adrian Beltre described repeated knocking and electronics switching off during a 2001 stay, Michael Young said he heard footsteps stomping around a locked room, and Carlos Martinez posted on social media in 2018 that he was hiding out in a teammate’s room after seeing a ghost in his own. Local legend attributes the activity to the spirit of Charles Pfister himself.

See also

Built 1893MLB road-trip loreAAA Four Diamond

Plan your visitDowntown Milwaukee, three blocks from Lake Michigan. Expect upscale pricing, generally $250 to $450 a night, higher during Brewers home stands and major conventions.

👻👻👻 Haunt rating: moderate. The best evidence here is a locker room full of professional athletes who won’t shut up about it.

Omni Mount Washington Resort

She hosted the party that created the World Bank, and staff say she never left.

Industrialist Joseph Stickney opened this Renaissance Revival resort in 1902, only to die of a heart attack the following year. His widow, Carolyn, took over the property and later became known as “the Princess” after marrying a French prince. In 1944, the hotel hosted the Bretton Woods Conference, the meeting that created the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. After Carolyn’s death in 1936, staff began reporting her figure descending the staircase for dinner and lights switching off in the tower with no one nearby. Room 314, her old room, still holds her original four poster bed, and guests staying there have described waking to find a woman seated at the foot of it, brushing her hair.

Built 1902Room 314National Historic Landmark

👻👻👻 Haunt rating: moderate. More of a wistful ghost story than a nightmare.

Hay-Adams Hotel

A Gilded Age tragedy, two blocks from the White House.

Built on the former site of the homes of statesman John Hay and historian Henry Adams, this luxury hotel takes its name from both men. Adams’s wife, Marian “Clover” Adams, died by suicide on the site in 1885, decades before the hotel itself was built in 1927, and her presence is reported most often on the fourth floor: soft crying with no source, clock radios switching on and off, and guests hearing their names called out in empty rooms. Reports of activity noticeably increase each December, close to the anniversary of her death.

4th floorSteps from the White HouseHistoric Hotels of America

👻👻👻 Haunt rating: moderate. Subtle, not the stuff of horror movies.

Lizzie Borden House

You can book the exact room where the axe murders happened. This one isn’t folklore.

On the morning of August 4, 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were killed inside this house, in a case that was never definitively solved even after their daughter Lizzie was tried and acquitted. The Victorian home now operates as a museum and bed and breakfast, restored to look as it did that morning, with six guest rooms available for overnight stays. Guests have reported footsteps on the stairs with no one there and a woman’s crying heard late at night, and the property fully leans into its history with murder mystery nights and guided tours built around the case.

1892 crime sceneNow a B&BNightly ghost tours

👻👻👻👻👻 Haunt rating: maximum. This is documented history, not legend.

Compare All 14 Before You Book

Read through all fourteen? Here’s how they stack up side by side on price, room, and haunt rating.

FAQ