Boo! The most haunted hotels in the US revealed — just in time for peak spooky season

October 23, 2024

These guests have overstayed their welcome.

As the spookiness of Halloween approaches, a new report reveals the most haunted hotels in the US — based on guests recounted tales of seeing, hearing, and even feeling so-called ghosts and other freakish phenomena.

Travel booking engine Hotels.com, which noted a “significant rise in interest in spooky getaways” this month, pored over thousands of user reviews left on their site compile the terrifying list.

Across the nation, with a significant concentration in The South and Southwest, the experts identified 13 places where guests are most likely to get a good scare.

“We’re working on adding guaranteed ghost sightings but these spirits are hard to pin down,” joked Melanie Fish, a spokesperson for the site.

Leading off the list with a “boo!” is the Bourbon Orleans Hotel in New Orleans, where guests alleged encounters with the spirit of a little girl, supposedly friendly, who checked in and never left.

“Book 305 and maybe you will see the little girl my husband woke up to see,” one guest claimed. “[He] woke up to getting poked on his feet and saw a little girl standing by the bed.”

The building, originally a theater in the early 19th century, has a particularly colorful history, according to Ghost City Tours, which corroborated the guest’s experience.

“When yellow fever swept through the city during the late 19th century, the nuns of the Sisters of the Holy Family prayed and cared for the sick orphans in their care” on the premises, according to the site, noting that room 644 is also eternally occupied.

“The haunting sounds of lilting children’s laughter echo in the hallways of the hotel. Guests of the hotel have experienced the back of their shirts being yanked, only to turn around and find the hallway completely empty.”

A phantom Confederate soldier from the Civil War supposedly also roams the hallways of the historic hostelry.

Elsewhere in The City that Care Forgot, Hotel Provincial’s building five — the former site of a Confederate military hospital — might still be caught up in Civil War drama.

One hotel reviewer insisted that “something pushed my 15-year-old daughter out of bed during the night.”

Other guests have claimed to experience similar, unsettling circumstances.

On TripAdvisor, a 2018 patron wrote “I was awoken as my bed was rocking back and forth from left to right. It rocked like an earthquake.”

“Nothing else in my room or on dressers shook or vibrated, including the chandelier hanging over my bed,” the guest added, mentioning that this went on for days during their stay.

Also on the list is the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, home to the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. It’s here where the spirit of Marilyn Monroe is believed to remain, the site said.

Forbes corroborated the tale, saying that the ill-fated starlet shot her first print advertisement at the hotel’s pool, while a psychic told the outlet that the water is “buzzy” with spirit energy to this day.

Others have claimed to see her hanging out in the mirror of her old suite, room 1200.

And down in San Diego, the Horton Grand Hotel supposedly had its room 309 haunted by a 19th-century gambler named Rodger Whitaker who checked in 200-plus years ago.

“He was known for his heavy drinking and for cheating when it came to gambling. During his stay at the Horton, he found himself running to escape the violent threats against his life that were being made by creditors who were tired of not getting the money he owed them,” according to Ghosts and Gravestones.

“One night, after an altercation with these henchmen and already suffering from one gunshot wound, Whitaker raced back to his room at the Horton and hid inside the armoire. Unfortunately for him, he was followed and subsequently shot to death inside the armoire,” the experts said.

Meanwhile, up in the Pacific Northwest, Seattleites are familiar with the upper echelon ghost of Alice B.Toklas, thought to be a gracious host to those in room 408 of the Hotel Sorrento.

Toklas, who became famous for her 1954 cookbook that introduced the world to pot brownie recipes, has also made her presence known to staff as well as guests.

“The first week I started [at the Hotel Sorrento] in 2019, I was going up for something and the elevator just stopped on the fourth floor [and no one was there]. Doors opened and then the doors closed and it moved on to the sixth floor,” a former employee told Fodors.

“Now, the same thing happened yesterday. I was coming down to get coffee from the fifth floor, which is where I’m staying, and the fourth-floor doors opened, closed, and then went on. So I’m like, oh, Alice, you’re just saying hello and welcome back.”

The famed luxurious Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah, Nevada has for centuries been believed to be home to many unrested spirits, the site revealed.

One of the tortured souls is a murdered prostitute named Rose, according to U.S. Ghost Adventures.

A recent guest said “our Ghost Radar went off the chain in our room” with another claiming “a ghost or spirit woke me up in the middle of the night.”

At Albuquerque’s Hotel Parq Central, a former psychiatric hospital, one guest claimed “the hotel is very haunted, and we experienced some paranormal activity during our stay. We were supposed to stay for two nights but left after the first night due to us barely sleeping.”

Houston’s Hotel ICON, former site of the depression-era Union National Bank. is believed to still hold the souls of devastated finance workers whose lives were ruined by hard economic times.

And in nearby San Antonio, the brave soldiers who defended the Alamo as supposedly seen by guests at the Hotel Gibbs.

Two states over at Prescott, Arizona’s Hassayampa Inn, a ghost named Faith supposedly died of a broken heart when her husband disappeared during their 1927 honeymoon.

In that same year, Annalisa Netherly, a guest at Read House Hotel in Chattanooga, Tennessee was believed to have been beheaded by a jealous lover in the bathtub of room 311.

“Over the years, a number of guests have reported paranormal activity in the room, including unexplained noises, flickering lights, running water, shadowy figures and more,” claims the hotel, which has turned the room into a tourist attraction claims.

“Many of the original elements from Annalisa Netherly’s time remain, including a vintage clawfoot tub and an AM radio. A manual lock on the door requires the use of a physical key, just like hotel guests would have used in 1927.”

The site also revealed a handful of trending destinations in the run-up to Halloween. Number one is the Colonial-era cancel capital of Salem, Mass. — where hysteria over witchcraft saw scores imprisoned and 19 executed.