Dear Atlas is Atlas Obscura’s travel advice column, answering the questions you won’t find in traditional guidebooks. Have a question for our experts? Submit it here.
* * *
Dear Atlas,
My wife and I are obsessed with ghost stories, so for our anniversary we want to stay someplace that’s purportedly haunted. Are there any cool hotels or vacation rentals where one might have a paranormal encounter?
It seems every hotel and vacation rental today wants to boast a haunting—perhaps there’s no such thing as cursed press. If you’re interested in overnighting inside a ghost story, it can be a bit daunting to hunt through the hundreds of claims floating around. And while many visitors are entertained by staying at well-known spooky lodgings like the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, ever famous for its creepy atmosphere that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining, for this request we’re going beyond fame based on fictions or feelings based on appearances.
Rather than be so easily enticed by vague promises of unexplained sounds, smells, or misplaced items, we’ve searched for accommodations with deeper backstories and stronger archival “evidence,” if you will, for hosting centuries-old guests. We’ve located hotels around the world where ghostly claims are backed by chronicled histories and testimonies of past deaths. That means whether or not you succeed in finding your own paranormal encounter, you’ll know you’re sleeping in a setting connected to the afterlife. The choice then becomes a question of what flavor of ghost you prefer, from soldiers to murder victims and cowboys to child spirits.
Many fatalities have been documented at the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Not only did two people fall to their death on the premises, several people also died at the hands of a fraud doctor who experimented on patients and pocketed their money. You can hear about the grim history on the hotel’s ghost tours or participate in a nighttime ghost hunt, both of which include visits to the old basement morgue.
Quite a few stays seem plagued by the spirits of children. Sickness claimed many young guests, such as seven-year-old Mary Masters who died of cholera in 1846 at The Shelbourne in Dublin, a young girl who succumbed to polio on the eighth floor of the Hotel Alex Johnson in South Dakota, and a child named Rosalia Fihn who passed from typhoid fever in 1908 at The Manor in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Their misplaced items and laughter have supposedly lingered around rooms still rentable today.
Another girl is said to have drowned at The Drovers Inn in Scotland, though perhaps more strange are the cattle herders who regularly fought to the death while battling over cows in the 18th century and allegedly cause all kinds of mischief today. Murder played a never-ending role at both the Lizzie Borden House in Massachusetts, where you can stay and see where the infamous woman killed her parents with an axe, and the Villisca Axe Murder House, a farmhouse in Iowa where guests can attempt to sleep through the night after hearing about the six children and two adults bludgeoned to death on the property.
A more medieval murder can be found at Lumley Castle, built in 1389 in England, where the wife of the original owner was killed and thrown down a well by Catholic monks, so they could pretend she’d converted to Catholicism on her deathbed while her husband was away in Scotland. Stories of Lily Lumley are told on the “Night With the Spirits” tour of the castle, and you can even peer down the well of her doom.
At the Biltmore Hotel in Florida, the story begins with the mob murder of Thomas “Fatty” Walsh in 1929, but develops more morbid layers after being turned into a World War II hospital, which was abandoned in 1968 and reopened for bookings in 1987. Several other properties saw the mass death of soldiers, such as the Concord’s Colonial Inn in Massachusetts that functioned during the Revolutionary War and The Marshall House, which was once a Civil War hospital in Savannah, Georgia.
A prisoner of war met his end at Parador de Jaén in Spain, where some guests have had disturbances in hallways and in room 22. And Dragsholm Castle in Hørve, Denmark is said to be haunted by James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, who died while imprisoned in the dungeon in 1578. Today, he’s just one of many ghosts said to roam the old palace-turned-prison-turned-hotel.
Some hotels today have been cursed by fatal accidents. A 1930s cruise ship called The Queen Mary, which was used during WWII to transport troops, is now a floating hotel in California—despite the girl who drowned in the on-deck swimming pool and a crew member who was crushed to death in the engine room. In Thailand, a fire claimed the lives of 13 people at First Hotel Bangkok in 1988, where guests say they’re still disturbed by the victims. Another deadly accident led to the haunting of the 17th-century Ballygally Castle in Ireland by Lady Isobel Shaw, after she fell from a tower window.
Finally, you might hear the faint click of cowboy boots at a few hotels in America’s Wild West, where many disputes were settled by gunfights. Some 26 victims were fatally shot at the St. James Hotel in New Mexico, a barman was shot dead at the Black Monarch in Colorado, and Chief Justice John P. Slough lost a draw in 1867 at La Fonda in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In each case, the hotels transport guests back in time with historic architecture, period decor, a touch of macabre, and maybe some unexpected nightly visitors.
* * *
Danielle Hallock is a former senior editor at Atlas Obscura, Thrillist, and Culture Trip, as well as a writer for National Geographic, Well+Good, and Time Out. She’s been working in travel since 2018, after four years as a managing editor at Penguin Random House. As a Chilean-American, crossing cultures and mountains is in her nature, and she continues to grow her collection of books, bagged summits, and passport stamps. Though she has a hard time sitting still, Brooklyn has become her base camp.
