It all started at a motel. More particularly, in the shower of a Bates Motel room. Marion Crane screamed in terror as a mysterious person carrying a huge kitchen knife yanked aside the shower curtains and slashed her to pieces. The moment horrified a generation of moviegoers and went on to become the most influential scene in horror film history. It not only established a new cinema genre, but it also established a strange link between hotels and all the terrifying things that keep us up at night.
Even as an accommodation company, we have to acknowledge that hotels are weird. Who are your next-door neighbors? What occurred in the room prior to your arrival? What tales do the employees refuse to tell you? Is the paranormal activity safe, or are you placing yourself in danger? (see the last hotel on the list). Let’s get our creative juices flowing. Here is our list of the spookiest hotels in the United States.
Stanley Hotel, Estes Park, Colorado
Is the bathroom door familiar? Perhaps someone chopping at it with an ax will trigger your memories. When Stephen King and his family stayed here in the early 1970s, the vast hotel was deserted save for the workers. Consider an empty 140-room hotel. Consider the deserted corridors. Check-in better hopes the staff doesn’t freak you out. King’s experience influenced his novel The Shining, which drew the attention of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, who made it into one of the best horror films of all time.
The hotel’s solitude, regular reminders of notable sequences from the film, and whispers of strange activity combine to make this a terrific “I dare you” stay. Book a room at the Stanley, wander the halls (beware of scary twins), and try not to get too carried away reenacting scenarios. During the day, the hotel is fairly nice, and the neighboring mountains provide beautiful scenery. We just wouldn’t stay out late at night, especially if it started snowing heavily.
Emily Morgan Hotel, San Antonio, Texas
Spending the night in the hospital carries with it unpleasant implications. Serious injuries, disabling diseases, and procedures are virtually always cause for fear. However, we seldom realize that the hospital also includes a mortuary and, in certain situations, a mental section. Things you don’t want to see are only a few levels away.
Check both of those options for the Emily Morgan Hotel, which was formerly a huge hospital. The structure itself appears unsettling. It’s a looming neo-Gothic building that appears foreboding even on the brightest of days. Guests have reported seeing shadows move about the hotel and feeling touched while sleeping. Strange sounds are commonly observed as well.
If you want to take your experience to the next level, look for a room on the 12th or 14th levels, where the majority of procedures were performed. The 14th floor also included a cremation for deceased patients with no known relatives. Rest well!
Hawthorne Hotel, Salem, Massachusetts
Salem, Massachusetts is connected with witches and the equally terrifying pursuit for anyone suspected of witchcraft. Don’t get your hopes up about broomsticks and sizzling cauldrons. The Hawthorne has enough plausible stories to make you reconsider spending the night there.
Several visitors have complained about flickering lights and faucets that switch on and off at random. One staff member was entrusted with tidying a room named “the lower deck” at night, only to return to find that all of the furnishings had been replaced. After that, the employee refused to perform night shifts.
If you think that’s just a typical ghost story, consider this: the property on which the hotels stand was previously held by Bridget Bishop, the first person to be hung on suspicion of witchcraft. The spirits benefit from history.
Gettysburg Hotel, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
The community has plenty of legends of paranormal activity. One of the most prevalent accounts of locals and visitors hearing cries in the woods, allegedly from the spirits of wounded warriors bleeding out, is one of the most haunting. In terms of unusually high frequency of reports, there is a farm in town that was utilized as a Confederate field hospital. According to locals, the ghosts of the troops who died on the farm still roam the grounds. Another popular destination is the Gettysburg Hotel. Guests have reported seeing a lady dancing in the hotel’s ballroom at night, as well as the ghost of Union soldier James Culbertson of the Pennsylvania Reserves prowling the premises.
Gettysburg’s small-town atmosphere (population around 8,000) contributes to the ghostly atmosphere. There’s something unsettling about gazing over the little town and knowing that it was overrun by tens of thousands of soldiers 150 years ago, many of whom would perish in the town’s fields and woodlands. Booking a stay at the Gettysburg Hotel puts you in uncomfortably close proximity to one of the most significant events in American history.
Congress Plaza Hotel, Chicago, Illinois
You might say we saved the most disturbing for last. Karel Langer, a six-year-old kid who was living in the hotel with his mother after fleeing Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, is one of the most terrifying hotel legends. The kid’s mother had a mental breakdown (perhaps because she didn’t know if her husband had escaped Czechoslovakia) and flung the boy out the window of her twelfth-floor room. There have been reports of a weird youngster prowling the corridors of the twelfth level, but what concerns us is staff workers reporting feeling pursued through those same halls.
But it does not stop there. Suicides and natural deaths have occurred often at the hotel. One of the most distressing examples is that of a woman in her 70s who sliced her wrists in a bathtub. The room is still accessible, and people have reported seeing the woman late at night in the tub. Another scary story involves an exorcism that occurred in one of the hotel’s rooms. The hotel refuses to say which room it is. Guests have also reported being kicked awake by shadow forms in the middle of the night.
The haunting is also ironic in other ways. G. Herb Palin, the man who coined the phrase “safety first,” died of a heart attack in the hotel in 1928.
The skeptic’s obvious conclusion is that the hotel promotes these claims in order to attract tourists who are looking for a paranormal experience. Isn’t creating a legend beneficial for business? This argument has a serious flaw. The hotel has shut down some rooms and even barricaded the doors. Of course, when these rooms are walled off, they lose business. It begs the question. Book a hotel at Congress Plaza and… we’d suggest leave the light on, but it could simply flicker in the middle of the night.