If midnight hayrides and creepy graveyard tours aren’t enough to scare you this fall, there are a slew of haunted hotels across the country where you can get spooked. Here are five of our favorites.
Built in 1909, The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo., may be best known as the inspiration for Stephen King’s The Shining, but its real-life ghosts have been said to haunt guests, too, in the form of phantom piano players, playing children and lights turning off and on.
At The Green Mountain Inn in Stowe, Vt., you’ll learn of the legend of Boots Berry, a horseman fired from the inn for his alcoholic tendencies. He later fell to his death from the inn’s rooftop while saving a girl during a snowstorm; it’s said he can now be heard tap dancing on the third floor whenever a snowstorm hits. Meanwhile, at Boston’s Omni Parker House, the controlling original owner, Harvey Parker, haunts the hotel — he’s often spotted roaming the halls of the 10th floor — unable to let go the reins of running the business.
More than a century has passed since the Hotel Galvez & Spa opened in Galveston, Texas, a beach town outside of Houston known for the many shipwrecks that have occurred there. Several spirits are said to haunt the hotel, but the most famous may be the “ghost bride,” a young woman who walks the fifth floor mourning her husband. And Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans’ French Quarter has been operating since 1886 with numerous reports of paranormal activity: furniture drawers opening and shutting, doors locking, an elevator that stops without reason, and sightings and sounds of the ghosts of children.
