Haunted Hotels and Ghostly Guesthouses

If you do a Google search on haunted hotels you will get results like ‘the 15 most haunted hotels in the US’. My question is how can something be the MOST haunted? A single haunt makes it haunted, right? More than one and it is still haunted, so I don’t get the most haunted.

Nonetheless, I recently read a story about Air India flight crew requesting not to travel to Chicago because the hotel where they stay had ‘negative energies’.  I’ve stayed in a few Chicago hotels that felt haunted, so I’m not surprised and that got me thinking about what makes a haunted hotel.

Is it the age of a building? The location? Why THIS hotel and not the one across the street? Are hotels built in the 80s haunted? I don’t have answers but I have stayed in a few hotels that gave me the creeps. In fact, the most haunted place I stay was in New Mexico. I checked in around 11pm and almost immediately felt such a malevolent presence that I barely slept. In fact, I woke up about 2:30am, covered in hives. I packed up and beat feet out of there faster than you can say Boo! To this day, I vow never to return to that part of New Mexico.

Another haunted hotel was in beautiful Cape May, New Jersey. A gorgeous Victorian guesthouse on the beach, this hotel was a lovely place to stay, appointed with nice amenities and a friendly spirit. The few days I was there, I swear things got moved from where I put them and lights went off with no one else in the room but me.  It was weird, but it was not a negative energy, just a playful one.

Finally, at a quaint little place in West Virginia, I was kept awake by a tap dancing ghost. After 30 minutes of tap-enhanced soft shoe from the room above me, I called the front desk to complain and was told there was no on staying in that room. It took me three calls before the bellman went to check the room. Empty. Cue spooky music. I just took a Tylenol PM and went to sleep. I figured the dancing apparition wasn’t evil, just bored.

Those are my “most” haunted hotel experiences in the US. Someday maybe I’ll recount my experiences with witchcraft in Belize, the ghost of a priest in Salisbury, England and the wail of a voices in Cambodia.

Here are some well-known haunted hotels in the U.S. that I would happily visit, but not alone!

What about you? Have you ever stayed in a haunted place? Leave a comment and tell me all about it. Thanks for stopping by!