Overview
Situated in the heart of Anchorage, Alaska is the Captain Cook Hotel. Standing in at rather impressive eighteen stories tall, this newly remade luxury hotel boasts over five hundred premium rooms along with ninety-six suites. The Captain Cook Hotel is listed with the National Trust for Historic Preservation as being registered as a Historic Hotel of America. Four-star dining, with every plush amenity known to the modern traveler, the Captain Cook Hotel is the epitome of class in Anchorage. It is also reputed as one of the most haunted locations in the city as well.
Is the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage Haunted?
In terms of history, the Captain Cook Hotel is relatively new and its grounds came from an unlikely catalyst. In 1964 a devastating earthquake of a 9.2 magnitude hit Anchorage and leveled nearly every building it could. Anxious to rebuild in the aftermath, a real estate developer named Walter Hickel was committed to building a luxury hotel to help bring tourists back to Anchorage. By the end of 1965 the majority of the hotel was built and opened for business with subsequent room towers within the next few years. Hickel named the hotel in honor of Captain James Cook whose travels often included the Alaska coastline. But what unexplained supernatural activities are haunting such a relatively new hotel and why?
The most frequently reported apparition at the Captain Cook Hotel is a woman dressed in white who appears, in of all places, the women’s lobby restroom. Details were never really reported as most hotels try to keep such information as private as possible, but in 1972 a young guest at the hotel committed suicide in the restroom. Her presence is seen and felt all these decades later with subtle paranormal activity. Innocently enough, female guests in the restroom have spoken of the lights wildly flickering on and off with nobody controlling them, only for a maintenance worker to determine there’s no issue with the circuitry as well as sink faucets mysteriously switching on and off. Female guests inside an actual stall have complained of adjoining stall doors flying open and banging back and forth quite violently. The overactive stall doors have no explanation as nobody is found to be in the restroom at all when this happens.
Guests who have happened to see the spirit, describe her as younger in her 20s, dressed in white, having a stressed look on her face. In fact, female guests at the hotel who have entered the restroom have come out so panicked at the activity that it’s not uncommon for a guest services manager to go into the restroom and openly ask the young spirit to stop making a commotion! Some people have speculated that a separate entity is also haunting the space just outside the tower as some people have spoken of an unseen hand trying to intertwine its fingers with that of the living.
The Captain Cook Hotel remains today as one of the premier luxury hotels in all of Alaska. Ghost tours in Anchorage are now including the hotel as a stop on their ever-growing lists of haunted spots.
I had NO IDEA it was haunted, but I googled it after staying there because my door opened at 1 AM and no one was there… the door was locked and there was no recorded key swipes .
[…] Although this is information that was initially hidden from the public, it was later discovered that in 1972, a young female in the hotel committed suicide in that very bathroom. Although she isn’t a malevolent ghost, she does play quite a few pranks on guests, such as flickering the lights on and off in a crazy fashion or banging the stall doors as hard as she can. Many guests who have witnessed her chaotic behavior have been frightened to the point of notifying management.[8] […]
[…] Although this is information that was initially hidden from the public, it was later discovered that in 1972, a young female in the hotel committed suicide in that very bathroom. Although she isn’t a malevolent ghost, she does play quite a few pranks on guests, such as flickering the lights on and off in a crazy fashion or banging the stall doors as hard as she can. Many guests who have witnessed her chaotic behavior have been frightened to the point of notifying management.[8] […]