Haunted Hotels

Originally a hospital for the copper mining town of Jerome, this hotel is home to many ghosts and manifestations dating back to 1927. Sitting at 5000 feet in elevation, this National Historic Landmark offers ghost hunting packages which includes a good old fashioned ghost hunt. Maybe you will meet the ghost of Claude M. Harvey, the hospital’s fireman engineer who is said to have been crushed to death by the elevator. He is known to appear in the basement and sometimes has some fun with the elevator. Going down?

A Spectral Sport – Ghost Hunting

Guests of the Jerome Grand Hotel, are offered one of the most unique experiences of any haunted attraction: The chance to go on an actual ghost hunt, complete with digital camera, EMF meter, and IR thermometer to aid in their search.

The hotel is five stories high, with guestrooms that are all notoriously haunted. One couple chose to mount a digital camera near the ceiling of their hotel room during their stay. A ghostly orb appears to float across the room and into the back of the woman’s head while she slept. The same white orb was again captured seeming to dance back and forth across the balcony of the couple’s suite. Numerous other encounters with the orb have been well documented by various hotel guests and a quick search online yields proof of the ethereal sightings.

History of a Ghost Town

Jerome Grand Hotel, which was once a state-of-the-art hospital, is believed to be one of the most haunted attractions in the United States. Situated in the town of Jerome Arizona, the hotel is among several haunted dwellings in what is now considered a ghost town. In the 1950’s, with its mines rich in copper, silver, and gold, Jerome was home to over 15,000 miners and their families. During World War II, the town continued to thrive, but two massive fires destroyed much of Jerome in the late 1890’s. In 1953, the mine closed and by 1955 the population of Jerome dwindled to fewer than 100 people.

The hospital, which was owned by the Phelps Dodge Mining Company, was closed in 1950 and the building remained unoccupied for the next 44 years.

In the 1970’s, Jerome began to breathe new life. A subculture of artists, curators, restaurateurs, and other creatives settled into the hillside and the community began to flourish once again. While this community has continued to thrive due to increasing tourism, Jerome is currently home to fewer than 500 residents.

The old hospital was purchased by the Altherr family in 1994, and opened as Jerome Grand Hotel in 1996. The building was so well preserved that to this day, it has retained 95% of its historical attributes.

Jerome Arizona is also known as “The World’s Most Vertical City” due to its intense steepness. It is located atop Cleopatra Hill and rises to a staggering 5,200 feet in altitude. The 30-degree incline has not been kind to many of the buildings that once dotted its slopes. While many of the original buildings were damaged or destroyed in the fires, others have succumbed to gravity, crumbling into heaps at Cleopatra’s feet. Of the buildings that have remained standing, many have been restored and transformed into restaurants, wineries, and gift shops.

Ghosts of the Jerome Grand Hotel

In the 1930’s, the body of the Verde Hospital’s maintenance man Claude Harvey was found at the bottom of a service elevator shaft. The elevator was found to be in working order and the death was investigated as a homicide. Several guests of the hotel, while acting as Paranormal Investigators, have reported a ghostly figure of Claude Harvey in the basement, staring vacantly at the closed elevator doors. Others have reported hearing a distant whistling; presumably the sounds of a man dutifully performing his maintenance routine, even from beyond the grave…

Considering the hotel served as a hospital in its previous incarnation, it is no surprise that guests often report the haunting wails and cries of its former inhabitants. Sounds of labored breathing, coughing, and screaming have oft been reported within the common areas, halls, and stairwells of the Jerome Grand Hotel. One such inhabitant is known as “the bearded man” and appears to “visit” numerous rooms on various floors of the hotel.

One of the most common sounds heard in any busy hospital is the first cry of a newborn babe. Guests of the hotel frequently report the sound of an infant crying. Callers have reported the sound to hotel staff, claiming to hear it coming from a neighboring room, only to learn that the room had not been occupied.

The hotel is even home to the ghostly form of a feline; numerous guests have reported feeling a ghost cat brushing up against their leg, leaving an imprint on the bed linens from its cat nap, and one guest even captured the phantom feline in a photograph. The picture was framed and still sits upon the front desk of the hotel.

Haunted Room 32

The most popular of all the rooms available for guests to retire after an evening of ghost hunting, is room 32. The room is well-known as the most haunted room in the hotel after having been the location of not one, but two grisly suicides… One man leapt from the balcony to his death, while another turned his gun on himself. Guests who dare attempt sleep in this room are awoken by the sounds of doors opening by themselves, and of water streaming from faucets that apparently turned themselves on full blast.

Your Stay

If hunting for ghosts at a historic hotel, decked out with high-tech paranormal detection equipment appeals to you, then Jerome Grand Hotel is where you should book your stay. The ghost hunt costs $30 per adult, $20 per child and is offered on select weeknights. And as an added bonus for you ghost hunters, you’ll receive a 10% discount on your stay, for as many nights as you dare.

In the much-anticipated horror sequel to Stephen King’s The Shining, there’s an early scene in Doctor Sleep which showcases a white, two-story hotel that is revealed to be in Florida. As the character Danny Torrance remarks, he and his mother moved to Florida after the events in The Shining because “we both hated snow.” Filming was completed at the Riverview Hotel in St. Mary’s, Georgia which sits less than two miles from the Atlantic Ocean coastline. However, there is something unusual about filming scenes for a horror movie at a hotel that is actually reputed to be haunted itself.

The area of St. Mary’s itself is considered quite historic with original inhabitants to the area around the future hotel site being the Timucuan Native Americans. Later in the 1500s the area was explored by the French and eventually Spanish explorers as well. The Riverview Hotel was originally built back in 1916 by the Brandon Family, a trio of goodnatured sisters who developed a reputation for being hostesses that wowed visitors with a combination of southern charm as well as fine southern cooking. Situated right on the banks of the St. Mary’s River, a bustling ferry is nearby to shuttle those curious to Cumberland Island.  Over the many decades of operation, there have been guest stays at the hotel where people have walked away with tales of the paranormal.

Is the Riverview Hotel Haunted?

Room Number 8 is said to be one of the most active rooms at the Riverview. Interest was piqued by a guest during a threatening coastal storm and the entire hotel lost all power except for Room Number 8 where no known technical explanation could ever be found. In fact, a hole was actually cut into the wall next to the bedside lamp because electricians could not figure out how a corded bedside lamp was getting power despite the rest of the hotel being powerless. The spirit in this room has manifested to some guests over the years and is believed to be a predominantly male spirit, though confirmations are fleeting as he disappears as soon as approached.

Room Number 8 isn’t the only paranormal activity witnessed though, shadows have been seen all over the entire hotel. Guests have noticed certain travel toiletries being stacked, arranged, and moved in unusual positions, and even sometimes have had the feelings that there’s a spirit watching them in the room. And in something straight out of the horror film Paranormal Activity, a woman staying at the hotel said the bed covers were pulled off her multiple times during the night despite nobody else in the locked room and even at one point an unseen spirit fully tugged at her leg shaking her awake!

The historic and small town area of St. Mary’s has enjoyed a recent boom in coastal tourism and stays at the Riverview Hotel are said to be quite pronounced during the holiday times especially. Given the probably poltergeist activity at the Riverview, it sounds like the producers of Doctor Sleep chose the ideal place to shoot scenes from their film there.

Paradise Valley, Arizona is a supremely small municipality within the enormous confines of Phoenix’s own Maricopa County. Affluent by nature, this wealthy area was carved out a long time ago European migrant settlers in the late 1880s. As Phoenix and nearby Scottsdale were annexed and grew into their own, Paradise Valley became an area that commanded commercial attention. One of the premier places to stay in this sun-dried desert locale is The Hermosa Inn. But settled in such a wealthy area backed up by the desert, is this oasis inn greatly haunted?

Is the Hermosa Inn Haunted?

Famed cowboy artist Alonzo “Lon” Megargee built the Hermosa Inn back in 1935 on six-plus acres of arid and commercially rich property. The layout of the inn was really quite simple in that sun-dried adobe bricks were used to eventually construct the entire building. Megargee also found himself heavily influenced by old-world Spain, and the use of wooden beams and some iron fixtures. While open for business, things went a little too well for Megargee and he began to take advantage of his success by running gambling games inside the inn. So as to avoid detection from law enforcement, he had a tunnel constructed from underneath the inn that ran all the way out to the stable area on the fringes of the property.

The wild times at the inn were proving too much for Megargee and he eventually ended up selling the Hermosa to some private individuals in 1941. Megargee lived something of a tumultuous life in his later days being married upwards of seven times before he finally passed away on his ranch at the age of 77 in Cottonwood, Arizona. Subsequent owners to the ranch added other amenities such as the tennis courts, swimming pool, bar, spa, and of course refurbishments and additions to the landscape. However, it was years after Magargee’s death when stories of the paranormal really began to emerge for the Hermosa Inn.

The Ghosts of the Hermosa Inn

The chief spirit of the Hermosa Inn is actually that of Lon Megargee himself. While it is common knowledge he passed away at his ranch some two hours north of the Hermosa, paranormal theorist muse that his fierce love and attachment to the inn forced him to in fact haunt it. And like many facets of the paranormal, their activity is as varied as ever. One of the more popular spots is the kitchen area where staff have claimed to see a tall, and ghostly man resembling Lon’s trademark cowboy figure looming over areas where pots and pans have routinely flown off racks by a pair of invisible hands!

Not to be outdone in proximity, and just past the kitchen waiter door to the bar area of the inn’s fine dining restaurant, wine glasses have been seen not only moving by an unseen force, but also tumbling to the floors in an instant. Chefs in the kitchen look to the supernatural mishaps as nothing more than Lon acting up and showing others that he’s still around, however not all staff have taken such a jovial approach to Lon. A newly hired maid in desperate need of a job was hired to clean the guest rooms. Not long after starting, she went to a normal room that was empty and had just made the bed when she turned around and saw Lon’s ghostly figure staring back at her in the mirror! Fleeing in terror, this once job-desperate maid gave notice and quit her job immediately.

It’s wholly possible that the maid had found herself in an impossibly haunted situation as a good portion of the rooms at the Hermosa are rumored to be haunted, including number seven which was said to have been Lon’s personal favorite. The heavy sound of footsteps is very common to be heard in the doorway of the guest room without anyone even being there. Is this Lon acting up again? Of all things, Lon isn’t thought to be the only ghostly spirit that haunts the Hermosa Inn property. There have been sightings of a woman in a pink dress that has been seen spotted outside on the property’s waterside strolling bridge. Some believe that the pale specter of this woman in pink could have been an ex-wife of Lon, however, since he was married seven times it’s hard to pinpoint just exactly which wife this could be that shows up at any time of day or night before fading away back to the afterlife.

One of the more eerie sightings has been what one longtime employee of the Hermosa saw, which was a pair of ghost children dancing in the parking lot in the middle of the night! Absolutely zero information could be found on the genesis of their ghostly states, but from all indications, they have been spotted laughing and dancing so they appear comfortable in their paranormal dispositions.

The Hermosa Inn is one of the most luxurious boutique hotels in the entire Paradise Valley and Phoenix area with particular attractions to its award-winning fine dining and wedding hotspot. But if in a party picture a cowboy hat faintly shows up, it might just be Lon checking in to say hello.