The flickering flames can’t seem to erase the chill that pervades the campfire. The plentiful goose bumps have nothing to do with the temperature. They’re the result of the ghost stories being told.
The storyteller swears these aren’t far-fetched fables but all-too-true accounts. There are, of course, doubters around the circle. Perhaps a midnight trip to the morgue will change their minds.
In the Arkansas Ozarks, the proprietors don’t shy away from the Crescent Hotel’s dubious past as a Depression-era hospital for cancer patients hoping for miracle cures. It’s fodder for hair-raising, spine-tingling tales sure to delight, and terrify, guests.
For those who don’t mind spending the night with one eye open, there are haunted hotels scattered across the country. When checking in, visitors should understand they may be sharing their rooms with spirits that never checked out.
The 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa (75 Prospect Ave., Eureka Springs, Ark.; 855-725-5720; crescent-hotel.com) bills itself as “America’s Most Haunted Hotel” and has built the business by sharing the creepy past of con man Norman Baker’s Cancer Curable Hospital. Guides in period costume lead visitors on nightly tours. On the third floor, they learn of how the squeaking wheels of a stretcher have lured guests into the corridor.
“They would see a lady in a starched white nurse’s outfit pushing a gurney, with a body covered with a sheet, going down the hallway,” recalled Bill Ott, the hotel’s marketing director. “And then she would just kind of disappear.”
As with the campfire tales, the tours end in the basement, where the morgue was in the 1930s.
“There’s a lot more activity down there than other places in the hotel,” Ott added of spirited goings-on.
The Otesaga of Cooperstown (60 Lake St., Cooperstown, N.Y.; 607-547-9931; otesaga.com) isn’t far from the former home of Louis C. Jones, author of “Things That Go Bump in the Night.” Fittingly, the hotel has had plenty of inexplicably eerie happenings, many of them linked to the years when The Otesaga also housed an all-girls school.
“They claim that children are running up and down our hallways, having fun and making noise,” director of sales Bob Faller said of his co-workers’ experiences.
“People claim to see orbs going through the ballroom and passing through the veranda (and) people dressed in clothes from the 1920s,” he continued. “When approached, they shoot down the stairs and disappear.”
Though Faller has worked at The Otesaga for 17 years, he has never witnessed an orb, let alone a ghost.
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“I’ve never seen that,” he said. “I’m disappointed.”
After 30 years sailing the Atlantic, the Queen Mary (1126 Queen’s Highway, Long Beach, Calif.; 877-342-0738; queenmary.com) is now a floating hotel as well as a tourist attraction that draws 1.5 million visitors a year. Many come for one or both of the haunted experiences offered on board.
Looking smart in his white dress uniform, “Captain” Will Kayne — in reality, the ship’s historian — said the archives are full of tales of supernatural activity, much of it occurring in the staterooms.
“There have been reports of the mirrors in the bathroom fogging up when there hasn’t been anyone in there taking a shower,” Kayne recalled. “People feel the covers on the bed being pulled during the night.”
Guests taking late-night strolls on the deck still hear faint strains of orchestra music coming from a long-closed ballroom. People are heard splashing around in the First Class swimming pool even though it hasn’t held water for decades.
A young crewman is said to haunt the engine room. In 1966, he was crushed by a watertight door that the captain had ordered sealed.
“Watertight doors aboard the Queen Mary closed within several seconds. Seven hundred pounds of hydraulic pressure would slam those doors shut,” Kayne said.
While standing on the metal gangway beside Door No. 13, some visitors say, they have felt fingers in their hair. Others have heard the sailor whistling.
A maid at Savannah’s 17Hundred90 Inn (307 E. President St., Savannah, Ga.; 912-236-7122; 1790inn.com) quit a couple of years ago after she said she witnessed a rag doll moving itself across the mantel in Room 204.
Owner Patrick Godley suspected that the inn’s resident ghost, Anna, was responsible for the shocking experience.
“She’s not a mean ghost. She’s just mischievous,” he said. “She’s particularly fond of women’s jewelry.”
Women staying in rooms on the second floor regularly report that their jewelry mysteriously moves during the night. Earrings left on a nightstand will be found tucked in a seat cushion or under a dresser across the room.
Anna is believed to be the spirit of an indentured servant who worked in the building when it was a boardinghouse before the Civil War. Her antics are shared on various ghost tours of Savannah, including those in which guests travel in former hearses.
Walking tours of Colorado’s The Stanley Hotel (333 Wonderview Ave., Estes Park, Colo.; 800-976-1377; stanleyhotel.com) come with plenty of spooky stories. But those seeking the full otherworldly experience may want to book a night in Room 217. That’s where guests continue to feel the presence of Elizabeth Wilson, a former housekeeper.
Even though she died more than 50 years ago, Wilson apparently is still on duty in the hotel’s most requested room.
“You might come back to your room to find that your clothes have been folded and put on the bed or inside a drawer,” tour director Walter Oglesby said. “Other people have said they wake up to find the bed made around them so they couldn’t get out of it.”
“I always like to say she’s creepy but well-intentioned,” he added.
In addition to 90-minute tours most evenings, The Stanley also offers five-hour ghost hunts three to four times a month. They’re led by professional investigators.
“They really do their best to use scientific methods to determine if something is paranormal,” Oglesby said.