America’s Most Haunted Hotels: The Terrifying Top 5

🕯️ Would you spend a night in one of America’s most haunted hotels? In this chilling episode of Deep Woods Paranormal, Matt checks into five of the most terrifying hotels in the United States — where guests check in… but not all check out.

Featuring:
🏨 The Stanley Hotel — Colorado
🏨 1886 Crescent Hotel — Arkansas
🏨 Omni Parker House — Massachusetts
🏨 Hotel Monteleone — Louisiana
🏨 The Menger Hotel — Texas

Explore their tragic histories, eerie hauntings, and the paranormal activity that keeps investigators and thrill-seekers coming back for more. From ghostly bellhops to haunted elevators, you’ll hear the stories that make these places legendary.

🎧 Would you stay the night?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Well, hello, my paranormal peeps, and welcome back to the
deep Woods Paranormal Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Harvey. I'm
an investigator, I'm a storyteller, and someone spent more nights
and haunted locations than I can count, so across the
United States, the historical hotels hold more than memories behind
those elegant facades and whispers of tragedy, lingering souls, and

(00:39):
the kind of energy that make sure he hairstand on end.
So grab your room key, let's go explore the five
most haunted hotels is stolen by guests if you're brave
enough to spend the night. All right, guys, So let's
start with the Stanley Hotel. And this is an Estes Park, Colorado,
So let's start with the legend the Stanley Hotel built
a night sorry nineteen oh nine. This beautiful hotel with

(01:03):
white white men are inspired Stephen King's The Shining. But
you don't need to be in Hollywood to find chills here.
Room two seventeen is the most famous room in the hotel.
In nineteen eleven, housekeeper name Elizabeth Wilson was caught an
explosion that caused by a gas leak. She survived, but
her spirit may not have moved on. Guest still report

(01:25):
their belongings being neatly folded, lights chain turned off on
their own, and a phantom footstep pacing the hall. That's
kind of creepy. I've actually been to the Stanley Hotel.
I'll talk about nine just a minute. Others hear a
piano playing softly late in the night in the empty ballroom.
Local say it's Flora's Stanley, the hotel's founder's wife, keeping

(01:51):
her music alive. So I guess she used to play
music during the night. Cold drafts, shadowy figures, and even
laughter echoing from nowhere. The Stanley isn't just haunted, it's
proud of it. They run nightly ghost tours for anyone
daring enough to wander its long corridors after dark. So
if you remember in The Shining the Little Kids, actually

(02:12):
supposedly Stephen King supposedly saw that something like that, and
that's possibly what triggered that for him. There's a lot
of ghosts that actually haunt the location. You want I understand,
And you know, if you've seen the shows, you know
that there's quite a few paranormal teams that have investigated there.

(02:32):
So my question to you is, have you investigated the
Stanley Hotel a man? And I don't think a man
and I've ever actually stayed there. But I stayed there
with my parents when we actually went skiing one year
up there once one winter during winter break or whatever.
And I didn't really feel very comfortable in that hotel.

(02:53):
I was only like eight or nine maybe at that
point in time. I don't remember a lot about it.
I do remember that the hotel just creeped me out.
But it's a beautiful hotel. I mean not every room's
haunted and everything. But if you get a chance, I
would go check it out. All right. So let's talk
about the Crescent Hotel and Spa in Urica Springs, Arkansas.

(03:15):
This was built in eighteen eighty six. So if the
Stanley Hill Hotel is spooky, the Crescent Hotel is a
pure nightmare. Fuel in the nineteen thirties and a man
named Norman Baker bought it and turned it into a
cancer hospital. Oh boy. He claimed he could curate anyone

(03:36):
without medicine, without surgery, but patients never left when investigating
investigators have convded the ground, excuse me. Later that year,
they found jarge full with human remains and tissue samples,
horrifying proof of his crimes. So it sounds like he
was actually operating on people and probably killing them and

(03:58):
basically just doing a topsy Today guest reports seeing operations
of patients in hospital gowns, ghostly nurses pushing journeys, and
lights flickering in the old treatment room. One guest left
coins on a dresser overnight. By morning, they were perfectly
rearranged in a neat triangle. Interesting. The Crescent calls itself

(04:20):
America's most haunted hotel, and it might just be right.
So I've actually never been to the Crescent Hotel. It
sounds like a very creepy hotel. Imagine. You know, I've
spent unfortunately many nights in hotel rooms, in not only
hotel rooms, but also in old hospitals where things have happened.

(04:43):
You hear like people talking and whispering and stuff like that.
And you know, like I said, I've been through many
many hotels in my life, and probably thousands actually through
my paranormal journey. But yeah, I mean, I can't imagine
staying in a room where somebody was being operated on,

(05:03):
and imagine what was going through those people's minds as
he was basically doing what he was doing. I'm not
going to even get graphic here because of my own
kids listening, but imagine you're being basically autopsied while you're
probably either slightly asleep or hopefully not awake, right. That

(05:23):
would cause just automatic trauma and for somebody to take
your life so soon. It's just amazing. If I remember right,
he had all kinds of I've actually seen a special
on this. He had like trapdoors and stuff like that,
and he would do all kinds of horrible things. He
would put carbon monoxide into rooms to hurt people and

(05:48):
stuff like that. This was like if you ever ever
seen the show Saw. I mean, this was basically not
that crazy, but it was just basically a death house.
And so imagine going in there and staying in there.
Imagine if he's still haunting those grounds. So that would
be insane to stay there, but it would be really

(06:12):
cool to investigate. I think as a paranormal investigator, we
always want to go into the most haunted locations and
see if you can document anything for yourself. And so, anyways,
have you guys investigated the President Hotel and spa. What
did you experience live a common down below? We'd love
to hear about it, all right. So next location, Omni

(06:37):
park House in Boston, Massachusetts. Our next. So this is
where history hauntings walk hand in hand. Founded by let's see,
founded in the eighteen fifties by Harvey Parker, This elegant
hotel once hosted Charles Dickens, JF. Kennedy, and dozens of
other American icons. But it's not the famous living guests

(07:00):
that make it legendary. Floors nine and ten are home
to flickering lights, sudden temperature drops, and the ghost of
Parker himself checking on guests long after death. The creepiest
story is the elevator that keeps stopping on. It's on
the third floor, and no one win. No one's inside

(07:21):
staff says it's Harvey taking one last patrol. U add
in moving shadows, disembodied laughter, and precise persistent scent of
scar smoke from an are long ago gone, and you're
we've got a haunted haunting that blends class and chops perfectly.

(07:41):
So yeah, I mean, we've smelled like old cigar smoke
in locations and you know you're looking for a reason
for it. You go up to the wallpaper and you're
looking at the old furniture and you're trying to figure
out what's coming from, but there's no It's weird because
there's no actual smell coming from those things that you

(08:03):
can smell. But then you're you walk down the way
and then all of a sudden, you get like a
puff of smoke in your in your your nostrils, and
you're like, what the heck? And then you get a
cold spot, and then maybe you hear footsteps or something else.
That's happened to me a few times where I've smelled
the smell of of like potpourri or something like that,

(08:27):
like old perfume. So yeah, I mean, definitely cool. You
know cold cold spots, that's just where energy is basically
being pulled out of the air, and that could be
the sign that spirit's going to do something because they're
using that energy to manifest in some way. At that point,

(08:48):
you might get an EVP, you might get something coming
through a ghost box or spirit box. You might get
you know, an apparition caught on camera. You might get movement,
you might see a shadow, you might get some kind
of other activity. You might inherd, somebody voice, somebody might
see something. So yeah, very cool, very very cool. I've

(09:13):
had a lights flicker off and on. That's creepy, I'll
tell you what. And then you know, the goes to
Parker Harvey himself. That would be really cool to see
him like on the elevator and uh, you know, door's open.
He's there and it's kind of like translucent and you
see him and then he pushes the button and then
the doors closed and he takes off up to the

(09:35):
next floor and you go running up the stairs to
chase him and he's there, He's not there. That would
be really cool. So anyways, yeah, if you get a
chance to go check out the Omni park House in Boston, Massachusetts,
let me know if you experienced anything. Have you guys
been to this location, have you experienced anything? All right,
So moving on the Hotel mont Alone, New Orleans. I'm

(10:00):
sorry if I mispronounced that Louisiana. So in the heart
of the French quarter stands the Mona Monteleone as a beautiful,
as beautiful and haunted as it is. I'm sorry. I
can't talk today. I don't know what my problem is.
At least recently, I haven't able to pronounced anything for
some reason, any things I can normally pronounce. Okay. So

(10:24):
one of the most haunted spirits is Maurice Brage, a
young boy who died in the late eighteen hundreds while
in his while his parents were away. Guess is staff alike.
I've seen him roaming the fourteenth floor looking for his mom.
That's sad. And then when you get scared spirits, I
mean that itself can be really really cool because you

(10:47):
basically they're they're very active usually, and they're very mischievous.
I'm doing that because those the dolls behind me are
haunted and they like to mess with things as I'm
doing my podcast sometimes as I feel hand in the
middle of my back. All right, So some say the

(11:08):
elevator plays tricks when children ride it. It'll stop at
that floor even if no one presses the button. So
get more childlike antics. You know, when you get an
elevator and your kid goes oh, it starts pushing all
butts pretty much. Yeah, so, I mean little kids. Spirits
are essentially the same in death as they are in life.

(11:29):
I mean they you know, they're still playful, they're still mischievous.
They still like to have fun and they like to
mess with people and stuff like that. So other reports
of hearing laughter, running footsteps, and even seeing former employees
still performing their duties, So that could be more like
a residual thing where basically there's just an energy kind

(11:52):
of trapped in time where stuff is just still happening.
It's like a rerun on TV. If you watched an
old I Love Lucy run or something like that, or
or an old show that you used to like, imagine
that kind of playing out in real life where you know,
basically somebody was cleaning the floor, somebody else was standing

(12:13):
at the desk answering a phone and stuff like that,
and you know, even years later, even if that person's
still alive, that energy gets trapped in time and then
basically just kind of plays like a rerun on TV.
And sometimes people will see that. We had a lady
call probably about fifteen years ago, and she and I
think I've talked about this before. It's just a good

(12:35):
way to explore explain residual energy. She saw herself walking
down the hallway. I think she had a laundry basket
in her hands, and she walked down the hallway and
then disappeared. And she was standing right in front of
the hallway and she saw this, and essentially she called
right away. She's like, I don't know what to do.

(12:56):
I'm not dead, I'm alive. She was just panicking and
I told her don't worry about it. She had lived
in this house for like thirty plus years, and she
was an older lady, and she's she's like, you know,
I don't know what to do about this. I'm like,
don't worry about it. And you might see stuff like
that from time to time. It's just regiseral energy. She
had done the laundry in the house for thirty years

(13:16):
and then she just you know, energy from her walking
up and down the hallway was just trapped there. It's
not a big deal. Whoever moved in the house after
she's gone, we'll probably also see that. Okay. So Louisiana
basically thrives with ghost stories, and the mon Alone Montlone
stands as one of the most convincing, classy, tragic, and

(13:38):
undeniable activity locations. So yeah, go check that out if
you haven't been there before. And I'm probably mispronouncing this,
but Louisiana is an amazing place. I mean, just all
the history and all the stuff that's happened, all the hurricanes,
all the bad things that have happened there just basically

(13:59):
have caused that look to be haunted. I mean, if
you think about all the stuff that's happened in Louisiana
and in Texas too, but Louisiana is one of those
places where it probably holds a lot of energy. There
is you know, it's basically at sea level or below
in most places until you get them a halfway up
through the state, and so there's water associated with it. Again,

(14:24):
that water just brings energy, and energy allows spirits to
manifest in some way. So this is one that people
keep telling me I need to go check out. This
is actually in San Antonio, Texas. This is a Menjer hotel.
I've heard this is probably one of the most haunted
hotels in the world from what I understand. But again,

(14:44):
you know, if you've been there Camment down below, tell
me what your experiences are. This is when I haven't
had the pleasure of staying at. One of these days,
when we take Amanda, we're going to go spend a
night there and just see what we experience. And maybe
we'll record it for you guys to experience it with us.
All right, So deep in Heart at Texas, near the Alamo,

(15:05):
the Merger Hotel is home to more than thirty reported spirits. Okay,
So the most famous spirit is Sally White. She's a
maid who was murdered by her jealous husband. She's been
seeing countless times, pushing her towel towel card down the halls,
and her presence presence calm but sorrow. So she's basically

(15:27):
just a soul that basically roam's hallways, pushing her car,
still doing her duties, and she's basically just really relaxed,
but she looks really sad. So guest report doors opening, beds,
levitating slightly. That would be creepy, a man's face appearing

(15:48):
in mirrors. Some investigators have even claimed spirits communication with
a Spanish speaking ghost named Victor and the relentless energy
of Captain Richard King who died in his name sake suit. Okay,
So even skeptical visitors admit there's something heavy in the air.
Something They call it energy and they can't others call

(16:11):
it memory. So again, you know, I talked about the
spirits as if their energy all the time. But I've
been on a bed that livitated that was creepy as hell,
Like something literally pushed the bed up as it climbed underneath.
I don't know. And I looked under the bed when
I got up in the next morning and there was
nothing there. I mean, there was nothing under a bed

(16:31):
at all. That's creepy as hell. But again that was
more of the negative type haunts. But yeah, poor Sally White.
You know, anytime somebody's murdered in a location, there's a
very good chance that they're gonna possibly stay, especially if
a lot of energy went into her killing. Her husband

(16:53):
was jealous evidently, and essentially I don't know why he
was jealous. Maybe something else was, you know, interested in
her or something like that. But like I said, doors opening,
that's that's always interesting. We've had that happen. We've actually
caught it on camera. If you guys want to go

(17:15):
back and look at the Norman dy N video where
the tour well, I don't want to give it away,
just watch the land because it gets crazy. And then
the Spanish speaking name of ghost named Victor. That would
be cool. So if you have anybody that speaks Spanish fluently.
Maybe you could take them with you and see if

(17:37):
you could get Victor to communicate with you. Captain Richard King,
we love to be more research into him. I don't
know exactly who he was, either a Civil War soldier
or maybe he was, you know, fighting during the Mexican
American War. That's huge in Texas. Actually, there's a lot

(17:57):
of battlefields here in Texas where the Mexican American War happened.
One of these days we're gonna sneak down to one
of these battlefields and see if we can experience anything.
But yeah, just a crazy cool place. A lot of
my friends have actually stayed there, and they've told me
they've experienced things like the coins being moved. They left

(18:19):
coins out and found them moved and stuff like that,
and they just just they say, that place just feels
really haunted. So I'll ask you guys again, have you
been to the Merger Hotel? Did you have any experiences?
Please calm it down below or feel free to reach
out to us. I'd love to hear about it anyways.
So what ties all these haunted hotels together? The history,

(18:42):
the tragedy, the emotionally strong imprint that's been left. Whether
it's residual energy replaying like old events, or intelligence spirits
trying to reach out, we may never know for sure,
but one thing's for sure. When the lights go out,
the halls fall silent, and something still lingers. All right,

(19:04):
So two more haunted hotels for you. Okay, what is it?
I forgot the name of the other one, but I'll
start with the Queen Mary. Uh So, the Queen Mary.
We've been on the Queen Mary so many times. You've
got ghosts from everything from the engine room all the

(19:25):
way up through the whole ship. I mean, the whole
ship is is just like a whole haunted location. Now
granted it's it's on the on the water still, even
though it's basically on a sandbar. That ship's never going
anywhere again. It's just basically the engines have been pulled
out and stuff. It is just sad. But that whole area,
I mean, there's still residual energy down in the you know,

(19:49):
the engine room and stuff like that. If you go
down there, you can hear footsteps, you can hear people working.
We've come across a World War two nurse that was
trying to assist helping somebody and she's still there. She's
very intelligent. Actually was able to have a conversation with

(20:09):
her with our K two meter. Unfortunately we didn't have
ghost box or a spirit box at that point in time,
but we were able to communicate with her and she
was very interesting. And then when I was up where
the bow was where the actual incident happened, where the
Queen Mary ran over the other warship and the sailors

(20:34):
they basically cut a warship in half with the front
of their bow because they were told during World War Two,
don't stop because the U boats keep going no matter what,
and so they had to keep going. And there was
damage done to the bow and I think I don't
know if it was thirty soldiers died drowned up there
or what. But as we were doing an EVP session

(20:57):
trying to communicate with whoever was there, an apparition actually
formed and we were sitting on the ropes up in
the front where they you know, they keep the ropes
and stuff. It's basically just for show now, but anyways,
we were sitting up there and it's kind of staged
as if it would have been back in the day
when the ship was still going and we weren't getting

(21:19):
him very much activity, and all of a sudden, this
guy sitting between a man and I just appears and
he stands up and he looks straight at me, and
that poor guy, he had blood coming down the side
of his face and he was in an old sailor's outfit,
and he looked at me and with this disappointed look

(21:43):
like he was frustrated, and I think he was just
sad that essentially he was still there. And then he disappeared,
and I was like, okay, he just looks solid. I mean,
he looked like a person, and then he slowly faded
out and disappeared. I think he might have been intelligent,
as I get goosebumps, my arms on my back, cold

(22:05):
spot behind me. And then of course there's room B
three forty. There was actually a couple of different times
where people were actually murdered on the ship. To put
this story behind B three forty was it's actually room
to B three forty where Roomb three forty is now.
It's actually two different rooms, but they've made it into one,

(22:28):
so essentially stuff moves around that room. There's a lot
of Poulter guys like activity. A guy supposedly drowned, has
murdered his wife and drowned his kid in the tub
in that room. That bathroom is I don't think that
bathroom is still really well put together. But they pulled
the carpet and everything out of there, and we were
sitting in there for about forty five minutes or so.

(22:51):
There wasn't any activity. And then this is God, this
is twenty years ago when we first started, and so
we didn't have a whole lot of gear with us.
We didn't have video cameras or anything. And because the
Queen Mary back then, if you wanted to come on
to the ship, you couldn't come on as a paranormal investigator.
You had to be really careful about running around with
different gear and stuff because they would kick you off

(23:13):
the ship. At this point, when we first started, you
could do whatever you wanted. You could carry cameras around,
you could do EVP sessions, you could go in and
do anything that was unlocked. But in this case, we
were in there and then all of a sudden, the room,
just the whole room just started to change. You got
thick and heavy on the side we were on, and
the lady was standing ask me I'm like, is this

(23:33):
seem different to you? And she's like, yeah, it's getting
thick and heavy here. I'm like, yeah, something had just changed.
And the people on the other side of the room,
which is the other room, actually weren't experiencing any of this.
It's like fifteen people where worth Eerka Fross back that
time doing a ghost tour. She gave us a personalized
ghost tour. So she walks out. They all start to

(23:55):
walk out. I walk out. I'm like, I just felt
like something was wrong. So as we rocked down the
B deck, which is one of the longest decks on
the ship, we got about halfway up to the front
and I just I'm like, I got a try. I
kept fell on feeling like we are being watched and
something was just standing there. So I looked down the hall.
I don't actually see anything, but I took a picture.

(24:16):
I took like, this is with an old digital This
actually I think this was the old Yeah, I think
it was a digital camera. It's like a two point
five make apixel digital camera, right, so it's not anything
that we've used today. I mean two point five If
people would laugh at that now, that was a brain
new camera. Back in the day twenty years ago. So

(24:36):
I start taking a pictures, one after another after another.
I took ten pictures, and in one of them there's
a shadowy figure standing down by rumb E three forty,
just kind of like glaring at us. So that was
really cool. You know, we've investigated that place, friends of
mine and I. We've gotten so many EVPs from in

(24:58):
there and all kinds of other stuff. Another place we've
we've been that we you know now is actually a
hotel again, is the Normandy Inn. If you get a
chance to go stay there here in Texas. It's now
in Galveston, Texas, and Queen Mary's in Long Beach, California.
By the way, I don't know what's going on with it.
I've heard it's gonna undergone renovations again, and there's kind

(25:21):
of all kinds of stuff going on with that place,
and they just can't seem to figure out how to
make it work. But anyways, so the Normandy In we
got the opportunity. We're the only teams ever legally investigated
that location. We spent two full nights in there. I
was gonna spend the night, but I chickened out. I

(25:42):
didn't want to be the only one in It was hot,
no running water, no toilets, no nothing nowhere to go
to the bathroom or anything. And I would have had
to bring everything. I would have to bring like a
whole bunch of stuff with me more than normal to
actually investigate that location. So we spent two nights in there,

(26:02):
and I don't want to give away the video. You
can go back and check it out. But then the
first night we didn't have a lot of activity all
other than a spirit basically saying he's coming up to us.
And essentially basically they UH with some Amanda and Uh
Elena saw a full body app person maybe the same

(26:25):
entity UH in the house. And so a little history
of the place. Basically it's just changed, place changed changed looking,
you know, basically has changed. Sorry stubbled stargars struggling here.
I don't know why I can't talk recently. So essentially
it started out like a hotel and then it went

(26:47):
to like a place for kids to you know, basically
abandoned kids to stay. And then it went back to
like a retirement community, and then it went back to hotel,
and then it just fixed it up and basically then
a hurricane hit and essentially, you know, they lost the
property and it's dormant for almost twenty years, and then

(27:12):
basically recently in the last couple of years, somebody went
through and redid it and made it into a hotel again.
It's beautiful now. But anyways, when we were there, we
experienced little kids. We were playing hide and go seek
with the little kids with the K twos. We left
the K two's in the hallway and stuff like that,
and you can watch the video you can see that.

(27:33):
And then at the end of our time there, we
actually had the ghost box going. I'm sorry, we had
the spirit box going, not the ghostbox. We didn't have
the ghost box. Then I wish we would have spirit box.
And as we were our last hour there during the day,
a woman's the way starts coming through and basically telling
us we need to leave and all this other stuff

(27:55):
and ended up with a dramatic ending. I'll just say
that it was really cool, creepy, but cool. So if
you get an opportunity, you know, I would recommend you
go check it out and stay there if you can
impossibly you can possibly do it. I think a man
are going to do it in the future. It might
be one of our Halloweens things. So, would you guys

(28:17):
stay any of these rooms? Would you guys go stand
any of this hotels if you knew it was haunted?
You know, basically seven haunted hotels for you guys to
kind of think about. Are you interested in any of
these haunted hotels? All right, guys, We will catch you
guys on the next one.