The 5 Most Haunted Hotels in New Orleans
Many New Orleans hotels are in original buildings or sit on lots as old as the first European settlements, and carry with them the sometimes dark and haunted history of almost 300 years of love stories, personal disaster, calamity, fires, floods, and wars. Maybe you can chalk it up to the spirit of the French Quarter, guests’ wild imaginations, or too many hurricanes at Pat O’Briens. Believer or not, these tales of paranormal activity will have you spooked.
Bourbon Orleans Hotel
Why it made the list
Guests at the Bourbon Orleans have reported several ghosts from different eras of the 200-year-old building’s past, when it was once a grand ballroom and later a convent and orphanage. The most famed ghosts at the Bourbon Orleans are a wandering Confederate soldier, various nuns and children, and a solo ballroom dancer, twirling forlornly into the night.
The Cornstalk Hotel
Why it made the list
The iconic fence itself has been said to have a strong paranormal energy, and inside people have reported hearing children laughing and playing (when there were no children at the hotel), and a woman in a lace-collared black dress standing at the window. The creepiest paranormal evidence: Several guests have reported returning home and finding pictures on their cameras that were taken of them while sleeping (in a room with a securely locked door), sometimes from above or other impossible angles.
Hotel Monteleone
Why it made the list
In 2003, a group from the International Society of Paranormal Research confirmed what guests had been saying for years: This old hotel is very haunted. Locked doors that open and close in the night, elevators with a mind of their own (that reportedly love to stop on the 14th, the hotel’s most haunted, floor), and ghost children playing in hallways are among the most frequent rumors. Ghosts of note: William “Red” Wildemere, a former employee who died in the hotel of natural causes, and Maurice Begere, a toddler who also passed while at the hotel, and wanders the hallways in search of his parents. The hotel assures guests that all ghosts are friendly.
Le Pavillon Hotel
Why it made the list
This hotel is so haunted that some paranormal investigators have supposed it was built on a portal to the other side. Employees over the years have reported that ghosts here are realistic—no holograms or fuzzy outlines—and there is a couple (a long, young woman and man, each with their own distressed story) among the most popularly sighted. In the creepiest story of note: One guest claims he woke in the middle of the night to an elderly ghost kneeling by his bed and stroking his hair. He promptly packed his bags and checked out. Understandably.
Hotel Provincial
Why it made the list
At the top of our list even just for the sheer number of reported hauntings, this hotel is often named one of the most haunted hotels in the world, and is a frequent stop on local ghost tours. Several of the buildings were used as a Civil War hospital for a time, and there are reports of Confederate soldiers wandering the hallways, not ready to pass into the next world. Guests have claimed pools of blood on the floors, blood-stained sheets and sounds of wailing and painful groans throughout the night. Among the wilder reports over the years, one group of guests swear that elevator doors opened onto a vivid scene of a bloody military hospital floor, before closing again.
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