From a ghost bride on the grand staircase at Fairmont Banff Springs to the most requested room at Hotel del Coronado, these luxury haunted hotels pair a good ghost story with spas, sea views and centuries of history.
Some travellers want a beach this fall. Others want a room with a reputation, and the best luxury haunted hotels deliver the ghost story and the thread count in equal measure. According to Booking.com’s 2027 Travel Predictions, 59 per cent of Canadian travellers are interested in experiences that confront the paranormal head-on. For a spooky season getaway, these six span three continents, and every one is reachable on a non-stop flight from Toronto this fall.
Fairmont Banff Springs, Alberta
Canada’s “Castle in the Rockies” has welcomed guests since 1888, and it has had nearly a century to polish its ghost stories. The best known is the Ghost Bride, said to have tumbled down the grand marble staircase in the late 1920s and still seen gliding down the steps or drifting through the ballroom in white lace. There’s also Sam the Bellman, modelled on a real and much-loved employee, whose double is said to help guests with stubborn doors, then vanish before he can be thanked.
Fairmont Banff Springs shares the lore openly, along with a dry footnote: there’s no written record of a bride ever dying there. Between sightings, there’s the Fairmont Spa, a golf course and 724 rooms and suites inside Banff National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Hotel del Coronado, California
The Del opened on Coronado Island in 1888, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977 and played backdrop to Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. Its permanent guest is Kate Morgan, who checked in alone on Thanksgiving Day 1892 under the name Lottie A. Bernard. Five days later, she was found dead on an exterior staircase leading to the beach. The coroner’s ruling never fully settled the mystery.
Her former room, now 3327, is the hotel’s most requested, with guests reporting flickering lights, a television switching itself on and off, and objects on the move. Hotel del Coronado runs 45-minute Haunted Happenings tours that retrace her steps after dark. By day, it’s a beachfront resort fresh from a six-year revitalization, with Nobu Del Coronado on site.
Hotel El Convento, Puerto Rico
Across from San Juan Cathedral in Old San Juan, this yellow-walled landmark was a Carmelite convent dating to 1651. Its ghost story begins with its founder, the noblewoman Doña Ana, who is said to have given up her home and fortune to become a nun after her husband went to war and never came back. Guests and staff report the swish of robes in empty hallways, and some say Doña Ana has woken them when they slept in too late.
The nuns left in 1903, and Robert Woolworth turned the building into a hotel in 1962, with Gloria Vanderbilt as its very first guest. Today, Hotel El Convento has 81 rooms with mahogany beams and Spanish tile, a rooftop plunge pool and heated jacuzzi overlooking San Juan Bay, and a complimentary history walk every Saturday morning.
The Langham, London
Open since 1865 and billed as Europe’s first grand hotel, The Langham, London has no shortage of resident spirits. The star is Room 333, where a figure in Victorian evening dress is said to appear, most often in October. In 1973, BBC broadcaster James Alexander Gordon, staying in the room when the corporation owned the building, reported waking to a glowing figure that stared at him and reached out its arms. He left in a hurry.
Others report a German prince at a fourth-floor window, a phantom butler on the third floor and Napoleon III in the basement. In 2014, members of England’s cricket team complained of sleepless nights. For a less eventful evening in London, there’s Artesian for cocktails, afternoon tea in the Palm Court and the pool at Chuan Body + Soul. Daily non-stops run from Toronto to Heathrow.
The Shelbourne, Dublin
Dublin’s “Grand Dame” has stood on St Stephen’s Green since 1824, and its history runs deep: in 1922, a committee chaired by Michael Collins drafted Ireland’s first constitution in Room 112, where the original table and chairs remain. In 1965, paranormal investigators Hans Holzer and Sybil Leek visited, and Leek described a young girl who said she was cold and looking for her sister. They identified her as Mary Masters, a cholera victim believed to have lived in one of the original townhouses.
Guests have since reported taps and showers switching on by themselves, and actor Lily Collins said she sensed a “giggling ghost” during her stay. The Shelbourne also offers calmer pursuits: afternoon tea in the Lord Mayor’s Lounge and a drink at the Horseshoe Bar, where, legend has it, The Chieftains got their name. Air Canada and Aer Lingus fly non-stop from Toronto to Dublin.
The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai
Built by Jamsetji Tata in 1903, The Taj Mahal Palace faces the Arabian Sea and predates its neighbour, the Gateway of India, by nearly two decades. Legend holds that the hotel’s English engineer, W. A. Chambers, still walks the old Palace wing, unable to let go of a building that wasn’t finished the way he designed it.
The living are well looked after: the Harbour Bar, which the hotel bills as the city’s first licensed bar, has poured drinks since 1933, afternoon tea is served in the Sea Lounge, and Wasabi by Morimoto anchors the dining. Air India launches non-stop service from Toronto to Mumbai on October 25, three times a week through March, putting India within a single flight.