A spirited stay: haunted hotels and castles around the world

Who doesn’t love a good ghost story this time of year?

Enjoy your time at these properties but watch out – some of the guests may have taken the phrase ‘come in and stay a while’ a little too far.

Stanley Hotel - Estes Park, Colorado

Nestled high in the Rockies, the Stanley Hotel is perhaps best known as where prolific horror novelist Stephen King was inspired to write The Shining. 

According to interviews with King, during his one-night stay at the property in 1973 – when, much like the Torrance family in the novel, he and his wife were the lone guests – he experienced a number of encounters which would later become iconic parts of the novel and subsequent film, including the appearance of ghostly children and the supernatural significance of Room 217 – the room in which King stayed and now the hotel’s most requested, due in part to its pop culture connection and alleged paranormal activity. 

Eager to play up its reputation, the Stanley Hotel offers nightly ghost tours on the property for guests looking to encounter the resident spirits, including original owners F.O. and Flora Stanley. Coincidentally, while the Stanley Hotel served as inspiration for King’s novel, the exterior of the Overlook Hotel in the film adaptation was provided by a different property – the Timberline Lodge in Oregon.

Castle Leslie – Monaghan County, Ireland

Located in a picturesque region of Ireland’s County Monaghan, Castle Leslie offers such an idyllic surrounding that some guests just don’t want to leave. Built in 1870 on an estate owned by the Leslie family since the 1600s, the castle offers a number of different guest accommodations, with the most popular amongst ghost hunters being the Red Room. 

The centre of Leslie family life, it’s in the Red Room where Lady Marjorie Leslie is reported to have seen her son Norman briefly appear from nowhere, shortly after his death on the battlefields of World War I, thousands of kilometres away. 

Norman is said to still haunt the room, moving around paper and occasionally asking a noisy guest to quiet down. In addition to its paranormal guests, Castle Leslie has also seen some famous (living) faces over the years: the property hosted the 2002 wedding of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills and has also welcomed Irish poet WB Yeats and Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger as guests.

Rose Hall – Montego Bay, Jamaica

Perhaps the most famous of Jamaica’s great houses, Rose Hall is currently a privately-owned tourist attraction situated on thousands of acres of former plantation grounds, which have since been developed for commercial real estate including several resorts such as those by Iberostar, Hyatt and Hilton. 

While the resorts are ghost-free, Rose Hall’s alleged paranormal happenings take place in and around the former great house, where according to local folklore, former resident Annie Palmer, dubbed the ‘White Witch of Rose Hall,’ is said to have murdered three husbands and continues to haunt the grounds. The famed White Witch Golf Course, located on the former plantation grounds, also takes its name from the legend. Tours of Rose Hall are available, including a special Halloween program where guests just might encounter the White Witch herself.

Waitomo Caves Hotel – New Zealand

Built on a former British fort in 1908, the grounds of the Waitomo Caves Hotel have a long history of strange happenings. The local landscape, particularly the caves, is held sacred by local Maori people, and has traditionally been associated with nature spirits tied to the lands; the region has also been the site of several historic violent clashes between the Maori and British colonists. Guests of the hotel have reported ghostly figures, unexplained sounds and movement of objects. Just as eerie as the alleged ghostly happenings are the Waitomo Caves themselves, where thousands of travellers flock each year to see a light show performed by bioluminescent glow worms in the darkness.