The haunted hotels in New York split into two kinds, and which you want depends on whether you mean the city or the state.
Some couples do a Broadway weekend. Some friends do the sample sales and come home with a coat they did not need. You want to sleep somewhere with a history, and maybe among a few ghosts.
The haunted places to stay in New York City are buildings where famous people died badly and recently, which is a very different flavour of haunting from a colonial inn. Upstate New York gives you two and a half centuries of grand hotels and taverns with quieter stories.
Below you’ll find 6 haunted places to stay in New York, four in Manhattan and two upstate, with what happened in each building and what guests report now.
- Most haunted hotel in New York: The Hotel Chelsea – Dylan Thomas (the Welsh poet), Sid Vicious (Sex Pistols), and Room 100
- Best for a story: The Marlton Hotel – Jack Kerouac (On the Road) wrote here, and Valerie Solanas lived here the year she shot Andy Warhol
- Best bar attached: The Algonquin – home of the Algonquin Round Table (Dorothy Parker and friends), and a cat who runs the lobby
- Strangest location: Washington Square Hotel – the park outside holds an estimated 20,000 bodies
- Best upstate: Beekman Arms, Rhinebeck – open since 1766, and guests report a Revolutionary War soldier in the rooms above the tavern
A note before you book: every one of the haunted hotels in New York below is a working hotel you can book tonight. The hauntings are what guests and staff report, not claims we can verify. The deaths, in Manhattan at least, are a matter of public record.
Haunted Hotels in New York City
All four of these haunted hotels in Manhattan are walkable to a subway. Greenwich Village has two of them within three blocks of each other.
01. The Hotel Chelsea, Chelsea, Manhattan
Opened in 1884 and, for a century, the address where the twentieth century went to fall apart. The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas collapsed here in 1953 after the drinking session that killed him. Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols was arrested here in 1978 after his girlfriend Nancy Spungen was found stabbed in Room 100.
Guests have reported figures in the stairwells and lifts stopping at floors nobody selected. The building has been expensively restored, which has changed the decor but not the reputation.
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02. The Algonquin Hotel, Midtown, Manhattan
The 1902 home of the Algonquin Round Table, where the critic Dorothy Parker, the humourist Robert Benchley and Harold Ross, who went on to found the New Yorker, drank their way through the 1920s.
Staff have reported the Rose Room feeling occupied when it is empty, and Parker herself is the name most often attached. There is also a resident cat called Hamlet, who is alive and firmly in charge.
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03. The Marlton Hotel, Greenwich Village
A 1900 boarding house turned boutique hotel on West 8th Street, and the building where Jack Kerouac wrote part of On the Road, and where the writer Valerie Solanas was living in 1968 when she walked into Andy Warhol’s studio and shot him.
Guests report footsteps in corridors and doors opening on their own. It is now one of the prettiest small hotels in the Village, which makes the history sit oddly against the wallpaper.
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04. Washington Square Hotel, Greenwich Village
Formerly the Hotel Earle, on the northwest corner of Washington Square Park, which was a potter’s field until 1825 and holds an estimated 20,000 bodies beneath it.
The hotel itself is cheerful and the park outside is the haunted part. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez both lived here in the early sixties, and the folk-era ghosts are the ones staff mention most.
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Haunted Hotels in New York State
Upstate is where you find the colonial buildings, and where haunted places to stay in New York cost a third of what Manhattan charges.
05. The Otesaga Resort Hotel, Cooperstown
A 1909 lakefront grand hotel upstate, all white columns and long verandas overlooking Otsego Lake.
This is the quietest reputation on the list, and worth saying plainly: there is no single famous death attached to the Otesaga. What guests describe is a grand hotel that empties out after the summer season and does not feel empty. Footsteps along the veranda, doors on the upper floors, lifts that move without being called. If you want haunted New York without Manhattan prices, this is the one.
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06. Beekman Arms and Delamater Inn, Rhinebeck
Open since 1766 and widely described as the oldest continuously operating inn in the country. George Washington stayed. So did Franklin Roosevelt, who ended every campaign here.
With roots going back to 1704 and its doors open since 1766, the inn has put up travellers, soldiers and founding figures including George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Over 250 years, the lore goes, not all of those guests checked out. Visitors in the older rooms above the tavern describe a man in Continental Army uniform standing at the foot of the bed, gone by the time they sit up properly.
Local events and regional tourism groups lean into the creaking floorboards and the colonial-era cellars, running storytelling evenings and flashlight tours through the older parts of the building.
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Where to Stay for Haunted Hotels in New York
The haunted hotels in New York City do not sell out for Halloween the way Salem or Savannah do, because there are more than 120,000 hotel rooms in the city. You can book late and still find something. What you cannot do is book late and find it cheap: late October is peak season and rates climb accordingly.
Upstate is the opposite. The Otesaga and Beekman Arms are small, they fill for leaf-peeping weekends through October, and they are worth booking by August.
Deciding between cities? Savannah is smaller and more walkable, New Orleans has the deepest history, and San Antonio is the easiest late booking, and Salem is the one you have to book by June. All are in our guide to the most haunted hotels in the USA.
Haunted Places to Visit in New York
Nobody comes to New York only to sleep. Manhattan hides its dead well, which makes the places that do show you something worth seeking out.
The Merchant’s House Museum on East 4th Street is the most convincing haunted building in the city: a Federal row house preserved almost exactly as the Tredwell family left it, furniture, clothing and all. Gertrude Tredwell was born in the house in 1840 and died in it in 1933, and she is the one staff describe seeing.
African Burial Ground National Monument in Lower Manhattan is free and holds the remains of an estimated 15,000 people, rediscovered during construction in 1991. Trinity Church graveyard on Wall Street and Washington Square Park, a potter’s field until 1825, are both open and both hold far more people than the ground suggests.
And you should do a ghost tour in New York. Greenwich Village and the East Village have the best of them, since that is where the oldest surviving houses are. Haunted house tours in New York take you inside instead, and the Merchant’s House runs candlelit evening visits of its own.
Haunted Hotels in New York: Your Questions Answered
What is the most haunted hotel in New York?
The Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan, open since 1884. Dylan Thomas collapsed there in 1953 after the drinking session that killed him, and Nancy Spungen was found dead in Room 100 in 1978. Guests report figures in the stairwells and lifts stopping at floors nobody selected.
Are there haunted hotels in New York City you can book?
Yes. The Hotel Chelsea, The Algonquin Hotel, The Marlton Hotel and Washington Square Hotel are all working haunted Manhattan hotels. All four are walkable to a subway station.
What is the oldest haunted hotel in New York State?
Beekman Arms in Rhinebeck, open since 1766 and widely described as the oldest continuously operating inn in the country. George Washington stayed there, and staff have reported a Revolutionary War soldier in the older rooms above the tavern.
Which New York hotel is built beside a mass grave?
Washington Square Hotel, on the northwest corner of Washington Square Park. The park was a potter’s field until 1825 and is estimated to hold around 20,000 bodies beneath it. The burials are documented; the hauntings people report are attached to the park rather than the hotel.
Is it cheaper to stay at a haunted hotel in upstate New York instead of in Manhattan?
Considerably. The Otesaga Resort in Cooperstown and Beekman Arms in Rhinebeck both cost a fraction of comparable Manhattan rooms, though both are small and fill for leaf-peeping weekends through October.
When should you book a haunted hotel in New York for Halloween?
Manhattan holds availability late because the city has more than 120,000 hotel rooms, but late October is peak season and rates rise sharply. Upstate is the opposite: book the Otesaga or Beekman Arms by August for an October weekend.
The hauntings here are what guests and staff report. You can read the history of the Hotel Chelsea and the long list of people who lived and died there.
So, Which Haunted Hotel in New York Are You Booking?
Pick the one that made you stop scrolling. Of all the haunted hotels in New York, Manhattan you can leave late; upstate you cannot.
More Haunted Hotels and Haunted Places to Stay in the U.S.
If this city is booked out, or you just want to compare the options before you commit, here is the rest of the collection:
- Haunted places to stay in New Orleans – the deepest history and the shortest walk between a hotel bar and a cemetery.
- Haunted places to stay in Savannah – small, walkable and built on top of its own burial grounds.
- Haunted hotels in San Antonio – the easiest one to book late, and the Alamo is across the street.
- Haunted hotels in Salem MA – the October capital, and the one you have to book by June.
- Haunted hotels in Gettysburg – buildings that were field hospitals, with the bullet holes still in them.
- The most haunted hotels in the USA – the full list, city by city.
- Haunted places to stay: 24 rentals and haunted Airbnbs – whole houses, so the ghost is all yours.