Coronado Hotel

The Hotel del Coronado is a haunted hotel in San Diego, California. One of America’s most beautiful resorts is also one of its most haunted.

Room 302 – The Ghost of Kate Morgan

The most popular story is about the “Beautiful Stranger”, Kate Morgan. She and her husband Tom ran a con game in the late 1800’s. They would ride the trains going from town to town posing as brother and sister. Kate was very beautiful, and she had no trouble attracting rich men. She would trick them into playing cards with her husband and they would lose all their money to him.

Tom Morgan got off the train in Orange County, telling Kate to go on without him. He said he would join her in Coronado in a day or two. She never saw him again.

She checked into room 302 and spent five lonely days waiting for her husband. Many hotel employees grew concerned about her because she looked pale and sickly. She grew more and more desperate as days went by. Kate went to a store and bought a gun.

The next day she shot herself in the head and was found on the steps leading to the beach, dressed elegantly in black. The police said it was a suicide, but some say her husband Tom returned to murder her and make it look like a suicide.

Kate’s maid mysteriously disappeared the day after her funeral, and no one knew where she had gone. No one ever heard from her again. Another story claimed the maid was found dead and the hotel staff hid the body to keep publicity at a minimum.

Today Kate’s room is 3502, the most requested room in the hotel.

Room 3502

There have been many accounts of strange occurrences in room 3502, which would room 502. Reports range from feeling of uneasiness to out and out fear. Lights have known to flicker on and off in the room. Some feel an icy cold draft outside the door and windows open and close by themselves. The plumbing seems to groan and gurgle all night. Even the bed has shaken on occasion.

One maid claimed she slipped a note under the door asking if the occupant wanted the room cleaned. The note was sent back with the answer, “Yes.” When she went inside there was no one there.

In 1950 a little girl named Melissa was staying there with her aunt. She was playing out in the hall with her favorite doll when she became violently ill. She was rushed away to seek medical help and her doll was left behind. Melissa died and her ghost is often seen roaming the hallways still looking for her beloved doll.

One psychic has come across a little girl and boy that run up and down the stairway between the second and third floors. The crown room’s first caretaker can sometimes be seen roaming around tapping the floor with his cane the way he did when he was alive. There is a vision of a beautiful woman in an elegant Victorian Dress floating effortlessly across the dance floor.

Room 502

One story is that the girlfriend of the manager committed suicide while staying in room 502. When the authorities showed up, the body of the woman disappeared. Rumor has it that the management disposed of the body in the ground outside under a swimming pool that was being constructed. Anything to avoid a scandal, I suppose.