When you think about haunted places, what comes to mind? Hospitals? Sanitariums? Hotels? At the Emily Morgan, you don’t have to choose.
The Emily Morgan Hotel is one of the most haunted hotels in the US — most recently, it landed on The Top 25 Most Haunted Hotels Of 2024. Let’s see if you have have what it takes to last through the night.
Once upon a time
Before the Emily Morgan was anything, its plot adjoined a battlefield where 600 men lost their lives in the Alamo’s Long Barracks.
The building began its life in 1926 as the most advanced medical facility west of the Mississippi. It had a morgue in its basement, and a psychiatric hospital, surgery, and crematorium on higher floors.
Designed for ghosts
The Medical Arts Building (the former name of the Emily Morgan) wasn’t just the most advanced medical science facility in its day — it was the tallest skyscraper in the West, if briefly.
Gargoyles look down from the hotel in the New York Gothic style. Reflecting the building’s original purpose, the monsters are twisted in agony from various medical conditions, from toothaches to stomach bugs.
Rumor has it
These days, the building is a Doubletree Hilton — but if you believe, you might find remnants of its grim past.
Residents + staff report mysterious phone calls, rattling sounds, and antiseptic smells. On the seventh floor, some have seen a woman in white, fleeting shadows, or a rickety gurney.
Business is boo-ming
How has the hotel dealt with its supernatural reputation? Well, the “Room With A Boo” package lasts throughout fall, where you can receive a welcome gift, cocktail, and other perks.
Let’s face it: ghost stories are meant to draw us in, not keep us away. As the saying goes, “If you build it” — “it” being a hospital-turned-hotel on the site of an 1830s battlefield — “they will come.”
