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Room 101

La Posada de Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM

In 1882 the merchant Abraham Staab built Santa Fe's first brick mansion, a three-story French Second Empire house, to keep a promise he made his wife Julia on their wedding day. Their seventh child, a son, died soon after birth. Julia fell into a depression, her hair is said to have turned white, and she withdrew to her room, where she died in 1896 at fifty-two. The house became La Posada in the 1930s, and Julia was first recorded in 1979 by a night cleaner who saw a translucent woman beside a fireplace. Since then: glasses flying from the bar shelves, a fireplace that turns itself on and off, a waitress whose trays were pushed up from below, and a staffer who came out of Julia's Suite with long scratches down his back. She is said to react to guests who are rude. The Rose Room, where she held tea parties, has a silhouette in the stained glass.

The first brick mansion in Santa Fe, and its first ghost.

Address

330 East Palace Avenue

Rate

Around $700 a night, depending on season

Bar

Julia, A Spirited Restaurant and Bar

Room 325

Hawthorne Hotel, Salem, Massachusetts

The Hawthorne opened on July 23, 1925, with a parade, on the site of the old Salem Marine Society hall. Bewitched filmed in its elevator in 1970. In 1990 a séance in the Grand Ballroom tried to raise Harry Houdini on the anniversary of his death, and he declined. Room 325 is where guests hear a baby crying, wake to find the sheets pulled off, find the faucets running, and smell a perfume nobody is wearing. On the sixth floor a woman in a long white dress walks to the door of 612 and is gone; guests describe an icy hand, tugged hair, and a lock thrown open with a bang. Something that feels like a cat settles on sleepers' legs. The Witch House and the Hocus Pocus mansion are a short walk.

A crying child, a cold hand, and perfume with nobody in the room.

Address

18 Washington Square West, Salem

Rate

Around $250 a night, depending on season

Lady in Red Suite

Mizpah Hotel, Tonopah, Nevada

When the Mizpah opened in 1908 it was one of the tallest buildings in Nevada, with an electric elevator and a private bath in every room, financed by the mining barons of the Tonopah boom. It closed in 1999 and was reopened in 2011 by a winemaking family from California. The legend is a woman murdered on the fifth floor, a prostitute called Rose killed by a jealous client, or an adulteress killed by a husband who missed his train, who whispers in men's ears and leaves pearls from a broken necklace on the pillows. The hotel names her Evelyn and dates her death to 1914. A historian who went looking found no newspaper, death certificate, or burial that matched, and made a deal with her instead: let me sleep, and I will tell your story. Readers once voted it the most haunted hotel in America. The bar sells a Red Lady Bloody Mary.

"Let me sleep, and I will tell your story."

Address

100 Main Street, Tonopah

Rate

Around $150 a night, depending on season

To be announced

To be announced