Hawthorne Hotel

The story

The Hawthorne Hotel stands on Washington Square West in Salem, Massachusetts. It takes its name from Salem's best-known literary son, the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, and it has become one of the town's landmarks: a member of Historic Hotels of America, the National Trust for Historic Preservation's program for historic lodgings, and ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the top hotel in Salem.

The ground it occupies has a long history. In 1675 the house of Colonel John Higginson stood here. In 1809 the Salem builder Samuel McIntire put up the Archer Block on the site, a building later known as the Franklin Building. From 1833 it belonged to the Salem Marine Society. Fire hit the building in 1845, 1859 and 1860, and it was rebuilt in 1864.

In the early 1920s Salem's business leaders decided the city needed a modern hotel. The Salem Hotel Corporation was incorporated on August 27, 1923, backed by local merchants and benefactors. The old Franklin Building came down in 1924, and the new hotel, designed by the architect Phillip Horton Smith, opened on July 23, 1925. It had 150 rooms then; the hotel now describes itself as a 93-room property. The Marine Society kept a foothold: its rooms were rebuilt on the top floor of the new hotel, where the society still has them.

Later postcards advertise it as the Hawthorne Motor Hotel and show its Flagship Room and Essex Dining Room. In a town whose identity is bound up with the witch trials of 1692 and with Halloween, the hotel also built its own October traditions, which helped tie its name to the supernatural.

The legend

The haunting most often described is a woman who walks the hallways, mostly on the sixth floor and especially around Room 612. Room 325 is the other room people name: guests there report strange noises, the sense of a presence and the feeling of being touched. Popular websites add a smell of apples, faucets and lights turning on by themselves and bedsheets pulled in Room 325, but those details come from weak sources and should be read as embellishment.

Some websites claim the woman is Bridget Bishop, who in 1692 became the first of the accused Salem "witches" to be executed, and that the hotel was built on her apple orchard. No reliable source backs either claim. The orchard idea is a theory at best, and the Syfy write-up of Ghost Hunters places the Bishop connection at the nearby Lyceum Bar & Grill, not at the hotel. The North of Boston tourism office adds a playful piece of house lore, "Alice, the Doll in the Hall," a doll said to turn up in different spots around the building. It is presented as a hotel tradition, not as a ghost.

We found no dated early account of the haunting. The reputation grew through the hotel's Halloween events and through popular rankings. On October 30, 1990, a séance to reach Harry Houdini was held in the Grand Ballroom, and the hotel has thrown a big Halloween party every year since 1991. Lists from Travelocity and a 2019 TripAdvisor ranking then placed the Hawthorne among the most haunted hotels in the country.

Television added to the fame. In Ghost Hunters season 3, episode 17, "Salem Witch," broadcast on Sci Fi on October 24, 2007, the TAPS team investigated the Lyceum and then the Hawthorne's library and guest rooms. They noticed a guestbook in which guests had recorded many sightings over the years. In Room 325, though, they found nothing out of the ordinary and pointed to a vent and water pipes as likely explanations for the reported presence. A chandelier swinging in Room 628 was the most notable moment. Their verdict: little was debunked outright, but nothing rose to the level of genuine paranormal activity.

The sharpest skepticism comes from the hotel itself. In 2012 its general manager, Juli Lederhaus, told the magazine Literary Traveler, "The place isn't haunted," adding, "There's no documentation." She said she did not want the hotel promoted as a haunted property. The Hawthorne names no ghost of its own, so the legend lives mostly in guests' stories, guestbooks and Salem's ghost-tour scripts.

What remains today

The 1925 hotel is still in business on Washington Square West. Archival photographs from July 1925, kept in the Salem State University collections, show the building when it was new, and a photograph from about 1930 shows a streetcar on Essex Street in front of it. The Salem Marine Society's rooms remain on the top floor, a direct link to the maritime building that stood here before. Inside, the Grand Ballroom, the library and the guest floors named in the ghost stories are all part of a working hotel.

Visiting

The Hawthorne is a functioning hotel, so you can simply book a room, including on the floors that feature in the stories, subject to availability. Remember that the people sleeping in neighboring rooms came to rest, not to take part in an investigation: no knocking on doors, no wandering the halls at night with equipment. The hotel holds a large Halloween party every year.

Commercial ghost-walk companies in Salem include the hotel on their routes, which is an easy way to hear the stories from the sidewalk.

Sources

1. Wikimedia Commons category : Hawthorne Hotel — Wikimedia Commons
2. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Boston, MA 1958 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1958 · Public domain (USGS)
3. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Salem, MA 1888 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1888 · Public domain (USGS)
4. Episode Recap: Salem Witch (Ghost Hunters S3) — Syfy — Syfy
5. History of the Hawthorne Hotel — History of Massachusetts blog (Rebecca Beatrice Brooks) — History of Massachusetts blog (Rebecca Beatrice Brooks
6. Official website
7. The Intriguing Lore of the Hawthorne Hotel — North of Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau — North of Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau
8. The Spirit of Salem: The Hawthorne Hotel — Literary Traveler (Wes Newbury, 22 Oct 2012) — Literary Traveler (Wes Newbury, 22 Oct 2012
9. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.