Hotel Alex Johnson

The story

The Hotel Alex Johnson has been part of downtown Rapid City, South Dakota, since 1928. It carries the name of the man who built it, Alex Carlton Johnson, who was a vice president of the Chicago & North Western, a railroad company.

Work began on August 19, 1927, a single day before construction started on nearby Mount Rushmore. The Chicago architectural firm Oldefest & Williams drew up the plans for the brick building. The hotel opened its doors on July 1, 1928, and was formally dedicated on August 11 of the same year; it has 143 rooms. Johnson himself died in 1938.

Ownership changed several times after the Second World War. The Eppley Hotel Company bought the hotel in 1947, and when Sheraton Hotels and Resorts absorbed the Eppley chain in 1956, the property became the Sheraton-Johnson Hotel. Sheraton sold the building in 1965 but kept operating it under a franchise until 1968, when the original name returned.

In 1974 the hotel joined the National Register of Historic Places, counted as one of the buildings that make up the Rapid City Historic Commercial District. A restoration announced in 2016, with an estimated budget of about $7 million, set out to modernize the building's infrastructure and refurbish its interiors. Today it belongs to Hilton's Curio Collection.

The legend

The Alex Johnson does not hide its ghosts; it collects them. The front desk has long kept books in which guests record their encounters, and the hotel gathers new stories through a form on its website. Fittingly, the front-desk book was reported stolen around December 2024.

The central figure is the Lady in White, tied to Room 812 and the eighth floor. In the version the hotel tells, she was a newly married young woman who plunged from the Room 812 window at some point in the 1970s. Officials called it suicide; those close to her believed she had been killed, and no one was ever convicted. She is said to drift along the eighth floor in a white gown, searching for whoever was responsible. Guests in 812 report finding the window open in the morning and dresser drawers pulled out, flipped over and slid back in. The story has variations: a 2021 KOTA television report called her Alex Johnson's daughter, while the hotel's own page and a 2024 KOTA report speak only of a young bride. No source gives her name or an exact date, and no record of her death has been found. Her story should be read as legend.

The founder is the second ghost. Alex Johnson is said to stay on to keep an eye on his hotel. General manager Mitch McKeithan has described him appearing as a reflection over a bartender's shoulder in the Vertex Sky Bar. A little girl is said to knock on eighth-floor doors and vanish, giggling as she runs down the hall. A front-desk employee identified only as Laura told KOTA of a small boy in the lobby who disappeared, a black shadow figure on the sixth floor, and three heavy thuds there, after which a dark shape raced along the corridor; those accounts come from a single report.

More general claims include shapes reflected in mirrors, items launched from shelves, cups gliding over a desk, figures walking on the mezzanine and footsteps and voices with no source. In 2021 the chief engineer, Daniel Keogh, said he had heard a voice say "hello" from empty rooms.

Television made the stories famous. Ghost Hunters, the Syfy series led by The Atlantic Paranormal Society, came to Rapid City for season 7, episode 5, "Hotel Haunts Unleashed," which aired on March 23, 2011. The team went looking for the ghost of a "suicidal bride," and the episode also marked the debut of a ghost-hunting dog. The hotel hosted a viewing party when it aired. Since then KOTA has run Halloween segments on the hotel in 2021, 2023 and 2024.

Staff tend to present all this as friendly local folklore rather than as proof. In 2021 general manager Billi DeRudder said she had never experienced anything herself. No skeptical investigation of the claims has been published.

What remains today

The Alex Johnson is still a working hotel in its original 1928 building, in Rapid City's historic commercial district. A restoration announced in 2016 was meant to modernize its systems and refresh its interiors. The places named in the stories, Room 812, the eighth and sixth floors, the mezzanine, the lobby and the Vertex Sky Bar, are all part of the operating hotel, which still collects guests' stories.

Visiting

Because the Alex Johnson is an operating hotel, the way to explore its legend is to stay there or visit its public spaces. The hotel sells a Ghost Adventure Package, a night in one of the rooms said to be active with a K2 meter for measuring electromagnetic fields, and a separate Ghost Package for Room 812. There is no regular guided ghost tour.

Guest floors are for registered guests, so please don't knock on doors or wander the eighth floor at night if you aren't staying there.

Sources

1. Wikimedia Commons category : Hotel Alex Johnson — Wikimedia Commons
2. USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for Rapid, SD 1893 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1893 · Public domain (USGS)
3. USGS 1:24000-scale Quadrangle for Rapid City East, SD 1953 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1953 · Public domain (USGS)
4. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Rapid City, SD 1957 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1957 · Public domain (USGS)
5. Alex Johnson to host spooky TV viewing party — Rapid City Journal (2011) (not read directly) — Rapid City Journal (2011; paywalled, seen in search results only
6. HAUNTED: Hotel Alex Johnson (6 Oct 2021) — KOTA Territory News — KOTA Territory News
7. Official website
8. Paranormal — Hotel Alex Johnson (official site) — Hotel Alex Johnson (official site
9. The haunted history of the Hotel Alex Johnson (Mimi Herrick, 1 Oct 2024) — KOTA Territory News — KOTA Territory News
10. 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.