Haunted Hotels in San Francisco: What's Real Behind the Ghost Stories

A ghost tour guide told my group, in front of the Westin St. Francis, that a certain floor “still feels heavy.” Sure. Load-bearing walls will do that. That’s the exact problem with haunted San Francisco: a city with genuinely disturbing, well-documented history keeps getting narrated by people who need a flashlight-under-the-chin delivery to make it interesting. It doesn’t need the theater. A sitting president died in a room here and nobody agreed on why. That’s the whole ghost story. You don’t need fog machines.

Here’s my hot take after spending an unreasonable amount of time reading 1923 newspaper archives instead of sleeping: this city’s hauntings sort cleanly into two piles. Pile one is real, documented, sometimes upsetting history that later got a ghost story bolted onto it, because unresolved deaths make people uneasy and “haunted” is an easier word than “we genuinely don’t know what happened.” Pile two is straightforward folklore — atmospheric, fun, occasionally adorable — that never pretended to be anything else. Both are worth knowing. Only one should be presented to you as fact.

I’ve covered this same split in Savannah, where yellow fever and Civil War amputations do the heavy lifting, and in Chicago, where our haunted Chicago hotels guide untangles real Prohibition-era violence from tour-bus invention. San Francisco’s version runs on earthquakes, scandal, and one genuinely strange presidential death. For the full continental tour, Most Haunted Hotels in America is where I started this whole project — six hotels, two years, same conclusion every time: the real history is scarier than the ghost.

1. The Palace Hotel — 2 New Montgomery Street (built 1875, rebuilt 1909)

I’ve written the full standalone review of the Palace Hotel elsewhere on this site, so I’ll keep the haunted angle specific: on August 2, 1923, President Warren G. Harding died on the eighth floor during a sitting presidential visit. The official cause of death shifted depending on who you asked — food poisoning, a stroke, heart failure were all floated in the press — and the ambiguity was never cleanly resolved. His wife reportedly declined an autopsy. That’s not ghost-tour embellishment; that’s the actual historical record, and it’s exactly the kind of loose thread that generates a century of hotel lore.

The hotel treats this with more restraint than you’d expect. A small lobby museum, Landmark 18, gives Harding a mention among a much larger sweep of the building’s history — the 800-room original, the artesian wells, the fire that finished what the 1906 earthquake couldn’t. Staff will tell you the story straight if you ask, competing theories included, without leaning into any “presence on the eighth floor” material. I asked a bellman directly. He gave me medical ambiguity, not a séance.

What guests and some ghost-tour operators have layered on top over the decades is the standard unresolved-death package — a lingering presence, cold spots, the usual. None of that is documented. What’s documented is a president dying in a hotel room and nobody, in 1923 or since, fully agreeing on why. Sit with that fact on its own. It’s unsettling enough.

Rooms: ~$280/€258/£221 for a Classic Room, up to ~$700/€645/£552+ for the Presidential Suite — yes, that name is doing some unintentional work now.

Check availability at Palace Hotel →

2. The Westin St. Francis — 335 Powell Street, Union Square (built 1904)

The Westin St. Francis carries San Francisco’s darkest documented hotel history, and I want to handle it the way I did in the full review: plainly, not as ghost-tour material. On Labor Day, September 5, 1921, actor Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle hosted a party in his suite, Room 1219, with an adjoining party room, 1220. A young actress named Virginia Rappe became seriously ill during the party and died four days later, on September 9, at 30 years old. Arbuckle was tried three times for manslaughter — two hung juries, then a 1922 acquittal accompanied by an unusual written jury statement saying he should never have been brought to trial at all. It didn’t save his career. The scandal, amplified by sensational press coverage, ended it regardless of the verdict.

This is real history, not a haunting, and some ghost tours fold it into the hotel’s “dark past” narrative anyway, which I find uncomfortable — a woman actually died, and turning that into atmosphere for a walking tour is a choice I’d push back on. I’m including it because it’s the single most consequential thing that ever happened inside this building, and skipping it would be its own kind of dishonesty. There’s no plaque marking Room 1219. Staff will discuss it plainly if you ask directly; they don’t dodge it, and they don’t sell it either.

On a genuinely lighter note: the hotel has washed its silver coins by hand since the 1930s so guests never handle dirty change, a habit that’s survived nearly a century for no reason beyond institutional stubbornness. The lobby’s 1907 clock is still a citywide meeting point. Not everything about this building is heavy.

Rooms: ~$280/€257/£219 for a historic-building room, up to ~$650/€596/£510 for the Landmark Suite.

Check availability at The Westin St. Francis →

3. The Queen Anne Hotel — 1590 Sutter Street, Pacific Heights (built 1890)

This is the one on the list I’d actually call a proper ghost story, in the sense that nobody’s pretending it’s anything else. The Queen Anne opened in 1890 as a finishing school for young women, later became a gentlemen’s club, and eventually settled into being a hotel — one of the few Victorian Queen Anne buildings in the city that survived the 1906 disaster intact, mostly because Pacific Heights sits on more stable ground than the landfill downtown.

Local lore holds that Miss Mary Lake, the school’s original headmistress, still occupies Room 410 — her former office. Guests reportedly return to find their luggage unpacked and arranged with more care than they left it. I want to flag this explicitly as guest-reported legend, not verified history; there’s no coroner’s report or period diary backing it up, just a story that’s stayed remarkably consistent for a piece of hotel folklore. I’d take the free housekeeping if it’s real. I’d also just enjoy staying in a genuinely lovely, architecturally intact Victorian building regardless of who’s allegedly tidying my socks.

Rooms: ~$200/€184/£157 standard, more for a turret room with the curved bay windows.

I couldn’t confirm a specific Booking.com listing for this address with enough confidence to link it directly, so use the general San Francisco search: Check San Francisco hotels on Booking.com →

Things Ghost Tours Never Tell You

• The Palace’s Harding story is undersold on purpose, not for lack of drama. Staff give you the full ambiguity if you ask directly. It’s not on a placard because the hotel would rather it not be the headline.
• The St. Francis’s real dark history isn’t a ghost story at all. Room 1219 involves a documented death and a destroyed career, not a haunting. Ghost tours that flatten it into “spooky lobby lore” are skipping the part that actually matters.
• The Queen Anne’s Room 410 legend has stayed suspiciously consistent for decades. Most hotel ghost stories drift and multiply with each retelling. This one hasn’t changed much, which is either a sign of a stronger oral tradition or a sign the hotel likes the story exactly as it is.
• Pacific Heights survived 1906 mostly because of geology, not luck. Bedrock versus landfill decided which San Francisco neighborhoods kept their original buildings. That’s a more interesting explanation for “why this place feels old” than any ghost.
• Weekend Financial District quiet gets misread as ominous. The blocks around the Palace and the St. Francis empty out hard on Saturdays because it’s an office district. Guests occasionally describe this as eerie. It’s just commercial real estate.

The Catch

• None of this is verified paranormal activity. Every entry here is either documented history with lore attached (Palace, St. Francis) or guest-reported legend with no documentation at all (Queen Anne). Go in knowing which is which.
• The St. Francis history involves a real death, treated by some tours as entertainment. If that framing bothers you as much as it bothers me, skip any tour that leans into it and read the history instead.
• These are large, business-scale hotels, not intimate ghost-hunting lodges, except the Queen Anne, which is genuinely small and boutique.
• Financial District parking and weekend quiet apply here just like they do everywhere downtown. Skip the car; walk or take BART.

Is It Worth It?

Practical Info

• Getting around: All three hotels are BART- or Muni-accessible; skip the car entirely
• Best time to visit: Off-season weekdays for a quieter, less tour-group-heavy version of each hotel
• Ghost tours: Multiple operators run nightly through Union Square and the Financial District, ~$25–35/person; ask about sourcing before you assume anything they say is documented
• Pair it with: Our full San Francisco city guide for neighborhoods and getting around, and Historic Hotels in San Francisco if you’d rather book based on architecture and brunch than ghost stories

Final Verdict

San Francisco’s haunted-hotel reputation holds up better than most cities’ because the underlying history is genuinely strong without any embellishment. The Palace has an unresolved presidential death. The St. Francis has a scandal that ended a career and, more importantly, cost a young woman her life. The Queen Anne has an actual charming ghost story that’s honest about being a ghost story. You don’t need any of it exaggerated. It’s already enough to think about at 2am in an old building with the pipes ticking.

Go for the history. Let the ghosts be optional.

Browse San Francisco hotels on Booking.com →

Prices start at ~$200/€184/£157 per night depending on property and season; expect a premium in September and October when the city’s actual good weather shows up.

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Written by

Thomas Waverly

Travel Correspondent

Thomas covers East Coast, Southern, and Western grand hotels. He has personally stayed in over 80 historic properties and considers a properly aged lobby bar essential to any review.