8 Haunted Hotels in Florida: Ghost Stories & Places to Explore

1. St. Francis Inn: Lily and the figure in white

Lily’s story begins with a forbidden relationship. In the inn’s own telling, a young servant and a soldier fall in love, only for the romance to end in tragedy. The woman in white said to wander the building is identified with Lily, and the room bearing her name has become the focus of the legend.

The same account describes whispers, covers being pulled away and a hand glimpsed on the back-stair railing. It presents the disturbances as mostly gentle or mischievous. That last image is especially unsettling: a hand is an everyday sight on a staircase, until you begin wondering who is attached to it.

What gives this haunting its character is its domestic scale. You are picturing someone passing a bedroom, touching a rail or interrupting a quiet night. The building becomes part of the story in a way that a room number alone cannot convey.

Follow the story: read the different Lily accounts before an Old City ghost walk, then ask your guide how the legend has changed in local retellings. Our St. Francis Inn guide explores the haunting and the room connected with it.

2. Casa Monica: an answer from an empty suite

A housekeeper knocks before entering a suite. Someone inside answers as though they have been waiting for her. She opens the door—and finds the room empty. That is one of the most memorable stories in US Ghost Adventures’ Casa Monica account, which associates the encounter with the Flagler Suite.

The operator also retells reports of running footsteps on a deserted fourth floor, a small handprint appearing on a bathroom mirror, and a radio starting unexpectedly in the Ponce de Leon Suite. A woman dressed in white and figures wearing clothes from an earlier era add faces to the unexplained sounds.

These are published tour stories, with limited detail about the original witnesses. Still, they give Casa Monica a distinctive kind of eeriness: the impression that another set of guests is carrying on its own stay, just beyond the ordinary workings of the hotel.

Its illuminated towers provide a striking setting for an evening look from the street. Follow the story: make the exterior part of an Old City walk, then explore the full Casa Monica ghost-story guide. Guest corridors and named suites are private spaces, so use an authorised visit or your own stay to explore beyond public areas.

3. Casa de Sueños: the feeling of being watched

Some haunted-house stories offer a named spirit and a dramatic final moment. Casa de Sueños leaves more unanswered. Its sister inn’s published account describes a former funeral-home connection and a lingering presence: a soul in the corridors, or the sense that someone is watching. It also says most guests experience nothing unusual.

That is a quieter premise, but it has its own pull. A house once associated with farewells becomes a place where travellers spend the night. The story encourages you to imagine the lives that passed through it, without supplying a neat identity for whatever might remain.

The available account is brief. It does not give enough detail to reconstruct a witnessed apparition or assign a particular bedroom to a resident ghost. The mystery here is the house itself, and the way knowledge of a building’s earlier use can alter the feeling of an otherwise ordinary hallway.

Follow the story: pair this stop with the better-developed Lily and Casa Monica tales, and compare how much each storyteller actually knows. Our Casa de Sueños guide separates the published lore from the questions still left open.

4. The Don CeSar: the host who disappears

A man in a white suit and Panama hat seems entirely at home at the Pink Palace. According to Haunted Rooms’ retelling, he greets guests and then vanishes. Other accounts place him along the beach, in the garden or inside the hotel. The figure is identified as Thomas Rowe, the man who built The Don CeSar.

Behind him waits a love story. Nightly Spirits recounts the Lucinda legend: a young singer, a disapproving family, a separation and letters that never bring the lovers back together. A fountain becomes the symbol of their lost meeting place. Later ghost stories sometimes reunite Rowe with a dark-haired woman believed to be Lucinda.

Details of the romance vary between tellings, but the emotional thread is clear. The hotel is imagined as a place where a life’s unfinished longing might finally be resolved. Even the disappearing host feels more wistful than threatening—a man still making his rounds in a building he cannot leave.

Follow the story: read our Don CeSar ghost stories, then consider the hotel’s docent-led history tour. It explores the real building and its past; it is a history experience rather than a ghost hunt. A permitted shoreline walk afterwards gives the legend its setting.

5. The Vinoy: the stranger by the curtains

In an account reproduced by Miami New Times, pitcher Scott Williamson described a disturbing night at The Vinoy in 2003. Lying on his stomach, he felt pressure on his back and struggled to breathe. When he rolled over, he said he saw a man in an old-fashioned coat standing near the curtains.

The paper also collected stories involving the Pittsburgh Pirates. Staff member Frank Velasquez described a transparent man beside a window. Another account tells of someone mistaking a formally dressed figure for a concierge, only to find he had disappeared. A guest looking for ordinary hotel assistance suddenly becomes part of the hotel’s folklore.

Named witnesses make these tales more specific than an anonymous rumour, though they do not settle what caused the experiences. Their appeal lies in that abrupt intrusion: people travelling for work, expecting a familiar room and a few hours’ sleep, instead leaving with a story they continue to tell.

Follow the story: approach The Vinoy as a stop in St. Petersburg’s haunted history. Read the player accounts together and notice their differences, rather than assuming every figure represents the same ghost. Ask the hotel about current public-area access or historical interpretation before planning an interior visit.

Read The Vinoy’s full ghost stories and stay guide →

6. The Biltmore: Fatty Walsh and the thirteenth floor

An elevator rises to the thirteenth floor without anyone asking it to. In the Biltmore’s folklore, the unseen passenger is often Thomas “Fatty” Walsh, the gangster killed at the hotel in 1929. The tower becomes the setting for a familiar haunted-place idea: someone whose life ended suddenly still waiting upstairs.

In a 2011 Miami New Times interview, former hotel storyteller Linda Spitzer recounted that elevator tale and described how staff and guests brought her their own experiences. Her collection included figures in military clothing, sounds of a party with no apparent gathering, and people who vanished after being noticed.

The hotel’s later use as a hospital gives those uniformed figures a different historical backdrop from the Jazz Age gangster. Spitzer said she had never seen a ghost herself. Her role was as a collector and teller of the stories—a reminder that a hotel’s haunting can live through the people who keep repeating it.

Follow the story: look at the tower from the grounds or other permitted visitor areas and ask about current history visits. Spitzer’s old storytelling evenings belong to the hotel’s past, so do not plan around them as a current event. The named suite and upper floors require appropriate guest access.

Read the Biltmore’s full ghost stories and tower-suite guide →

7. The Artist House: the bride and the doll in the window

The Artist House’s own history preserves a striking image: a woman in a wedding dress descending the Turret Suite staircase. The apparition is identified in the story as Anne, wife of artist Robert Eugene “Gene” Otto. The inn presents these as friendly encounters while acknowledging that it cannot vouch for all the tales.

Then there is Robert the Doll. In the property’s account of Otto’s lifelong companion, passersby reported the doll changing position at a window. Other stories describe shifting expressions and laughter. A child’s habit of blaming a doll for mischief grows into the far more unsettling possibility that the doll really is responsible.

The turret makes the legend easy to picture, but Robert no longer lives here. He is displayed at the Fort East Martello Museum. The house and the museum are two separate stops in the story, and that distinction is useful when planning a visit.

Follow the story: see the house’s exterior from the public street, then visit the museum during its opening hours to encounter the actual object behind the legend. If you stay in the Turret Suite, remember that the staircase tale concerns Anne; Robert’s museum display is elsewhere.

Read the Artist House’s full ghost stories and stay guide →

8. Marrero’s: lavender and laughter after midnight

At Marrero’s, a trace of lavender is enough to begin the story. The guest mansion’s haunting page connects that scent, relocated belongings and sightings of a woman in the halls with Enriquetta Marrero. In the hotel’s telling, she remains attached to the home she loved, still acting as its hostess.

Its current account focuses on Suite 7 and adds another strand: playful disturbances attributed to her children. A door linked to the former playroom is said to lock and unlock unexpectedly, while laughter has reportedly travelled through the halls and stairwell. The mansion admits only guests aged 21 and over, which gives the reported children’s sounds their particular chill.

The property also remembers a swaying chandelier interpreted as Enriquetta’s displeasure, but says that fixture has since been replaced. It is a small, useful detail: the house changes even while its stories endure.

Follow the story: read the mansion’s own account alongside other Key West retellings, which may use older room numbers. Ask about the house’s history during a stay. This is a tale of lingering family life, with the unsettling suggestion that the people who welcome you might include someone you never meet.