The idea of haunted houses is something that we are all familiar with. The concept of haunted rooms is less well-known, yet they are eerie buildings that are the center of inexplicable paranormal activity. Some rooms appear to be haunted, cursed, or both, and for whatever reason, they are the epicenter of a variety of unexplained phenomena.

And as for spooky or cursed rooms, hotels don’t lack those either. One of them is situated in the icy expanse of north Alaska. Most of the cities currently in Alaska were initially built as nothing more than tent cities. This was to accommodate the number of late 1800s and early 1900s miners who came to the state when it was a number one destination for the gold rush. These cities gradually developed to include buildings and modern amenities to become permanent settlements. One of them is located in the present-day large city of Juneau, which was founded in 1800 as a tent community by two miners named Richard Harris and Joe Juneau. When they hit pay dirt in the Silver Creek Basin, they called the town the same. There were businessmen like Charles Hooker, Jules B. Caro, and brothers John and James McCloskey who built the Alaskan Hotel, a three-story hotel on town steam docks, in 1913 when settlers poured in through the docks. The hotel, which is one of Alaska’s oldest hotels remaining in operation after more than a century, is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. And is well-known for both its eerie ghosts and its quaint Victorian architecture. Alaska has haunted sites as frightening as any other place, despite being a sparsely populated area with more wilderness than people.

 The hotel’s frequent hauntings appear to be mostly connected to its tumultuous and frequently violent past. It was formerly a bordello and was once said to be a hotbed of wild gambling and drunken bar fights. The story of Alice, a young woman who was purportedly married to a local miner, is among the most well-known. Unsure if her husband would ever return or even survive, the anxious woman turned to prostitution to try to support herself. Apparently, he went on a mining expedition and did not return for a long time. However, he turned out to be very much alive. According to the narrative, and he did not take it well when he returned from his lengthy journey three months later to discover his wife as a lady of the night. He reportedly killed her in the room, apparently without hesitation.

 The recurrent sightings of a ghostly blonde woman dressed in white period attire who wanders the halls here and appears to hover especially near chamber 219. Which is believed to be the chamber where she was killed, as well as Room 218 are attributed to Alice’s spirit. Alice’s ghost spends a lot of time in other parts of the hotel and appears to spend a lot of time frightening both visitors and staff. One former employee said:

 People used to tell me, “She’s in my room.” People have told me they saw her seated on the bed or that she was caressing them. From one of the visitors, you can spot her in the hall mirror at room 308 if you go up through the stairs. I have also heard from people that she was on the descending stairs in the pub. There are mirrors everywhere in the pub, so it is easy to get a glimpse of things, especially when you are tired.

 It’s intriguing to see that room 219 appears to be quite strongly influenced by supernatural powers. Regardless of whether this tale is real or merely a bit of an eerie legend. The room’s housekeepers frequently discover lost or misplaced items, and occasionally something will abruptly vanish or appear somewhere while they are there. Both visitors and staff have reported experiencing abrupt nausea or vertigo while in the feared room, and there is a strong sense of dread and sorrow that permeates the atmosphere. Regarding Room 219 and the hotel as a whole, one front desk employee has stated:

 I get chills every time I enter room 219. it’s always cold in that room for whatever reason. I believe there are possibly a few ghosts in this building. I don’t know, but I do think that the individual in 219 is the only one who is bothered, miserable, or may even be possessed. Persons have informed me they had seen things before, such as persons who resemble people in paintings in the hallways. I’ve never personally had any experience with it, but I’ve heard about it. There are some areas in the hotel that just don’t feel right to me, and this is the only reason why I myself consider this hotel to be haunted. It just doesn’t feel right in some areas of the hotel. I’m kind of spooked and always looking over my shoulder.

The Alaskan Hotel has more terrifying rooms than room 219. Not just is room 315 the site of a host of paranormal activity, ranging from ghosts and objects flying in mid-air to ghostly cold spots and the like. It has attracted a lot of people for its spooky tales and has become somewhat mythic. As one recent hotel owner, Bettye Adams, has described it, “I just — it’s creepy.” I don’t know anything, but I feel things, you know. On the 19th of May, 2007, a wayward sailor from the Navy vessel the USS Bunker Hill happened to be in town for the night and, much to the hotel’s extremely friendly demeanor, went so far as to ask if he could stay in the notoriously haunted Room 315. This is just one of the modern-day ghost stories of the room. The sailor stupidly jumped out through the window of the room and land on the ground level after he heard some commotion in the room at night. He was severely injured in the accident and was said to have “injuries all over his body from head to toe.” One of the guests there at the time would later recount the scene as follows: “The walls were covered in blood. “There was—I didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t look right—like something horrible had occurred within that room.” The US Navy later investigated the case and essentially covered up the whole incident. 

In response to the incident’s aftermath, hotel owner Bettye Adams has stated: 

 “What do you mean by renting a haunted room?” his mother asked me over the phone from Arizona. My son was almost killed by you. “I really, really have nothing to do with that,” I replied.

 Was this a typical suicide attempt? Did someone or something toss him out of that window? Or was something in there that he observed in that empty room that got the better of him and, or compelled him to do so? Whatever the true cause was, it undoubtedly contributes to the eerie legend surrounding Room 315, even if we’ll probably never find out. A sense of evil is said to pervade the space, to the extent that many visitors ask to be relocated. There are even urban legends that the bathroom somehow transforms into a Victorian-age bathroom only to then change back into its ever-so-slightly more modern state, as if its past ghosts the current days like a specter. Talking of creepy rooms, it seems that there is plenty of paranormal activity that’s attracted to the other rooms in the hotel in Alaska. Room 321 down the corridor is said to have a very angry ghost that throws objects about, and room 313 adjacent to 315 is said to have a fisherman’s ghost whose presence is marked by the terrible odor of fish. The hotel bar is also rumored to be haunted with moving ghostly spirits and glasses that spill or move on their own, along with these rooms.