Admiral Fell Inn

A charming hotel in Fells Point with a history dating to the 1770s, originally serving as a ship chandlery, boarding house, brothel, and theatre. The building survived the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 when much of the city burned.

The Admiral Fell Inn stands at the heart of Baltimore's historic Fells Point, a neighborhood founded in 1726 as a shipbuilding hub. The hotel comprises eight adjoining buildings dating to the 1770s, and its brick walls have witnessed nearly 250 years of maritime history, tragedy, and death.

In 1900, the Port Mission Women's Auxiliary established a Christian boarding house for sailors called The Anchorage at the corner of Broadway and Thames Street. The crowded dormitories could house 152 seamen, offering clean beds, Sunday Mass, and holiday cookies baked by neighbors—a refuge from Fells Point's notorious saloons, gambling halls, and brothels. When the deadly Spanish Flu pandemic struck Baltimore in 1918, The Anchorage transformed into a makeshift infirmary, treating infected sailors as city hospitals overflowed. Many never recovered.

In 1929, the YMCA took over and expanded the facility into a 105-room Seaman's YMCA—rooms so tiny it earned the nickname "the doghouse." Over 50,000 sailors passed through before it closed in 1955. As managing director Ted Jabara told the Baltimore Sun: "A lot of them would not be very healthy. The women would care for them and try and get them better. Given how advanced medicine was back then, some of the sailors checked in and never checked out." At least one sailor shot himself on the property. After serving as a vinegar bottling factory through 1970, the building was renovated and reopened as the Admiral Fell Inn in 1985.

The hauntings represent a compilation of lives lost across the seven buildings' dark history. Guests report seeing sailors in dirty white clothing floating where fire escape stairs once stood, phantom butlers knocking on doors then vanishing, and hearing jovial singing echoing through empty corridors. A ghost dog has been spotted playing in hallways. Most unsettling is an elderly woman who enters rooms uninvited, sits on guests' beds staring until they wake, then shushes them and tells them to go back to sleep.

One named spirit is Emma, identified through EVP recordings, believed to be a "lady of the night" from the brothel era. Another is a German sailor who contracted a disease in North Africa and committed suicide at the hotel—his sorrowful figure wanders the halls aimlessly. In Room 218, guests witness a woman in old-fashioned nursing attire walking through walls, thought to be one of the Port Mission nurses who died tending plague-stricken sailors. Staff at the subterranean bar pass around a photograph showing an apparition with a white nurse's cap. One skeptical guest reported seeing a woman with a medical chart standing at the foot of his bed—then recognized her in a historic lobby photograph as a Port Mission volunteer.

Room 413 carries the darkest energy. On June 29, 1999, Gary William Mick stalked pharmaceutical salesman Christopher William Jones, who was attending a convention. Mick cornered Jones in his room and bashed his head with a hammer claw nine times in a hate crime targeting gay men. Police arrested Mick after matching fingerprints and DNA; he was sentenced to two life terms plus 30 years. Housekeepers report sudden cold chills, shadows moving at the edge of vision, and icy unseen hands pressing on their shoulders. Some refuse to enter. During paranormal investigations, EVP recordings captured Jones's voice saying "murder" and "head."

The spirits seem to enjoy parties. In 2003, when Hurricane Isabel forced evacuation, workers boarding windows heard loud music blaring from the second floor, footsteps bouncing across the ceiling, glasses clinking, and people laughing and singing—despite the hotel being completely empty. The phenomenon ceased as suddenly as it began. A general manager reported the same ghostly celebration after an earlier hurricane evacuation.

Bartender Steve G. Mavronis has witnessed hanging bulb lights flicker before paranormal activity spikes, and photographed what he believes is a woman's ghost outside the tavern window. Staff historian Steven Lampredi, performing as "Steven Foote" in colonial garb, leads weekly ghost tours describing sailor faces appearing at windows throughout the building's narrow, winding hallways and numerous alcoves—what investigators call "a paranormal playground."

The Ghost Detectives TV show investigated in 2012, with lead investigator Bob Christopher concluding there was "clearly something going on" in the basement and several rooms. He characterized it as residual haunting—"kind of like a tape recorder playing over and over again." The paranormal team Ghost N'at documented substantial EVP recordings and photographed apparent apparitions.

Forbes Magazine ranked the Admiral Fell Inn among America's top 25 haunted hotels. TripAdvisor named it one of the Top 10 Haunted Hotels in America—the only Maryland property to make the list. Rather than downplaying its spectral reputation, the inn embraces it with complimentary Friday and Saturday evening ghost tours through its seven haunted buildings.