Canfield Casino

The Canfield Casino in Saratoga Springs was built by boxer-turned-congressman John Morrissey as an exclusive 1870s gambling house with three rules: no women, cash only, no locals. Paranormal activity escalated dramatically after the museum installed an exhibit of antique clothing worn by prominent local women, and the Travel Channel named it the 4th Most Terrifying Place in America in 2019.

In 2009, during an exhibition opening at the Canfield Casino, a patron had a glass slapped out of her hand by something nobody could see. A volunteer and an employee watched a garbage can lid fly into the air and crash to the ground on its own. The building had been acting up for years, but something about the early 2000s kicked it into a higher gear.

The likely trigger: a museum exhibit called "Fashion of Saratoga Springs" displaying antique clothing worn by prominent local women. After the exhibit went up, sightings increased dramatically. Whatever connection the clothes had to their former owners apparently wasn't finished.

The Canfield Casino started as a gambling house built by John Morrissey, a professional boxer who became heavyweight champion before turning politician and representing New York in Congress. In 1867, Morrissey invested $190,000 to build an elegant gaming club in Congress Park. It opened in 1870 as the Saratoga Club House, and he had three rules: no women allowed in the gambling rooms, cash only, and no locals. The exclusivity made it one of the most famous gambling houses in the world.

Morrissey died in 1878 at 47. Richard Canfield bought the club in 1884 for $250,000 (roughly $7 million today) and poured an estimated $800,000 more into renovations. Under Canfield, Saratoga Springs became known as the American Monte Carlo. He was recognized as the King of the Gamblers. The era ended in the early 1900s when local reformers succeeded in banning gambling. The building became a museum.

The ghost story centers on the third floor, which gets the most activity. Staff and visitors have seen a woman in Victorian dress appear suddenly in front of them (the earliest reported sighting is from the mid-1990s). She's described as the "lady in white," and several people who work at the museum believe she's Reubena Walworth, a nurse who cared for Spanish-American War veterans at a facility nearby. Walworth contracted typhoid fever from the soldiers she treated and died.

The third floor also produces an intermittent electromagnetic field that investigators attribute to the activity. During recorded sessions, people have reported having their hair pulled and feeling tapping on their shoulders. The smell of cigar smoke drifts through rooms where nobody is smoking, which feels appropriate for a building that spent decades as an exclusive men's gambling club. Objects move overnight in rooms that were locked. Temperatures drop suddenly and return just as fast.

Ghost Hunters came through in 2010 and recorded both ghostly voices and other activity during their investigation. The Travel Channel named the Canfield Casino the 4th Most Terrifying Place in America in 2019. The Olde Saratoga Paranormal Group runs public investigations at the casino, providing EMF meters, EVP recorders, and orientation on the building's history before sending groups into the dark.

What makes the Canfield Casino unusual is the trigger theory. Most haunted places have a consistent level of activity tied to some original trauma. This one was relatively quiet until the museum put up an exhibit of old clothes, and then everything escalated. From 2007 through 2010, reported incidents spiked. The clothing has since been part of the permanent collection, and the activity hasn't calmed down.

The Saratoga Springs History Museum operates out of the building now. You can take a ghost tour, book a public investigation, or just visit during the day and walk the third floor. The gambling rooms on the first floor still have their original woodwork. The park outside is beautiful. And if you smell cigar smoke where there shouldn't be any, that's just Morrissey's old club doing what it always did, operating by its own rules.