Cosmopolitan Hotel

The Cosmopolitan was built by Juan Bandini as Casa de Bandini between 1827 and 1829, the grandest adobe in Mexican-era San Diego, and became a stagecoach hotel in the 1860s. Guests in Room 11 still report lights turning on and off and objects moving overnight, usually attributed to Bandini's daughter Ysidora, who died in 1897 and apparently still looks in on her father's old house.

Room 11 is the one they'll warn you about when you check in. Guests sleeping in 11 at the Cosmopolitan (formerly Casa de Bandini) report lights turning on and off, doors that open by themselves, and small objects relocating overnight. The ghost most often associated with the room is Ysidora Bandini, one of the three famously beautiful daughters of Juan Bandini, and the story is that she's still looking in on the family home where she grew up.

Juan Bandini built the original U-shaped adobe between 1827 and 1829, back when San Diego was part of Mexico and Old Town was the whole city. Bandini was a wealthy Californio merchant, and his house was basically the grandest private residence in San Diego. Compared to the modest adobes around it, Casa de Bandini was a mansion. He held parties, hosted officials, and raised three daughters (Ysidora, Josefa, and Arcadia) who were considered among the most beautiful women in California and who all eventually married influential Americans.

The house changed hands a lot after Bandini died in 1859. In the 1860s it was leased and converted into a hotel by Albert Seeley, who added a second story and renamed it the Cosmopolitan. Seeley ran it as a stagecoach stop on the San Diego-to-Los Angeles route, and the place became a hub for travelers for decades. It eventually fell into disrepair, was nearly lost to demolition, and was finally restored by California State Parks. Today it operates again as a working hotel and restaurant inside Old Town San Diego State Historic Park.

The Ysidora stories are the most consistent. Ysidora married Cave Couts, a U.S. Army officer, and lived most of her adult life at Rancho Guajome near Vista. She died in 1897. The ghost reports at the Cosmopolitan started showing up after the restoration reopened the hotel, and guests have described feeling watched in Room 11, finding personal items moved to different spots in the room, and seeing a woman in a long dress briefly reflected in the mirror and then gone. Some of the reports fold in Rooms 4 and 5 too, with a "Lady in Red" seen briefly in the hallway between them.

The other reported presence is vaguer, a man in a dark suit who's been seen in the downstairs dining room and sometimes on the staircase. Staff think he might be Albert Seeley himself, still keeping an eye on his stagecoach hotel, though there's no documented reason to tie the figure to Seeley specifically other than "he used to run the place."

A handful of paranormal investigation groups have filmed at the Cosmopolitan, and the reports are what you'd expect: EVP hits in the dining room, temperature drops on the second-floor hallway, and one session in Room 11 where the investigators claimed a door locked on its own while they were inside. That last one is the kind of detail that's impossible to verify from outside, but the investigators in question were a local group that wasn't trying to sell anything, which is worth something.

What makes the Cosmopolitan worth a visit, ghost or no ghost, is that it's one of the only places where you can actually sleep in a restored Mexican-era adobe. The rooms have period furniture, thick walls, and the kind of quiet that modern hotels can't fake. The restaurant downstairs serves California-Mexican food, and the park around it has costumed interpreters walking the dirt streets during the day. It's basically a time machine with pretty good room service.

Ask for Room 11 if you're curious. If Ysidora wants to say hello, she apparently does it quietly, and everyone who's reported her says she's gentle. Nobody's ever described her as angry. She just seems to check in on the house her father built.