Emily Morgan Hotel

USA Today named it the third most haunted hotel in the world in 2015. Opened in 1924 as the Medical Arts Building, it held a psychiatric ward, surgical suites, and a morgue. The 7th, 9th, and 14th floors are the most active — and the building stands on the Alamo's long barracks, where hundreds died.

On the upper floors, guests open their doors and see hospital patients standing in the hallway. They look again. Nobody there.

The Emily Morgan Hotel was built in 1924 as the Medical Arts Building — a 13-story Gothic Revival tower that architect Ralph Cameron and builder J.M. Nix designed as the first "skyscraper" west of the Mississippi. Look up at the terra-cotta gargoyles: each one depicts a different ailment, a nod to the building's half-century as a medical facility. Doctors' offices, psychiatric wards, a morgue in the basement. It stayed a hospital until 1976.

It also sits a few hundred meters from the Alamo, on the exact site of the mission's long barracks. Hundreds of soldiers died on this ground in 1836.

USA Today named it the third most-haunted hotel in the world. Condé Nast Traveler cited it in 2019 when naming San Antonio one of the eight most haunted places in America. Hotels.com ranked it fourth. Historic Hotels of America spotlighted its ghost stories.

The most active floors track the building's medical history. The 7th floor was the psychiatric ward. The 9th was a waiting area. The 12th held surgery. The 14th floor — actually the 13th, renumbered — housed both surgical suites and a morgue. The basement morgue is the worst. Staff see glowing orbs drifting through the darkness. The smell of burnt flesh clings to the walls and will not leave.

Guests feel cold brushes against their skin. Lights flash in empty rooms. Nurses push gurneys down hallways that haven't been hospital corridors in decades. Bathtubs fill with water on their own. Phones ring with no call on the line. The top floor still smells like medicine and ointment. Some guests catch glimpses of the old hospital layout from the corner of their eye — rooms and equipment that vanish the moment they look directly.