Grand Imperial Hotel

Housekeeping at this 1880s Silverton hotel won't enter Room 314 alone. A man named Luigi Regalia shot himself there in 1890. Staff say he's back.

Housekeeping refuses to enter Room 314 alone. They go in pairs or they don't go in at all, and the reason they give is the same one they've been giving for decades: something in that room touches them. On November 1, 1890, a 42-year-old man named Luigi Regalia shot himself in that room around 10:30 p.m. and died early the next morning. He's still there, as far as the staff at the Grand Imperial Hotel are concerned, and he's apparently not done with Room 314.

The Grand Imperial sits in the middle of Silverton, a 19th-century mining town above 9,000 feet that the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad still rolls into twice a day during summer. W.S. Thompson, an English perfume importer who'd started investing in the local mines, commissioned it in 1882 as luxury lodging for mining-boom visitors. The hotel became the social center of Silverton's silver boom and picked up a reputation as one of Colorado's most active haunted buildings somewhere around the time Luigi pulled the trigger. The Durango Herald has covered the stories. DGO Magazine has covered them. A local paranormal group has run overnight investigations and reported back.

Luigi is the main character, but he's got company.

Staff have identified a doctor who rushed to Room 314 that night in 1890 and couldn't save Luigi. Guests near that room now say they hear footsteps pacing and occasionally a long, frustrated exhale next to the bed. Then there's Miss Mary. She sings somewhere on the upper floors, her voice carries down the hallways, and a strong perfume smell follows her (honeysuckle and vanilla, DGO Magazine's writer reports). Visitors have stopped staff to ask who's singing, and an investigator who caught her voice on recording noted that she sounded British.

The old sheriff is the strangest one. Silverton's working girls in the 1880s and 1890s were housed above the saloons on Blair Street, and some of them were moved between establishments through a network of tunnels that ran under downtown. The sheriff of the era supposedly knew the tunnel system better than anyone, and staff think his ghost still patrols the section that runs under the Grand Imperial, making sure the route is clear. Staff in the basement have described boot steps on dirt where there's no dirt.

At the bar, regulars and bartenders mention an old miner who comes in, sits on a stool, and is sometimes joined by a bartender who died years ago and now haunts the theater space in the basement. Beds in finished rooms occasionally appear slept in or sat upon after housekeeping has just made them. Staff have also reported persistent pacing sounds coming from empty upstairs rooms in the middle of the night.

Silverton itself has a body count that backs the ghost stories up. The town was wild in the 1880s and 1890s, Blair Street was lined with saloons and working women's houses, and shootings were common enough that the town's cemetery filled up steadily for a decade. Luigi Regalia's death is part of the documented record, which at least confirms the core of the hotel's ghost story.

The hotel plays along now, which is common for Colorado's old mining-town properties. They'll tell you about Luigi at check-in if you ask, and the stories get better after a couple of drinks with anyone who's worked there more than a season.

What holds the whole thing together isn't the folklore. It's that a housekeeper from twenty years ago and one working there today will both tell you to knock before opening the door to Room 314.