Hotel Savoy

Betsy Ward died in Room 505 of Kansas City's Hotel Savoy sometime in the late 1800s, either by suicide or foul play, and the room's doors, faucets, and showers have operated on their own ever since. A Victorian girl haunts the fourth floor, and the elevator ignores guest inputs, routing people to the wrong floor.

Room 505 at the Hotel Savoy has a problem it can't renovate away. Doors open and close on their own. Faucets and showers turn on when nobody's touched them. Guests hear voices in the hallway that stop when they open the door. The room belonged to Betsy Ward, and she died in it sometime in the late 1800s. How she died depends on who you ask.

One version says Ward killed herself in the bathtub. Another says foul play was involved. No definitive account has settled the question, and at this point, the ambiguity has become part of the story. What's not ambiguous is that Room 505 is the epicenter of everything strange that happens in the building.

The Savoy opened in 1888 at 214 West 9th Street and operated as the crown jewel of downtown Kansas City for decades. J.D. Rockefeller stayed here. So did Theodore Roosevelt, Will Rogers, and Harry Truman. The hotel bills itself as the oldest operating hotel west of the Mississippi, and the building carries that weight in its marble and woodwork.

Betsy Ward isn't the only presence in the Savoy. A young girl in Victorian clothing appears on the fourth floor. Guests have spotted her in hallways and around the elevator, which has a habit of getting stuck on the fourth floor or ignoring button presses entirely, sending passengers to the sixth floor when they pressed four. That elevator has frustrated enough guests that the hotel staff treat it as part of the character of the building.

EVP recordings have picked up voices in rooms that were confirmed empty during recording sessions. Photographs taken inside the hotel have captured shapes and forms that weren't visible to the naked eye at the time. Guests describe the feeling of being watched in areas nowhere near Room 505, which suggests Betsy isn't the only former resident who decided to stay.

The hotel reopened as 21c Museum Hotel Kansas City after a renovation, blending contemporary art with the original architecture. The renovation didn't quiet the fifth floor. If anything, construction tends to stir things up in old buildings like this, and the Savoy has had plenty of both. The art installations in the lobby and hallways give the hotel a surreal quality even before you factor in the ghosts, which makes it hard to tell where the curated strangeness ends and the uncurated kind begins.