Le Pavillon Hotel

A 1907 Beaux-Arts hotel where a ghost named Aida approaches guests in the lobby and asks for directions before vanishing. Paranormal investigator Dr. Larry Montz logged nearly 100 entities in one night in 1996. A 1920s couple walks into elevators that open empty on the other end, and floors 4, 7, and 9 see the most activity.

A young woman in black keeps walking up to guests in the lobby of Le Pavillon Hotel and asking them the same thing. "Pardon me, I am… very lost." Then she's gone. Staff and visitors have described her for decades. She has pale skin, brown hair pinned back, brown eyes that look like she's been crying. She carries a small clutch that she sometimes drops at a guest's feet. The scent of lilacs usually arrives with her. Her name, depending on which staff member you ask, is Aida, Ada, Adda, Ava, or Eva. The hotel's official story is that she was a teenage girl killed by a runaway carriage near the corner of Poydras and Baronne in the early 1900s, on the same block where Le Pavillon now sits.

The hotel opened in 1907 and advertised itself as "The Belle of New Orleans." It's ten stories of Beaux-Arts design at the edge of the Central Business District, and long before the hotel existed, the land it sits on had a rough reputation. Criminal activity and at least a handful of documented violent deaths gave the block its own character before the first stone was laid. Some paranormal researchers have argued that's why the hotel ended up with the density of activity it has, that the ground itself was already occupied.

Dr. Larry Montz ran an overnight investigation of Le Pavillon in 1996 for his group, the International Society for Paranormal Research. His team logged what they described as nearly 100 separate entities over the course of a single night. Whatever that number actually means, Montz's report is the reason the hotel now hands out a paranormal pamphlet at check-in if you ask for one. The hotel doesn't hide its haunting. It has a printed handout.

Aida is the most famous resident, but there are others. A couple in 1920s formal wear shows up on the first floor and walks hand-in-hand toward the elevators, the woman's jewelry catching the chandelier light. They step into an elevator. The doors close. Then the elevator opens again a second later and it's empty. Montz's team logged them specifically on the second floor and around Room 221. A third ghost is more of a joker than a tragedy: a long-haired man in a bright shirt who doesn't wear shoes. He pulls sheets off sleeping guests, hides shoes, moves room keys to the other side of the nightstand. Housekeeping has a running joke about him.

Room 930 is where Aida is supposed to have died after the carriage struck her. The ninth floor has the highest volume of guest reports, followed by the seventh and the fourth. If you want a statistical approach to the hotel's activity, Dr. Montz's findings point to those three floors, which is why the concierge desk will quietly not put a nervous guest there if asked.

The fact that a hotel in the French Quarter embraces its ghost stories is not unusual. What's unusual about Le Pavillon is the volume and the specificity. Most haunted hotels have one ghost, maybe two, and a PR department that tells you about them. Le Pavillon has names, rooms, scents, recurring dialogue, and a printed pamphlet with a paranormal investigator's report in it.

Aida's line is the one that sticks with people. Guests who hear it usually describe it as sounding more like an apology than a haunting. She says she's lost, and then she isn't there to correct.