The Lowe Hotel

This 1901 hotel across from Point Pleasant's Mothman statue hosts at least four named ghosts, including a legless riverboat captain in Room 316, a barefoot dancing woman on the mezzanine, and a child on a tricycle rolling through the second floor halls.

Room 316 at the Lowe Hotel has a guest who checks the river every night. Visitors report a legless riverboat captain floating by the windows, staring out toward the Ohio River like he's waiting for a vessel that sank a century ago. He's one of at least four ghosts in a building that sits across the street from a twelve-foot Mothman statue in what might be the weirdest small town in America.

Point Pleasant, West Virginia, earned its reputation the hard way. In 1966 and 1967, dozens of residents reported seeing a tall, winged creature with glowing red eyes. Then on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed during rush hour, killing 46 people. The Mothman sightings stopped after the collapse, but the town built its identity around the mystery. The Lowe Hotel sits in the middle of all of it.

The hotel was built in 1901 on the banks of the Ohio River, near the site of the 1774 Battle of Point Pleasant. It opened as the Spencer Hotel, named after a local judge. In 1929, the Lowe family purchased the property and gave it the name that stuck. Ruth and Rush Finley bought it in 1990 and ran it as a charming, antique-filled time capsule. Ruth Finley told the Charleston Gazette-Mail in 2007: "We used to keep all those stories quiet, because we thought it would be bad for business. But in the last several years, these kinds of experiences have come into vogue."

The dancing woman on the mezzanine between the first and second floors is the hotel's most distinctive ghost. She appears barefoot, wearing a nightgown, with long flowing hair, moving to music only she can hear. Staff believe she's Juliette Smith, Homer Smith's daughter, a heartbroken woman from the early 1900s who never got her happy ending.

The second floor belongs to a child. Guests hear giggling and the squeak of tricycle wheels rolling through the hallway when no children are staying at the hotel. The sound moves, as if someone small is riding laps through the corridor.

Up on the third floor, a whistling maid goes about her rounds. Guests hear footsteps and soft whistling from the hallway outside their doors. The working theory is that a former housekeeper is still on the clock.

Room 314 has its own reputation, separate from Captain Jim in 316. A railroad worker's wife stayed in 314 for a week and reported waking up to find a man standing in her room. She saw the same figure reflected in a large framed mirror while doing her hair. Investigator Joe Nickell from the Center for Inquiry stayed in Room 314 twice while researching the Mothman phenomenon, specifically to test the haunting claims.

The Lowe Hotel is a three-story building with more named ghosts than floors. Captain Jim by the river windows. Juliette dancing barefoot on the mezzanine. The whistling maid on the third floor. A child on a tricycle that nobody can see. For a 125-year-old hotel in a town famous for a winged cryptid and a bridge disaster, it fits right in.