Manresa Castle

Manresa Castle in Port Townsend was built in 1892 by the city's first mayor, served as a Jesuit college, and now operates as a hotel where Room 302 echoes with attic footsteps from a seminarian who hanged himself and Room 306 is haunted by a woman who jumped from the window. EVP recordings have captured a female voice speaking German in the dining room, the native language of the original Eisenbeis family.

A young woman in Room 306 of Manresa Castle learned that her lover's ship had sunk. She threw herself from the window. He survived the sinking. She did not survive the fall.

That story anchors one of Port Townsend's most layered hauntings. The castle perches on a hill above the city, a 30-room Victorian built in 1892 by Charles Eisenbeis, a German immigrant who served as Port Townsend's first mayor and ran businesses in banking, brewing, baking, lumber, and brickmaking. He built the house with bricks from his own works. German artisans carved the woodwork. Tiled fireplaces warmed every room. The castle was a monument to a man who believed Port Townsend would become the great city of Puget Sound.

The Eisenbeis family's story turned dark quickly. Charles Jr. killed himself in the basement of the family bakery on September 29, 1897. Charles Sr. died in 1902. Kate Eisenbeis remarried and left the house empty. In 1925, a Seattle attorney purchased it and turned it into a retreat for teaching nuns. In 1927, the Jesuits bought the property and renamed it Manresa Hall after a Spanish town significant to the order. It operated as a Jesuit training college until 1968, when it became a hotel.

The Jesuit period produced its own tragedy. A young seminarian, whose name is not recorded, hanged himself in the attic after his affair with a local nun was discovered. His body swung above what is now Room 302. Guests in that room hear footsteps pacing back and forth in the attic above them, the sound of a man walking the same circuit he walked as he contemplated his death. A hooded figure has been seen inside the room itself.

Father John Alden Murphy, a Jesuit priest stationed at the castle, drowned in Puget Sound. The circumstances of his death are not well documented, but his presence is one of several that staff and guests associate with the property.

Room 306 belongs to the woman who jumped. Guests report a figure in a white gown standing near the window. Belongings left on nightstands are rearranged by morning. Lights flicker. The television turns on and off. Room 304, adjacent to both hotspots, carries its own share of activity. These three rooms on the third floor form a concentrated zone that the hotel acknowledges openly.

The old chapel, now a cafe, produces some of the most physical phenomena in the building. Drinking glasses shatter in the hands of servers. Empty glasses flip upside down on tables when nobody is near them. A chair was caught tilting on its own by a camera in the breakfast room. The activity here feels different from the upper floors, less melancholy and more aggressive, as if a different presence occupies the ground level.

An EVP recording captured a female voice speaking German in the dining room. The Eisenbeis family spoke German as their first language. Additional EVP captures include the phrases "someone is here," "get out," and a spirit box session that produced "stay out." Ghost Adventures filmed an episode inside the castle and documented equipment malfunctions and unexplained audio.

Manresa Castle operates as a hotel. You can book Room 302 and lie in bed listening for the footsteps above you, or take Room 306 and sleep near the window a woman fell from over a century ago. The hotel does not hide the stories. Port Townsend has too many ghosts for that. The castle sits above the town, its brick facade visible from the waterfront, built by a man whose son died in a bakery basement and whose dream for the city collapsed with the railroad that chose Seattle instead. Everything about this place is a story of ambition meeting grief. The ghosts fit right in.