Manresa Castle

A 30-room castle built in 1892 by Prussian immigrant and Port Townsend's first mayor Charles Eisenbeis. Served as a Jesuit retreat from 1927 to 1968 before becoming a hotel.

Manresa Castle rises above Port Townsend like a Prussian fortress transplanted to the Pacific Northwest. Charles Eisenbeis, a Prussian immigrant who became Port Townsend's first mayor in 1878, built this 30-room mansion in 1892 at the peak of the city's boom years. German artisans installed finely crafted woodwork and tiled fireplaces behind walls a foot thick, made from bricks produced at Eisenbeis' own brickworks. The castle was the largest private residence Port Townsend had ever seen, but the family's fortunes turned dark. Eisenbeis' son Charles Jr. shot himself in the basement of a town building on September 29, 1897, reportedly unable to face mounting business failures. Charles Sr. followed in 1902, dead of Bright's disease. His granddaughter Lotta died of a heart infection at just thirteen years old on March 20, 1907, though she passed in a Seattle hospital rather than the castle itself.

Kate Eisenbeis remarried and left, and the castle sat vacant for over two decades before the Jesuits purchased it in 1927. They renamed it Manresa Hall after the Spanish town where Ignatius Loyola founded their order, and in 1928 added a large wing with a chapel and dormitories where priests spent their final year of training studying ascetic theology. During the Jesuit years, Father John Alden Murphy drowned in Puget Sound on September 2, 1943. His body was never recovered, though his folded clothing was found on shore, and his death was officially ruled accidental.

The castle's two most famous ghost stories, a Jesuit seminarian who hanged himself in the attic after being caught visiting a nun and a young English woman named Kate who threw herself from the window of Room 306 after learning her lover's ship had sunk, were investigated by the Olympic Peninsula Paranormal Society, which found no historical evidence for either suicide. According to their research, a bartender at the hotel invented both tales to entertain curious guests. Despite their legendary origins, the stories have become inseparable from the castle's identity, and the activity reported in those rooms is real enough to fill volumes.

Room 306, where the phantom Kate supposedly leapt, is one of the most active locations. Guests report an apparition in a long, flowing white gown near the window, dresser drawers left open overnight, personal belongings rearranged, singing from the bathroom in the early morning hours, and covers pulled off sleeping guests. Room 302, beneath the attic where the priest allegedly hanged himself, produces reports of footsteps pacing overhead, a hooded figure, and the sound of rope being dragged across the ceiling. EVP recordings in the attic have captured a male voice saying "I am not here." The dining room, formerly the Jesuit chapel, has its own phenomena: drinking glasses that shatter or turn upside down on their own, and a digital photograph that appears to show a woman in Victorian dress, possibly Mrs. Eisenbeis herself. Investigators have also captured a female voice speaking German, the Eisenbeis family's native language.

The Olympic Peninsula Paranormal Society conducted an extensive investigation in January 2010 using seven DVR cameras and multiple audio recorders running from 5 PM to 6 AM. They documented 51 EVPs and identified what they believe are multiple distinct entities: a German-speaking female, a male authority figure, a girl named Lotta matching the description of Charles' granddaughter, and a possible suicide-related male entity. A hotel housekeeper reported being physically attacked twice, once punched in the face and once struck on the leg, leaving a bruise the size of a child's hand. When Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures investigated in January 2015, host Zak Bagans was particularly intrigued by a mysterious child's coffin discovered in the Eisenbeis family crypt, theorizing a connection to the child-sized bruises on the housekeeper. During the lockdown, a spirit appeared to repeat investigator Aaron Goodwin's words back to him verbatim. Bagans declared the castle had "a very high level of hauntings" compared to other locations he had investigated. The episode aired September 5, 2015.

For years, the hotel kept guestbooks in every room where visitors recorded their experiences, and most entries described some form of paranormal encounter. Many of the books have since been retired to storage, partly because guests kept stealing them and partly because they frightened other guests. One book remains behind the front desk and is available upon request. In Room 302, guests went further, writing their experiences on the insides, sides, and bottoms of dresser drawers. Manresa Castle continues to operate as a hotel, and its haunted reputation has only grown since its television appearances on Ghost Adventures, Haunted History, and My Ghost Story. The castle that Charles Eisenbeis built to announce his success has instead become one of the Pacific Northwest's most investigated haunted locations.