The Elms Hotel and Spa

The Elms has burned down twice and been rebuilt three times since 1888. A 1920s maid supervises housekeepers on the third floor, a Prohibition-era mob victim haunts the basement pool where Al Capone threw parties, and a woman searching for her lost child throws objects across rooms.

Harry Truman spent election night 1948 at the Elms Hotel in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. He went to bed early, convinced he'd lost. He woke up president. The hotel has a knack for keeping secrets and springing surprises.

The Elms has burned down twice. The original wooden hotel opened in July 1888 as a 200-room resort built to serve visitors drawn to Excelsior Springs' mineral water. It lasted ten years before fire destroyed it on May 9, 1898. Nobody was injured. A second hotel opened on July 31, 1909, grander than the first, with roughly 300 rooms. It burned on October 30, 1910. At that point, someone decided the third version should be fireproof. The current building, designed by Jackson and McIlvain in a Tudor and Gothic Revival style, opened September 7, 1912, built from native Missouri limestone with steel frames and reinforced concrete. It's the one guests sleep in today, now a Destination by Hyatt with 153 rooms after a multi-year renovation completed in 2022.

The ghosts track to the periods between and during the fires, which makes architectural sense. A building that has died twice and come back carries a different kind of energy than one that's simply aged.

The 1920s maid is the most commonly reported figure. She appears on the third floor, a young woman in a dark maid's uniform from that era. A guest once spotted what he thought was a staff member in vintage clothing walking the hallway. She didn't respond when he spoke to her and vanished around a corner. Housekeepers describe a presence that seems to supervise their work. Some say they feel an urge to be more thorough when she's around, as if an invisible manager is looking over their shoulder. Her actual name has never been identified.

During Prohibition, the Elms operated as a speakeasy. Al Capone hosted all-night gambling and drinking parties in the basement, with machine gun-toting guards stationed at the doors, according to local historians. The basement lap pool is where the second ghost shows up. The story is that a man was killed during mob-related violence at one of these events, and his presence remains in the pool area. Guests report cold air near the water, a feeling of being watched, and sounds that don't line up with the building's mechanics.

The third spirit is a woman searching for her child. She's the most aggressive of the three, credited with pulling guests' hair, throwing objects across rooms, and walking through the hotel at night in visible distress. Nobody has identified her or tied her to a specific historical event at the hotel.

Investigators during the 2013 visit focused on the third floor and the pool area. The readings were strongest in the hallways where the maid has been seen, and the team noted equipment anomalies they couldn't reproduce through known interference sources.

Some guests report loud clanging noises around 1:30 in the morning. The timing roughly coincides with when the original fires would have been at their worst, though connecting a noise to an event that happened over a century ago on a different version of the building requires a leap.

Ghost Hunters investigated the Elms in July 2013 and detected unusual readings and energy spikes in the areas where the maid has been seen. The Kansas City Paranormal Society conducted their own investigation in March 2017, documenting EVP recordings and electromagnetic fluctuations.

The hotel landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. Jack Dempsey stayed here. Truman stayed here. Capone did business here. The Elms has hosted presidents, boxers, and gangsters across three buildings and two fires. The ghosts are just the ones who decided the third version was worth staying for.