The first Victor Hotel burned to the ground when Victor, Colorado burned to the ground, in August 1899, the whole town gone in five hours. The Woods Brothers rebuilt in brick and stone and called the new structure the Bank Block—four stories, housing a hotel, a bank, an investment company, and one elevator that has been operating in some form since 1899 and has never entirely behaved. The building sat at an elevation of nine thousand feet in a mountain mining town where, between October and June, the ground was too frozen to dig graves. The solution was the fourth floor. Bodies of the dead were taken up in the elevator and stored there until spring.
The fourth floor is where the apparitions concentrate. Witnesses at separate times have described figures in nineteenth-century dress—doctors and patients, by the accounts—moving through a space with no medical function. Some of these figures are reported as incomplete: without arms, without legs, without heads. The most consistent specific ghost, however, belongs to the third floor. A man named Eddie fell down the elevator shaft after stepping forward in the dark expecting the car to be there. He had been staying in Room 301. That room is now the most frequently requested in the hotel.
Room 301 guests report footsteps after midnight. The elevator operates without being called—moves on its own, always stops on the third floor, typically around three in the morning. The hotel does not dispute this. The elevator is inspected and maintained. It goes up anyway. Whether it’s Eddie operating it or something older—something that rode that elevator to the fourth floor in the frozen months and never found its way back down—the mechanism has been reliable about the hour for longer than anyone currently alive has been paying attention.
Story Source: victorhotelcolorado.com
Address: 321 Victor Avenue, Victor, Colorado 80860
Accessibility Rating: Booking Required — Open to visitors but requires advance reservation, ticket purchase, or tour booking.
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What Others Have Experienced
A Phoenix, Arizona traveler said the hotel itself felt deliciously creepy after dark, with over-decorated halls and an old elevator that added to the ghost-town atmosphere — though she didn’t personally encounter anything paranormal during her stay, she said she’d happily return.
— from TripAdvisor (Remy_Blue13)
A Colorado Springs woman who has returned to the Victor Hotel for family celebrations over six years called it one of her favorite haunted hotels in the state, despite its quirky old plumbing and small-town quirks.
— from TripAdvisor (Mary G)
One visitor described seeing an old miner’s face reflected in the elevator mirror, then said a woman passed straight through her on the third-floor landing — an experience she described as gentle, more like an angel than a ghost.
— from COHauntedHouses.com visitor review
A couple staying in Room 301 in July 2011 said their television switched to a different channel while the husband had dozed off; only afterward did the front desk clerk mention, unprompted, that Eddie is known for changing the channel in that room.
— from HauntedPlaces.org visitor comment
A family on a summer visit said a misty figure showed up in a phone photo taken at the foot of their bed, and a chair in their daughter’s room moved on its own to sit beside her bed overnight.
— from HauntedPlaces.org visitor comment
