The Jefferson Hotel
Opened in 1895 as Lewis Ginter's grand showpiece and designed by Carrere and Hastings, the Jefferson is a Beaux-Arts landmark once famous for live alligators kept in its marble pools. Its ghost lore is just as storied. The most repeated tale is a jilted bride who, abandoned at the altar while a hotel guest, is said to have hanged herself from a tall headboard later kept in one of the hotel's rooms. Staff at the hotel's TJ's restaurant have described glasses shattering on their own before anyone touched them, and a side-table drawer shooting open with no visible cause. On an upper floor, an employee reported encountering a woman in a red dress who appeared to be floating with no feet; when he looked up at her face, she vanished. The blend of Gilded-Age grandeur and tragedy keeps the Jefferson on Richmond haunted-hotel lists.
📍 101 West Franklin Street, Richmond, VA 23220, Richmond, VA · Get directions