The Haunted Horton Grand Hotel, San Diego: Room 309 and Its Gambler

The Horton Grand Hotel sits on Island Avenue in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, a few steps from what was once the Stingaree, the city’s old red-light and gambling district. It is a Victorian hotel with a twist: it is two historic hotels, the Grand Horton and the Brooklyn Hotel, dismantled in the late 1970s and rebuilt side by side in 1986. It is one of the best-known haunted hotels in San Diego.

Its resident ghost is Roger Whittaker, a gambler whose story is told in two very different versions, and whose room, 309, is the one guests ask for. Ida Bailey, the Stingaree’s most famous madam, is said to drift through too. The stories are folklore rather than history, but the reports from Room 309 have been remarkably consistent for decades.

The ghosts of Horton Grand Hotel

Roger Whittaker of Room 309

Every version of the legend agrees on the name and the room. In the most common telling, Roger Whittaker was a gambler caught cheating at cards in a Stingaree saloon. He ran back to the hotel with the men he had cheated close behind, hid in his room, some say in the wardrobe, and was shot dead. A second, older version says he was a young man killed by the father of the woman he hoped to marry, his body dumped in a swamp that once lay near the site.

Neither story fits the building neatly. The hotel you sleep in today was reassembled on this block in 1986, and the swamp version supposedly happened in the 1840s, decades before either hotel was built. None of that has slowed the reports, and staff and guests alike describe Roger as harmless and even friendly.

What happens in Room 309

Guests describe beds shaking hard enough to wake them, the doors of the antique armoire swinging open on their own, lights switching on and off, and toiletries moving around the bathroom. Some say the room grows unusually warm and will not cool down. Housekeepers have reported the shape of a person pressed into a freshly made bed and the sound of cards being shuffled when the room is empty.

One often repeated story has a guest asking a man in old-fashioned clothes in the third-floor hallway where the ice machine was, only for him to vanish in front of her.

Ida Bailey, the Stingaree madam

Ida Bailey ran the Canary Cottage, the Stingaree’s best-known brothel, close to where the hotel’s restaurant now stands. The hotel once named its restaurant after her. Her ghost is described as a gentle presence that shows up as a white mist or a sudden cold spot, and some guests say they have felt her pass straight through them.

Other figures on the stairs

Guests and staff have also described people in 19th-century clothing walking down the staircases and along the halls, along with footsteps, laughter in empty corridors and doors that open and close by themselves. Ghost walking tours of the Gaslamp often stop outside.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 309: Roger Whittaker’s room on the third floor, with its antique armoire. The room everyone asks for.
• Third-floor hallway: Where guests describe meeting a man in period dress who vanishes.
• The staircases: Reports of Victorian figures walking down the stairs. The central staircase came from the original Grand Horton.
• Salt and Whiskey restaurant and bar: Built near the site of Ida Bailey’s Canary Cottage; she is the ghost most linked to this end of the building.

History of Horton Grand Hotel

The Grand Horton was built in the mid-1880s, when San Diego’s first transcontinental rail link set off a building boom. The hotel gives 1886 as the year it opened; the National Register listing and most histories say 1887. German immigrant Peter Mayerhofer built it with architects Comstock and Trotsche, modeled on a hotel in Innsbruck, Austria, and it was named for Alonzo Horton, the developer of New Town San Diego.

The Brooklyn Hotel, a plainer building in what has been called Cowboy Victorian style, opened around the same time. From 1912 its ground floor was home to Kahle Saddlery, which made saddles for Tom Mix and Roy Rogers, and the building became known as the Brooklyn-Kahle Saddlery Hotel. Sunshine, the papier-mache horse that stood outside the saddle shop for decades, now lives in the hotel lobby. According to the hotel, Wyatt Earp lived at the Brooklyn during his years in San Diego, which began in 1886.

Guests at the two hotels over the years included President Benjamin Harrison, King Kalakaua of Hawaii, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis and Babe Ruth. Both buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

In the late 1970s the city bought both hotels to clear land for the Horton Plaza shopping center. Developer Dan Pearson saved them: every brick was numbered and stored, and the two hotels were rebuilt as one on Island Avenue, joined by a central atrium. The new Horton Grand opened in 1986 at a cost of about $12 million. Its old Palace Bar is now Salt and Whiskey.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Request Room 309 when you book directly with the hotel and confirm it a few days before arrival. Rooms booked through third-party sites can be harder to change.
• Look for Sunshine the horse in the lobby and the original staircase moved from the Grand Horton.
• Walk the Gaslamp Quarter at night. The hotel stands at the edge of the old Stingaree, where Roger is said to have cheated at cards.
• Pair your stay with the Hotel del Coronado across the bay for a two-night San Diego ghost weekend.
• Bringing a dog? Ask for a pet-friendly room before arrival; dogs are allowed in select rooms for a fee.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Hotel del Coronado: Kate Morgan’s beach resort across the bay
• The Queen Mary: the haunted ocean liner in Long Beach
• Haunted places in San Diego: from the Whaley House to Old Town
• Haunted hotels in California
• Haunted hotels in San Diego

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• Horton Grand Hotel: History
• Horton Grand Hotel: official site
• Wikipedia: Horton Grand Hotel
• Times of San Diego: Horton Grand Hotel
• San Diego Ghosts: Horton Grand Hotel
• California Through My Lens: Horton Grand Hotel

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