The Haunted Cassadaga Hotel, Florida

Cassadaga is a tiny community in the pine woods between Orlando and Daytona Beach, founded in 1894 as a Spiritualist camp and now home to dozens of mediums and psychics. It calls itself the psychic capital of the world. At its center, across the street from the camp itself, stands the Cassadaga Hotel, a low, cream-colored Spanish style building rebuilt in the late 1920s after fire destroyed the original.

In a town built on communicating with the dead, the hotel is considered the most haunted spot of all. Its best-known resident is Arthur, an Irishman said to have lived in Room 22 in the 1930s and died in the building. Guests describe the smell of cigars and gin, a presence by the window at the end of the hall, and a tap on the shoulder when nobody is behind them. The hotel encourages photography and describes its spirits as friendly.

The ghosts of the Cassadaga Hotel

Arthur in Room 22

Arthur is the reason most people book. The story says he was an Irishman who lived at the hotel in the 1930s, in Room 22 on the second floor. He loved the outdoors and liked to sit in a chair at the end of the hallway by the window. He smelled of cigars and gin, and sometime in the 1930s he died in the building; how is never explained.

Guests say he still keeps his old habits. They describe the smell of cigar smoke or alcohol drifting through a no-smoking hotel, a presence near that hallway window, and being tapped on the shoulder when there is nobody behind them. Many guests photograph orbs they put down to Arthur. As with most hotel ghosts, there is no published record that identifies him.

Other tellers add details of their own. A Waymarking entry calls him an Irish tenor who set up a chair at the end of the hallway to watch everyone, and says his room still smells of gin and cigars. An American Roads haunted hotels feature describes him as dignified, with silver-gray hair, a starched white shirt and a vest, standing at the top of the staircase with his cigar, especially around Rooms 17 and 18.

Leaving Arthur a gift

Because the stories are so specific about his tastes, some visitors bring Arthur a cigar or a drink. Week in Weird’s investigators did exactly that, sitting on the porch at 1 a.m. with cigars and alcohol, and later believed a tall, thin figure appeared in one of their photos near the front deck. Their write-up notes that motion lights should have come on if a real person had been standing there.

Gentleman Jack and the two girls

Arthur is not alone in the stories. Local lore, as collected on Waymarking, adds Gentleman Jack, a ladies’ man said to wander the hotel, and two little girls called Sarah and Katlin who are heard running the hallways at night. Nothing identifies any of them, so treat these as the hotel’s folklore rather than history.

A town of spirits

Cassadaga’s founder, the medium George Colby, said he was guided to the land by a spirit called Seneca, and the whole community is built around the belief that the dead can be reached. Some people describe the area as a vortex. That background colors every report from the hotel: guests here are often actively looking for contact, and the hotel invites them to take photos and share what they find.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 22: Arthur’s second-floor room, near the hallway window where he liked to sit. The one to ask for.
• The second-floor hallway: Where guests describe a presence by the window at the end of the hall and the smell of cigars.
• The porch and patio: The rocking-chair porch runs around the building. Week in Weird reported that staff lock the main hotel at night, with guests reaching rooms through an outside patio door, so check how access works when you arrive.
• The reading rooms: Mediums and psychics work from rooms in the hotel. A reading is part of the experience for many guests.

History of Cassadaga Hotel and Spiritual Center

George P. Colby, a trance medium from New York, said a spirit guide called Seneca, who appeared to him at a seance in Iowa, told him to go south to Florida, and he settled the land in 1875. The Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association received its charter on December 18, 1894, and Colby deeded it 35 acres in 1895; the camp later grew to 57 acres. The name comes from Cassadaga, New York, next to the Spiritualist camp at Lily Dale where Colby had attended summer meetings. By the 1920s Cassadaga had become a winter gathering place for mediums and their followers from the North.

A building has stood on the hotel site since the 1800s. The earlier hotel burned down on Christmas Day 1926, Vice reported, and its replacement, a Mediterranean Revival building, was completed in 1927 (The Clio also gives 1928). In 2026 the hotel was preparing to mark its 100th anniversary in 2027. It has around 40 rooms and is a contributing building in the Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

Dinah Morn and her late husband bought the hotel in 1979, on a whim during an airport layover, Vice reported, and she later put more than $2 million into renovations. Psychics work from the upper floors, and the ground floor has had a restaurant and bar. It is still the only place to stay in Cassadaga.

The hotel is not part of the Spiritualist camp, which is run separately as a nonprofit religious organization across the street with its own Colby Memorial Temple and mediums it trains and certifies. The hotel has its own psychics and a more New Age flavor. Together, the hotel and the camp still draw a steady stream of visitors looking for readings, healing services and, at the hotel, a night with Arthur.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for Room 22. It is Arthur’s room, and the hotel is used to the request.
• Book a reading. Readings are available in the hotel, and the camp across the street has its own certified mediums.
• Respect the camp. Cassadaga is a working religious community with mediums living in its homes, so treat its streets as a neighborhood, not an attraction.
• Leave the kids at home. The owners advise against bringing children.
• Bring a camera. The hotel encourages guests to take photos, and orb pictures are a local tradition.
• See our guide to haunted hotels in Florida for more places to stay.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Haunted places in Orlando: about 40 minutes south
• Casa Monica, St. Augustine: a Gilded Age hotel in America’s oldest city
• Haunted places in St. Augustine: about 90 minutes north
• Haunted hotels in Florida: every haunted hotel in the state, ranked and mapped
• Haunted hotels in Florida

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.

• The Clio: Cassadaga Hotel
• Week in Weird: Investigating the ghosts of Cassadaga
• Vice: Inside Cassadaga
• Wikipedia: Cassadaga, Florida
• Waymarking: Cassadaga Hotel
• American Roads: Haunted hotels
• Spectrum News 13: Why visitors from around the world journey to Cassadaga (July 2026)

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