Westgate Las Vegas: Is Elvis Still Haunting the Old International Hotel?

Plenty of Las Vegas resorts have a ghost story. Only one has Elvis. The Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino, a block east of the Strip on Paradise Road, opened in 1969 as the International Hotel and spent four decades as the Las Vegas Hilton. Elvis Presley made its showroom his Las Vegas home from 1969 to 1976, and since his death in 1977 guests, employees and one very famous entertainer have said they have seen him here again.

Unusually for a big casino resort, the Westgate is happy to talk about it. Its vice president of public and community relations has told local TV he believes Elvis’s spirit is still in the building. This guide covers every story the resort and local press tell, the real history behind them, including the deadly 1981 fire, and how to plan a stay if you want to walk the same halls.

The ghost of Elvis at the Westgate

Wayne Newton and the empty balcony

The Westgate’s best-known ghost story comes from a fellow Las Vegas legend. A few months after Elvis died in August 1977, the Las Vegas Hilton asked Wayne Newton to perform, and he sang an Elvis medley for the first time. Before the show a crew member told him the balcony would be closed that night.

As Newton told it, during the medley the house lights went down except for his spotlight, and he saw a man walk into the empty balcony. He believed it was Elvis, looking down at him and smiling. Gordon Prouty, the Westgate’s vice president of public and community relations, retold the story to KTNV in 2020 and said Newton took it as Elvis letting him know he was all right and appreciated the tribute.

The King in the theater and backstage

The showroom where Elvis played, now called the International Theater, is where many people expect to find him, and the stories oblige. KTNV and the Westgate’s own blog both say his image has been reported in the theater, and the resort’s blog adds sightings backstage, the area Elvis would have passed through hundreds of times on his way to the stage.

Most counts put his run here at more than 600 shows, all sold out; the resort itself uses the figure 837. Whatever the number, no performer spent more nights on that stage, which is why fans say that if anyone were going to stay on after the final curtain, it would be him.

Upper-floor hallways and the casino floor

Away from the theater, employees and visitors have reported glimpses of Elvis on the casino floor and in the long, dark upper-floor hallways of the tower. KTNV’s 2016 round-up of places to see ghosts in Las Vegas also listed the Hilton, as many locals still call it, saying people have reported him around the showroom and those upper corridors.

These are brief sightings rather than dramatic encounters: a familiar face at the end of a corridor, a figure that is gone when you look again. None has been documented, and Elvis impersonators have been a fixture of Las Vegas for decades, so keep an open mind both ways.

Music in the Tuscany villa

Elvis lived in the 5,000-square-foot Imperial Suite on the 30th floor during his engagements, with the entourage that traveled with him. The suite, later renamed the Elvis Presley Suite, was demolished in 1994 to make way for the luxury Sky Villas.

According to Prouty, the Tuscany villa now stands where Elvis’s suite was, and guests staying there say they have felt his presence, seen his image and heard his music playing with no radio on. It is the most specific story the resort tells, and also the hardest to test, since the villas are among the most exclusive rooms in the building.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• International Theater balcony: Where Wayne Newton says he saw Elvis smiling down from seats that were closed that night.
• Backstage at the International Theater: Named by the Westgate’s own blog as a place Elvis has been seen.
• Upper-floor hallways: Long, dark corridors where guests and employees report brief sightings.
• Tuscany villa (30th floor): Built on the site of the Elvis suite; guests report his music and his presence.
• The casino floor: Employees and visitors have reported glimpses of the King among the tables.

History of Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino (former International and Las Vegas Hilton)

The resort stands on part of the old Las Vegas Park racetrack. In 1967 Kirk Kerkorian bought a 65.5-acre piece of the site for $5 million and hired architect Martin Stern Jr. to design a 30-story, 1,510-room hotel. The International Hotel opened on July 2, 1969, the largest hotel in the world at the time, one day after Howard Hughes opened the Landmark across the street. Barbra Streisand opened the main showroom and Peggy Lee played the lounge.

Elvis Presley followed Streisand, opening on July 31, 1969. It was his first live concert engagement in years, the start of the comeback that turned him into the king of the Las Vegas residency. He came back season after season until December 1976 and died in August 1977. A bronze statue of Elvis was unveiled a year later and is still on the property, and in 2016 the street leading to Las Vegas Boulevard was renamed Elvis Presley Boulevard.

Hilton bought into the hotel in 1970 and 1971, renamed it the Las Vegas Hilton in July 1971 and kept adding towers until, by the early 1980s, it had 3,174 rooms and was again the largest hotel in the world. On February 10, 1981, a busboy set a fire in an eighth-floor elevator lobby that raced up the east tower in about 25 minutes. Eight people died and about 350 were injured, including 48 firefighters. The busboy was convicted of arson and murder. Coming three months after the MGM Grand fire, it helped force sweeping changes to Nevada’s fire safety rules. Ghost stories here do not center on the fire, but it is part of the building’s story.

The Hilton years also brought the Superbook sports book in 1986, the rooftop Sky Villas in 1995 and Star Trek: The Experience from 1998 to 2008. Colony Capital bought the resort in 2004, Hilton ended its franchise at the end of 2011 and the hotel became the LVH, Las Vegas Hotel and Casino in 2012. Westgate Resorts bought it in 2014 and renamed it Westgate Las Vegas. Today it has about 2,950 rooms, a Las Vegas Monorail station and, still, the showroom where Elvis played.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book a show in the International Theater. It is the best way to stand where Elvis stood and look up at the balcony from Wayne Newton’s story.
• Find the Elvis statue on the property and the photos of his years here. Staff are used to fans asking.
• Ask for a high floor in the main tower if you want to be near the upper-floor hallways where most sightings are reported. There is no specific haunted room to request.
• Use the Las Vegas Monorail station at the hotel to reach the Strip resorts with their own ghost stories, such as the Flamingo and Horseshoe (Bally’s).
• Room rates are often low midweek because the resort is off the Strip, but jump during big Convention Center shows. Check the dates before you book.
• Make a night of it with our guide to haunted places in Las Vegas.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Flamingo Las Vegas: Bugsy Siegel’s resort and his ghost by the gardens
• Horseshoe Las Vegas (Bally's): the tower that survived the 1980 MGM Grand fire
• El Cortez Hotel & Casino: downtown’s 1941 casino and its mob-era stories
• Circus Circus: a few minutes away; the Room 123 legend
• Haunted hotels in Nevada
• Haunted hotels in Las Vegas

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.

• KTNV: Haunted Las Vegas, did Elvis ever really leave the Westgate? (2020)
• Westgate Resorts: 12 haunted places in Las Vegas
• KTNV: 13 places you might see ghosts in Las Vegas (2016)
• Wikipedia: Westgate Las Vegas
• SkyscraperPage: Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino

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