The Haunted Van Gilder Hotel, Seward: Fannie and the Second Floor

The Van Gilder Hotel stands on Adams Street in the middle of Seward’s historic district, a three-story white building with a round-arched entrance, paired windows and a decorative cornice. Outside it has barely changed since the 1920s, and inside it keeps its original central hallway with rooms on either side. It is a short walk from the small boat harbor, where tours leave for Kenai Fjords National Park, and from the Alaska SeaLife Center.

It is also one of the best-known haunted hotels in Alaska. Its ghost is Fannie Guthery-Baehm, who was shot by her husband while the couple were staying at the hotel. Guests describe a tall blonde woman in a blue dress, objects that move and windows that open on their own. The current manager calls her a friendly ghost. For more, see our guide to haunted hotels in Alaska.

The ghost of the Van Gilder Hotel

Fannie Guthery-Baehm

The story the hotel tells is a sad one. Fannie Guthery-Baehm and her husband were staying at the Van Gilder when he came back to their room one night and shot her in the head. Manager Diana Quevedo told Alaska’s News Source in 2025 that her fate is known from newspaper accounts of the time, and that she had heard the husband was a drinker. “I don’t know if it was just a bad day at the bar,” she said.

Most accounts date the killing to 1947, the year Alaska’s News Source gives. A local history of the hotel says 1950 and calls the husband estranged, and older ghost guides say the 1950s. The spelling of her name also varies: Guthery, Guthrie or Guthry.

The woman in the blue dress

Guests who say they have seen Fannie describe a tall young woman with long blonde hair wearing a blue dress. Other reports are less visual: things moved around a room, windows opening and closing by themselves, and guests woken in the night by the building shaking. Ghost hunters who have visited are said to agree that it is one of the state’s most haunted hotels.

Quevedo has never seen Fannie herself, though she has heard from people who say they have. “If she wants to come pay me a visit I’d just say hi, she doesn’t scare me at all,” she said, adding that perhaps after all these years Fannie is at peace.

Which room?

This is where the story gets muddled. Alaska’s News Source puts the murder in Room 202. Other accounts say it happened in Room 201, and the older version of this guide, like many others, said Fannie is most often seen in Room 209. All three are on the second floor, so if you want to be close to the story, ask for a second-floor room. When the KTUU Roadtrippin’ team slept one floor above Fannie’s room in 2025, they reported that they never heard a peep.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 202: Where Alaska’s News Source places Fannie’s death in 1947.
• Rooms 201 and 209: The other rooms named in older accounts. Both on the second floor.
• The central hallway: The original 1916 corridor, little changed.

History of Van Gilder Hotel

Seward boomed in 1916. The federal government had taken over the Alaska Railroad, with its southern terminus at Seward, and some $200,000 in building projects started that year. E. L. Van Gilder, from Kellogg, Idaho, began a two-story office building on Adams Street in May. Local fraternal groups persuaded him to add a third floor for meeting rooms, and it was finished in October 1916, one of three reinforced concrete buildings put up in town that year, with central heat and hot and cold running water.

The extra cost ruined him. Van Gilder sold at a loss within months and left Seward. Early tenants included the Gateway newspaper in the basement, offices on the lower floors and the Odd Fellows, Masons, Christian Scientists and Seward Women’s Club on the third. When the lodges built their own halls in 1921, the building became apartments, and that September owner Joe Badger converted it into a hotel and named it after the man who built it.

From 1950 to 1964 it was known as the Renwald Hotel, after its owner. New owners in 1964, the year of the Great Alaska Earthquake, renovated it, added a dining room and restored the Van Gilder name. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 2, 1980.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask the front desk about Fannie; staff are happy to share the story.
• Request a second-floor room, and mention Room 202 if you want to be close to the story.
• Book a Kenai Fjords day cruise from the harbor, a short walk away.
• Seward is about two and a half hours from Anchorage on the Seward Highway. Stay a night at the Historic Anchorage Hotel on the way.
• Summer is the busy season; the town is much quieter, and darker, in fall.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Historic Anchorage Hotel: Alaska’s most haunted hotel, about 2.5 hours north
• Haunted hotels in Alaska: Every haunted hotel in the state
• Haunted places in Alaska: More of the state’s ghost stories
• Haunted hotels in Alaska

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.

• Alaska's News Source: Spending the night in a Seward hotel that may be haunted (2025)
• Wikipedia: Van Gilder Hotel
• SAH Archipedia: Van Gilder Hotel
• Sketches of Alaska: Van Gilder Hotel has been serving Seward for almost 100 years
• Alaska Business: Transcendental Travels, haunted hotels (2019)

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