Haunted hotel guide · Virginia Beach, Virginia

The Haunted Cavalier Hotel, Virginia Beach: Adolph Coors, Room 606 and the Ghostcat

The 1927 hotel on the hill above the Oceanfront, where brewer Adolph Coors fell from a sixth-floor window in 1929 and the front desk took calls from the sixth floor while it stood empty.

By The Haunted Rooms Team · Updated November 2026 · How we rate hotels

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1927Hotel opened

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The Historic Cavalier Hotel stands on a rise at the north end of the Virginia Beach Oceanfront, a seven-story brick Y with a cupola that has watched over Atlantic Avenue since 1927. In its heyday it hosted ten presidents, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor and Frank Sinatra, with Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller playing to dancers in the ballroom. After a four-year restoration it reopened in 2018 as part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection, with 85 rooms and suites, a spa and its own bourbon distillery in the basement.

The Cavalier is also the best-known haunted hotel in Virginia, and unlike many grand hotels it does not run from its stories. Its most famous ghost comes from a real death: in June 1929 Adolph Coors, founder of the Coors brewery, fell from a sixth-floor window. Since then guests have described cold spots, whispers and windows opening on their own on the sixth floor, and during the restoration the front desk took phone calls from rooms that were empty and closed. This guide covers the stories, the history and how to ask for the rooms people want.

The ghosts of The Historic Cavalier Hotel & Beach Club

Adolph Coors and the sixth floor

In June 1929 Adolph Coors, founder of the Colorado brewery, checked into Room 606 at The Cavalier with his wife and daughter. The story told at the hotel is that he walked away from breakfast, went back up to the sixth floor and fell from the window; his body was found on the grounds below. Whether he jumped, fell or was pushed has never been settled, and his death is the one event in The Cavalier’s ghost stories that is fully documented.

Guests on the sixth floor have described cold spots, whispering and windows that open on their own at night. Some report a thud on the sidewalk below the sixth floor with nothing there when they look, and Coastal Virginia Magazine says Coors makes his presence known to people who walk over the spot where his body was found. Others say they have seen him in the corridors at night.

Phone calls from an empty floor

The story that made the news came during the restoration. While the sixth floor was closed off in 2016 and 2017, Visit Virginia Beach says the front desk regularly took phone calls from it, with no one staying there and no one answering; one version says the line carried faint jazz. Paranormal investigators who sat in Room 606 with a spirit box say they made contact with a spirit who called himself Mike and told them there were multiple ghosts on the floor, at which point the room’s chandelier began to swing and shake.

The bellman who warns guests

The most consistent story is about a kindly older African American man, described as a bellman or in military clothing, seen on the stairs between the fifth and sixth floors. He warns guests not to go up because other ghosts are there, and vanishes if they try to ask him anything. Visit Virginia Beach notes that the hotel has not employed a bellman matching his description in decades.

The lady in white and the woman with the dog

A woman in a white gown is seen in the third-floor hallways. She is sometimes linked to Ida Harrington, the wife of the hotel’s founder, and sometimes to an unnamed socialite of the Jazz Age. The old social club in the basement, where many of the staff stories are told, is now nicknamed the Ghost Bar.

Coastal Virginia Magazine adds a well-dressed woman seen dining with her dog in Becca, the hotel restaurant, along with a World War II soldier wandering the halls.

Ghostcat and the little girl

The hotel’s most charming ghost is a cat. Staff have heard meowing and scratching at doors in the middle of the night when there is no cat in the building, and Visit Virginia Beach says the spectral kitty, known as Ghostcat, leaves paw prints on the back staircase. One account says it has been felt lying on staff paperwork and has scratched employees who bothered it.

Locals also describe a forlorn little girl on the stairs, forever searching for her lost kitten. Some retellings add that she and the cat drowned in the hotel pool, but no published record supports that, so treat the girl as legend.

Soldiers, pianos and stray elevators

From 1942 the Navy used The Cavalier as a radar training school, draining the pool for classes and housing extra trainees in the stables, and apparitions in military uniform are reported around the property. The piano in the Crystal Ballroom is said to play with no one at the keys. Hotel historian Chris Bonney told 13News Now that even while the hotel was closed, elevators went up and down with nobody in them, and guests have said their towels changed color while they were out of the room.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 606: The room where Adolph Coors stayed in 1929, at the end of the sixth-floor hall. A standard guest room you can request, though not guarantee.
• The sixth floor: Cold spots, whispers, windows opening and the phone calls during the restoration all center on this floor. Any room here puts you in the middle of the stories.
• The third floor: Where the lady in white and the soldiers are most often seen.
• Suites: 23 of the 85 rooms are suites, many with views over the Oceanfront from the hill.

History of The Historic Cavalier Hotel & Beach Club

The Cavalier was designed by Clarence Neff of the Norfolk firm Neff and Thompson and opened in 1927 as a seven-story, Y-shaped Renaissance Revival hotel on a hill above the beach. Almost every room had an ocean view and its own bathroom, which was a luxury at the time, and there were swimming pools, shops and stables. The Cavalier Beach Club opened on the oceanfront over Memorial Day weekend in 1929, only months before the stock market crash. The original hotel had 135 rooms.

Through the 1930s the hotel was the place to be seen on the Virginia coast. It hosted ten presidents and stars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra, and the big bands of Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller played in its ballroom. In 1942 the US Navy took the building over as a radar training school, draining the pool for classrooms and using the stables as extra barracks. It was handed back in 1945, but the war years had cost the business dearly.

The Cavalier became a private club in the 1950s and 1960s before reopening as a hotel. In 1973 a new oceanfront wing, later called The Cavalier Oceanfront, was built on the hotel’s beachfront land, and the original building on the hill slowly fell behind. In 2013 the property was sold under court order, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in May 2014.

Developer Gold Key | PHR spent four years and roughly $81 million to $85 million restoring the old hotel, with the Norfolk firm Hanbury Evans Wright Vlattas. The Hunt Room’s hearth was rebuilt brick by brick, the Crystal Ballroom was returned to its original size and the pool area known as The Plunge was refurbished. The historic hotel reopened on March 7, 2018, with 85 rooms and suites.

The oceanfront wing and the old Beach Club were demolished in 2015, and a new Beach Club, a Marriott and an Embassy Suites have since opened on that land. In June 2026 the three-hotel complex was sold to Wheelock Street Capital. The historic hotel continues to operate as part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for Room 606 or any sixth-floor room when you book, and call the hotel afterward to confirm the request.
• Have a drink in the Hunt Room or the basement social club staff call the Ghost Bar, and ask the bartender for their own stories.
• Look for Ghostcat’s paw prints on the back staircase, and listen for the piano in the Crystal Ballroom.
• Take a tasting at Tarnished Truth Distilling Company, which describes itself as the first distillery built into a US hotel.
• Book the hotel direct or through Booking.com, and add your Room 606 request in the notes.
• Combine your stay with the rest of our Virginia Beach haunted places, or drive up the peninsula to Newport News for the Boxwood Inn.

More haunted hotels nearby

• The Boxwood Inn, Newport News: an 1897 mansion where Nannie Curtis is said to keep house
• Edgewood Plantation, Charles City: a haunted plantation inn on Route 5 near Williamsburg
• Haunted places in Virginia Beach: the rest of the city’s ghost stories
• Haunted hotels in Virginia

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.

• Visit Virginia Beach: The haunted hotel on the hill
• Visit Virginia Beach: The most haunted places in Virginia Beach
• Coastal Virginia Magazine: Coastal Virginia haunted history
• 13News Now: Haunted Cavalier Hotel attracting some unexpected guests
• Wikipedia: Cavalier Hotel
• Virginia Department of Historic Resources: Cavalier Hotel (134-0503)
• Virginia Tourism: The history of the Cavalier
• Hotel Online: Gold Key | PHR completes four-year renovation of The Cavalier

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