The Haunted Boulder Hot Springs Inn, Montana: Simone's Suite and the Ghost Who Wanted Tea

Boulder Hot Springs Inn and Spa sits off Montana Highway 69, a few miles southeast of the small town of Boulder and about halfway between Helena and Butte. A saloon and bathhouse stood here by 1863, the main hotel followed in the 1880s and 1890s, and the property became a fashionable resort that is said to have drawn presidents. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Today it is a quiet retreat with nearly 30 themed rooms, geothermal pools and a strict no alcohol, no drugs and no smoking policy. It is one of the more peaceful haunted hotels in Montana.

It also has one of the state’s best-known ghosts. Simone is said to have worked at the hotel and to have died there, and she has a suite named after her. The staff are relaxed about her. When renovations disturbed her, the story goes, the way to calm her down was a cup of tea.

The ghosts of Boulder Hot Springs

Simone

Simone is the inn’s famous resident. The legend, as the staff tell it, is that she was a woman who worked at the hotel and argued with a mining executive, who stabbed her in the office behind the counter in the oldest part of the building. Most tellings make him a Butte man; a 2019 student newspaper report that quoted the general manager said Billings. Older versions, including our original guide and Wikipedia’s summary, describe her as a prostitute who was murdered at the hotel. No record of her name or death has been published, so she belongs to legend rather than history.

What people agree on is her character. General manager Kerri Kumasaka told Montana’s Secretary of State in 2023 that Simone is friendly and not harmful. Some guests ask specially for her suite; others refuse to stay in it. Visitors have said she shows up as a light in their photos, and Kumasaka has told visiting groups that, on the advice of tribal leaders, staff leave food out for her at night.

The stove and the cup of tea

The best story comes from the restoration that began around 1990. Workers kept finding the stove switched on when nobody had touched it. According to the staff, it only stopped after the crew made Simone a cup of tea.

Staff also say that objects sometimes turn up in a different part of the building from where they were left, and they put that down to Simone as well.

The woman in the Victorian blouse

Anne Wilson Schaef, who bought the hotel when it was facing demolition, is said to have seen Simone herself in the older side of the building, wearing a white Victorian blouse and a black skirt. Kumasaka has said she has never seen her.

Voices and children in the halls

Our original guide also recorded guests hearing men’s voices with nobody there, sudden changes in temperature and the sound of children playing in the halls. These reports are older and less specific than the Simone stories, but they are part of the hotel’s reputation.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Simone's Suite: The inn’s most famous room, named after its ghost. Guests either ask for it or avoid it.
• The office: Where the legend says Simone was stabbed, behind the counter in the oldest part of the hotel.
• The older side of the building: Where the owner is said to have seen Simone in a white blouse and black skirt.

History of Boulder Hot Springs Inn & Spa

The springs here were known and used long before any hotel. The inn describes the site as a place used by the First People of this land, and the property has some 20 to 40 springs, with water coming out of the ground at around 140 to 160 degrees. It has to be cooled before it reaches the pools, and it also heats the building, a greenhouse and even the chicken coop.

According to the inn’s own history, a prospector named James E. Riley built a saloon and bathhouse here in 1863 for local miners and ranchers. He enlarged it in 1881 and began a hotel for about fifty guests, but died of smallpox in 1882. Abel C. Quaintance and Cornelius Griswold bought the springs and finished the hotel, and the National Register dates the building to 1883. In 1890 C. K. Kerrick of Minneapolis leased the property, added a large Victorian wing with a veranda and renamed it the Hotel May after his daughter, the same year the Northern Pacific’s Elkhorn line brought rail service.

In 1909 the Butte millionaire James A. Murray bought the springs. His 1910 renovation added arches, fountains, lobby frescoes and a Chinese-style card room, and covered the building in stucco in the California Mission style you see today. Staff say Theodore Roosevelt sat by the fireplace in the west wing after hunting trips, and that Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt and General Omar Bradley also visited.

Murray’s nephew, the future U.S. Senator James E. Murray, sold the hotel in 1940 to C. L. “Pappy” Smith, who ran it as the Diamond S Ranchotel. Later owners ran it as a cattle ranch and subdivided the land. From the late 1970s Stuart Lewin ran it for about eleven years, restored the Boulder Hot Springs name and had it listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. By 1989 it had closed, been condemned and was due to be demolished. Author Anne Wilson Schaef bought it around 1989 to 1990 with other owners, and the spa reopened in 1991. A limited partnership owns it today.

Restoration is still going on. The inn received a Montana historic preservation grant to repair the exterior, a project that means removing the stucco, repairing the frame and re-stuccoing the whole building, and it has said it still needs to raise more money because construction costs have gone up.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for Simone’s Suite when you book, and check in before dark to see the older side of the building.
• Leave time for the pools. There is an outdoor pool and separate indoor pools for men and women, with the men’s pool also used as a co-ed pool.
• Remember the house rules: no alcohol, drugs or smoking anywhere on the property.
• Hike straight from the inn into the neighboring national forest.
• Butte is about 40 minutes away, so combine your stay with our Old St. James Hospital ghost hunt.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Sacajawea Hotel, Three Forks: a 1910 railroad hotel about an hour southeast
• Fairweather Inn, Virginia City: an 1860s inn where we run sleepover ghost hunts
• Grand Union Hotel, Fort Benton: Montana’s oldest hotel and the Lady of Room 202
• Haunted hotels in Montana

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.

• Montana Secretary of State: Ghosts and geothermals at Boulder Hot Springs (2023)
• Boulder Hot Springs: History
• Boulder Hot Springs Inn, Spa and Retreat Center
• Wikipedia: Boulder Hot Springs Hotel
• The Nugget: Geothermal ghosts

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