The Haunted Enders Hotel, Soda Springs: A 1917 Main Street Hotel and Museum Back From the Brink

The Enders Hotel stands at 76 South Main Street in Soda Springs, a small town in southeast Idaho named for the natural carbonated springs that made it a landmark on the Oregon Trail. Built in 1917, it is a three-story brick building with the only pre-1950 front on Main Street, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1993. It is one of the haunted hotels in Idaho you can actually book again.

For years that was not true. By 2021 the hotel was closed and its phone disconnected, and for much of two decades a local museum was the building’s only tenant. Since 2022 a local team led by Terah Jones has brought it back as a working hotel with suites, a coffee shop and shared workspace. The ghost stories date from the quiet years, and they center on the museum floor and the old bar.

The ghosts of the Enders Hotel

The man in the bar

The best-known story at the Enders is about a man. Visitors and former guests have described a male figure in the hallways and around the old bar area, and local tradition says he was killed there in a violent fight.

We could not find a record of a killing at the Enders, and the hotel does not promote the story. Ghost sites tell two versions, one of a man shot dead and one of a man who fell down the stairs, and neither comes with a name or a date. Treat both as local legend. The bar itself has real history: the ground-floor bay that was a barber shop in 1919 had become a bar by the early 1990s, when it was leased to The Alibi Bar.

Lights in the museum

For much of the time the hotel was closed, the only part of the building open to the public was the museum. Museum visitors have long said they felt uneasy there, as if they were being watched, and some describe small lights moving where there should be none.

Those reports are the core of the Enders’ ghostly reputation. If you visit the museum in season, it is the place to linger.

Footsteps on the upper floors

Ghost sites that collect guest accounts add more. Staff are said to have heard footsteps and voices and to have seen a figure on the second and third floors, and guests have described a rocking chair moving by itself and a shape brushing past them in a hallway. These are anonymous accounts, so read them as stories rather than evidence.

A building that sat in the dark

BYU-Idaho Radio reported in 2024 that the hotel had been nearly empty for about twenty years before the current revival. Long-empty hotels collect stories, and many of the Enders’ tales come from that period, when the upper floors were silent and only the museum below them was lit.

The 2024 coverage of the reopening did not mention ghosts at all, so do not expect a ghost-themed stay. This is a working hotel that happens to have a story or two.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The museum floor: Where visitors report feeling uneasy and seeing light anomalies. Open seasonally.
• The hallways: Where a male figure has been described.
• The old bar area: Where local legend places the death of the man said to haunt the hotel.

History of Enders Hotel & Museum

The Enders was the idea of two bachelor brothers, William and Theodore Enders, who were unhappy with the lodging on offer to stockmen and tourists in Soda Springs. According to its National Register nomination, they acquired the land around 1916, borrowed $16,207 from the local country doctor, Ellis Kackley, and had C.K. Blocker build the hotel to a design credited to Herman Falkenberg. Work began in 1917 and the hotel was finished in 1919. In May 1919 William Enders leased it to George Sutherland, and the lease banned alcohol on the premises.

It is a three-story brick building in an early commercial style, with a rectangular ground floor and C-shaped upper floors so that every room has a window. When it opened, the ground floor held the lobby, a dining room, Skadden Hardware and a barber shop, and Dr. Kackley lived in the building. The second and third floors each had 24 guest rooms, most sharing showers and restrooms. It is the only building on Main Street whose front dates from before 1950.

The Enders family ran the hotel for most of fifty years, until 1976. Around 1935 the dining room was divided into apartments. It stayed the town’s main hotel until the first sizable motel opened in the late 1940s. Lynn and Beth Beus bought it in 1976 and Louise Collard in 1992, by which time the old barber shop was a bar and the hardware store a cafe. The hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 14, 1993, and a restoration followed around the turn of the century.

In later years it struggled. For about twenty years it stood nearly empty, with the Enders Museum as its main tenant, opening each summer from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend, and by the summer of 2021 the hotel was closed with its phone disconnected.

In 2022 Soda Springs resident Terah Jones stepped in with a plan to revive it. BYU-Idaho Radio reported in February 2024 that Jones and her team had renovated it into a fully operating hotel and business space, with 19 individually decorated suites, five more rooms with shared bathrooms, a coffee shop and a workspace open to anyone. The hotel also rents space to local businesses, and sits across Main Street from the town’s movie theater.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book one of the 19 restored suites if you want a private bathroom; the five other rooms share bathrooms.
• Visit in summer if you want to see the museum, which has opened from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
• Walk to the Soda Springs Geyser, which is released on a timer every hour on the hour.
• Ask staff about the building’s history rather than its ghosts; the hotel does not market itself as haunted.
• Combine the trip with Gooding, about three hours west, home to the Gooding University Inn and the Historic Gooding Hotel.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Gooding University Inn: a former tuberculosis hospital you can rent overnight
• Historic Gooding Hotel B&B: a railroad-era B&B with a headstone ghost story
• Old Idaho State Penitentiary, Boise: Idaho’s most famous haunted site
• Haunted hotels in Idaho

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.

• National Park Service: Enders Hotel National Register nomination
• Wikipedia: Enders Hotel
• BYU-Idaho Radio: Soda Springs resident brings the historic Enders Hotel back to life (2024)
• Bear River Heritage Area: Enders Hotel
• HauntedHouses.com: Enders Hotel
• Wikipedia: Soda Springs, Idaho

Booking links on this page are affiliate links. If you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.