Haunted hotel guide · Hot Springs, Arkansas

Haunted Arlington Hotel, Hot Springs: Room 824, the Bride at the Window and Al Capone's Floor

The twin-towered Arlington has looked down Central Avenue since 1924. Its staff now talk openly about the stories: a steaming bathroom in Room 824, cigar smoke in Capone’s suite and a woman in white on the seventh floor.

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

3.2/5Haunted Rooms Score

1924Current hotel opened

Room 824Most talked-about room

Check availabilityMeet the ghosts

The Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa is the grand hotel of Hot Springs, facing Bathhouse Row at the corner of Central Avenue and Fountain Street. It is the third Arlington: the first opened in 1875 and the second burned in 1923. Al Capone took the whole fourth floor, Babe Ruth stayed after spring training, and the hotel still pipes thermal spring water into its own bathhouse.

For years the hotel kept quiet about its ghosts, and older versions of this guide noted that staff denied them. That changed in the mid-2010s. In 2020 Carmen Jones, the hotel’s director of operations and an employee since 1997, told the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record that staff had been allowed to talk about the reports for about five years, and that requests for the haunted rooms were now frequent. Here are the stories, from Room 824 to Capone’s suite. For the rest of the state, see our guide to haunted hotels in Arkansas.

The ghosts of Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa

Room 824

Room 824 is the room people name most often. Guests have told staff that items fall off the bathroom shelf, the sink turns itself on and steams up the bathroom, and lights flicker while they sleep, with much of it happening between 3 and 4 am, according to the hotel’s director of operations in a 2020 Sentinel-Record interview.

Nobody has offered a story to explain why this room in particular. The hotel does not try to explain it either; it simply calls the events unexplained.

Cigar smoke in the Capone Suite

Al Capone regularly booked the whole fourth floor, and the Encyclopedia of Arkansas records his favorite room as 443, now sold as the Capone Suite. Guests there report the smell of cigar smoke in a non-smoking hotel, and a connecting doorknob that turns even though there is no knob on the other side. Hot Springs’ visitor bureau has wondered aloud whether it is Capone himself.

The woman in white on the seventh floor

Guests report a woman in a white gown walking the seventh-floor hall outside Room 723. Two guests there photographed what look like two footprints pressed into the carpet with nobody standing in them.

Older versions of the Arlington’s lore describe a woman in a wedding dress staring out of a window at the street. Whether she and the seventh-floor figure are the same story told two ways, nobody can say.

The soldier in the bathhouse and the flickering chandeliers

On the men’s side of the hotel’s bathhouse, a figure resembling a soldier has been seen bathing. Hot Springs was a major military recovery center in the 20th century, with the Army and Navy Hospital up the hill, so the image fits the town.

Downstairs, staff themselves describe lights in the Magnolia Room flickering and brightening during event setups, and one chandelier in the Venetian Dining Room brightening and dimming on its own, though all share the same wiring. Electricians found nothing wrong.

Older tales: the man in black, the bellhop and the girl in pink

Longer-running guest lore, not repeated by the hotel, adds a man in a black suit who walks into the laundry and waves, a ghostly bellhop on Capone’s fourth floor, and a little girl in a pink dress in the lobby. Treat these as stories passed around over the years.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 824: The eighth-floor room with the most reports: a sink that runs and steams the bathroom, falling items and early-morning flickering. Request it; it is not sold by name.
• Room 443, the Capone Suite: Capone’s favorite room on the fourth floor he used to book in full, and now a bookable suite. Guests report cigar smoke and a turning doorknob.
• Babe Ruth room: A room type named for Ruth, who came to Hot Springs for spring training and often stayed at the Arlington.
• Mineral Water Room: A room with hot springs water piped straight into the bathtub, unique to this hotel.

History of Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa

Hot Springs grew up around its thermal springs, and the Arlington was its showpiece. Railroad executive Samuel Fordyce helped finance the first Arlington with Samuel Stitt; it opened in 1875 as the largest hotel in Arkansas, on the site of today’s park across Fountain Street. It was razed and rebuilt bigger in 1893.

On April 5, 1923, an employee noticed smoke from an electrical panel. The fire spread slowly but leveled the building. William Pinkerton, founder of the detective agency, was a guest and is said to have sat on the veranda smoking a cigar rather than save his belongings. Ground was broken for the new Arlington across Fountain Street on October 25, 1923, and it was finished on November 28, 1924, to a Mediterranean design with twin towers by George R. Mann, primary architect of the Arkansas State Capitol.

The 1920s and 1930s were its peak. Al Capone regularly booked the whole fourth floor, Babe Ruth stayed after spring training, and Will Rogers, Kate Smith and George Raft visited. In 1928 Joe T. Robinson accepted the Democratic vice-presidential nomination on its front steps. Radio station KTHS, the city’s first, broadcast from a tower between the towers.

Later decades were harder. The hotel was remodeled in the late 1990s, and in 2016 the city issued a notice of unsafe conditions, though it later backed off. New owners, Sky Capital of San Antonio, had renovation plans approved by the Hot Springs Historic District Commission in October 2021, and after COVID delays a restoration of about $30 million began in 2023, aiming to return the facade to its 1924 look. It was reported to be in its finishing stages in 2025. The hotel stayed open throughout and has around 480 rooms.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask about the restoration when you book so you know which floors are finished.
• Request Room 824, or book the Capone Suite (Room 443) if you want the gangster history and the cigar-smoke stories.
• Book a soak in the hotel’s Thermal Bathhouse; it uses the same spring water as Bathhouse Row.
• Walk Bathhouse Row and the Grand Promenade after dark; they are across the street.
• The Lobby Bar has live music. Ask staff about the stories; they have been allowed to talk about them since the mid-2010s.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Capital Hotel, Little Rock: about an hour northeast, with the same architect’s 1908 lobby
• Empress of Little Rock: an 1888 mansion inn with four ghosts
• Crescent Hotel, Eureka Springs: the state’s most famous haunted hotel, with nightly ghost tours
• Haunted hotels in Arkansas

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.

• Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa (official site)
• CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas: Arlington Hotel
• Hot Springs Sentinel-Record: Unexplained happenings commonplace at Arlington (2020)
• Visit Hot Springs: Spa stories to tell in the dark
• Wikipedia: Arlington Hotel (Hot Springs National Park)
• THV11: Historic building restoration in Hot Springs

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