The Haunted Bayfront Marin House, St. Augustine

The Bayfront Marin House looks like one long, porch-wrapped inn on Avenida Menendez, facing Matanzas Bay a few blocks south of the Bridge of Lions. In fact it is three houses stitched together: a coquina town house from Spain’s second period of rule, owned in the 1780s by a Minorcan colonist named Francisco Marin, and two Victorian cottages joined to it by a Gilded Age sea captain in 1893.

St. Augustine’s ghost tour companies say Francisco Marin is still in residence and likes a practical joke: noises from rooms that are empty, music on dead phone lines, and a feeling of being watched late at night. The inn’s own history page sticks to the facts and does not mention ghosts, so treat the haunting as local lore. The house was also one of the inns covered in Greg Jenkins’ 2012 book Haunted Inns, Pubs and Eateries of St. Augustine.

The ghost of the Bayfront Marin House

Francisco Marin, the owner who stayed

Francisco Marin was a Minorcan colonist who had taken refuge in St. Augustine, and the inn’s history says he acquired this house and lot in the 1780s, during the Second Spanish Period. In 1806 the Spanish governor granted the title to his son, Francisco Marin Jr. The family name is still on the house today.

Ghost City Tours, one of the city’s largest tour companies, describes him as a trickster spirit who never left. In its telling, guests report odd noises from empty rooms, strange music on the phone lines and a restless feeling late at night. It is a mischievous haunting rather than a frightening one, which suits a building that has been a home, an apartment house, a rental and an inn.

Footsteps from an empty room

The story most often repeated is a simple one. A guest complained about loud noises from the room above, only to be told by staff that the room was empty that night. It is the kind of report that turns up at almost every old inn in St. Augustine, but here it is pinned to Marin, the house’s longest-remembered owner.

Music on a dead line

The stranger tale involves a telephone technician. According to the accounts collected by local tour writers, he was working on the inn’s phone system while the lines were down and heard a tune playing from the receiver. Nobody could say where it came from. Tour guides put that down to Marin, too.

What we can and cannot confirm

The history of the house is well documented by the inn, which traces it through the 1788 Roque map, the Marin family’s ownership and the later owners. The ghost stories are not. They come from tour companies and from Jenkins’ book on the city’s haunted inns, and the inn itself does not promote them. We report them as stories guests and guides tell.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The original Marin House: The coquina core of the inn, home to the Francisco Marin Room, the Coquina Suite, Governor White and Lyndsay Michelle. The obvious choice if you want to sleep where the story starts.
• The upstairs rooms: Where the guest in the best-known story heard noises from an empty room above.
• The phones: If your room phone plays music when nobody is on the line, you have a story to tell at breakfast.
• The bayfront porches: Not a hot spot in the stories, but the best place in the house to sit after dark and watch the lights on Matanzas Bay.

History of Bayfront Marin House

A wooden building in poor condition already stood on this lot on the 1788 Roque map of St. Augustine. Francisco Marin, a Minorcan colonist who had taken refuge in the city, acquired the house and lot in the 1780s, and in 1806 Governor White granted the title to Francisco Marin Jr.

The house at the back of the lot, on Marine Street, was built during the Second Spanish Period to a plan that follows a 1573 royal Spanish ordinance for defensible town houses, with its walls on the street line and its entrance on the south side. Like many of the city’s colonial houses, its walls are coquina, the local shell stone also used to build the Castillo de San Marcos.

In 1893 Captain Henry Belknap, who had first come to St. Augustine as a guest of Flagler’s Hotel Alcazar, bought the Victorian Hopkins Cottage on what was then Bay Street. That same year he bought Andrew Burgess’s cottage, moved it east on the lot and attached it to his home, then bought the remodeled coquina Marin house and added wooden sections to it. The result was one rambling house spanning the colonial period to the Flagler era.

After Belknap died in 1909, John Cambell bought the building and turned it into apartments. Beulah Robinson Lewis of Virginia bought it in 1932, and her family kept it until 1988, when the Graubard and Stacklum families remodeled it as The Villas de Marin, a short-term rental property that ran for 14 years. After a full restoration it opened as the Bayfront Marin House bed and breakfast in July 2003.

Today the inn’s rooms are spread across all three original houses: the Marin House, the former Burgess Cottage and the former Hopkins Cottage, with names like Captain Henry, Robinson Lewis and Bridge of Lions that tell the building’s story. The Castillo de San Marcos, the Plaza de la Constitucion and the starting points of most evening ghost walks are a short stroll up the bayfront.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for a room in the original Marin House. The Francisco Marin Room and the Coquina Suite are the obvious picks for a ghost-minded stay.
• Bring the dog. The inn describes itself as pet friendly; check the details with the inn before you book.
• Walk the bayfront at night. The Casablanca Inn, home of the Lantern Lady legend, is a few minutes north on the same street.
• Take a ghost walk. Most of St. Augustine’s evening tours start within a short walk. See our guide to haunted places in St. Augustine.
• Cross the bridge to the lighthouse. The St. Augustine Lighthouse is a short drive over the Bridge of Lions and runs its own after-dark tours.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Casablanca Inn on the Bay, St. Augustine: the Lantern Lady’s inn, a few minutes up the bayfront
• St. Francis Inn, St. Augustine: the 1791 inn and Lily’s Room, a few blocks inland
• Casa Monica, St. Augustine: Flagler-era grandeur and a busy fourth floor
• Haunted hotels in Florida
• Haunted hotels in St. Augustine

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.

• Bayfront Marin House: History of the inn
• Bayfront Marin House (official site)
• Florida's Historic Coast: Bayfront Marin House
• Ghost City Tours: Haunted Hotels in St. Augustine
• Florida Trippers: Haunted hotels in St. Augustine
• Greg Jenkins, Haunted Inns, Pubs and Eateries of St. Augustine (2012), contents

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