The Haunted Hotel Vendome, Prescott: Abby and Room 16

Prescott, the old territorial capital of Arizona, is a town of red brick and Victorian houses in the pine country north of Phoenix. The Hotel Vendome sits on South Cortez Street, a short walk from Whiskey Row and the courthouse square. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the only unaltered two-story early 20th century hotel in Prescott built for tourists, and inside it still has its fir staircase, cast iron radiators and claw-foot tubs.

It also has Abby. The story says she came to Prescott for her tuberculosis, lost the hotel with her husband, stayed on as a guest and died in Room 16 with her cat Noble after her husband went out one night and never came back. Staff report footsteps in the empty room and a service bell that rings for it when nobody is checked in. As local historians point out, the records do not quite fit the story, which makes it all the more interesting.

The ghosts of the Hotel Vendome

Abby

The story told in Prescott goes like this. In the early 1900s a young woman named Abby, sometimes given the surname Byr, came to Prescott’s dry mountain air to treat her tuberculosis, as many people did. She married, and she and her husband bought the Vendome. They lost it over unpaid taxes, but the new owners let them stay on as guests. One night in 1921 her husband went out to fetch medicine, or on an errand, and never returned. Abby shut herself in Room 16, refused to eat or drink and died there.

Sightings reportedly began after World War II. Guests describe a woman in the room or the hall, footsteps and voices in Room 16 when it is empty, and a feeling of being watched. Legends of America calls her a benevolent ghost who is still waiting for her husband to come home. Workers at the hotel told local historian Parker Anderson that the old service bell sometimes rings for Room 16 when nobody is staying in it.

Noble the cat

Abby’s cat Noble is part of the story too. In one version Abby shut him in the closet when she locked herself in, and both of them died. Guests in Room 16 and nearby rooms say they have felt a cat brush against their legs or jump onto the bed at night, when there is no cat in the hotel.

What the records say

Local historians have been open about the problems with the story. Parker Anderson, writing for the Sharlot Hall Museum in 2001, called Prescott one of the least haunted cities in America and noted that most guests sleep in Room 16 every year without anything happening. A later Sharlot Hall article on haunted Prescott points out that there is no death record, newspaper report or archive document for Abby, Noble or a 1921 death at the hotel.

The ownership records are also hard to square with the tale. According to the hotel’s National Register history, Jack Jones built the Vendome in 1917 and owned it until 1924, when he traded it for ranchland, so there is no obvious window for Abby and her husband to have owned it and lost it before 1921. None of that stops staff hearing footsteps, and the hotel’s 100-plus years have left room for plenty of other guests to leave something behind.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 16: Abby’s room. The room most guests ask for, where footsteps, voices and the cat are reported, and the room the service bell rings for.
• The hallway outside Room 16: Where a woman thought to be Abby is reportedly seen.
• The old service bell: Workers at the hotel say the service bell sometimes rings for Room 16 when nobody is staying in it.

History of Hotel Vendome

Prescott was short of rooms in the 1910s, and John “Jack” Benton Jones, a Texas cowboy turned Arizona rancher, built the Vendome on a vacant lot on Cortez Street to meet the demand. It was finished by November 1917, a two-story Colonial Revival building in dark red wire-cut brick with a corbelled cornice, a front porch and veranda and a wooden sign later overlaid with neon. It opened with 30 rooms and 16 baths, at $1.50 for a single and $2.50 for a double. Nobody is quite sure why he chose the name, though the Place Vendome in Paris is the obvious guess.

Cowboy film star Tom Mix is said to have stayed often in the 1910s and 1920s while making westerns around Prescott. In 1924 Jones traded the hotel to bakery owner Henry Brinkmeyer for 156 acres of ranchland, and it passed through several owners in the following decades, including the Salvation Army briefly in 1958. The Porvaznik family bought it that year and repaired years of neglect.

The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in November 1983, the same decade as a major renovation. Rooms without baths were combined into two-room suites, seven bathrooms were added and part of the front room became a bar, while the original fir staircase, wainscoting and doors, cast iron radiators and claw-foot tubs were kept. The hotel now has 20 rooms, all with private bathrooms, and air conditioning, though the old radiators still provide the heat.

Today the Vendome is a small, independent hotel with 16 king rooms and four king suites. BarVendome, off the lobby, serves craft beer and wine to guests and locals. The hotel’s own website focuses on its history rather than its ghost, but the story of Abby is one of the best known in northern Arizona and appears in most guides to the state’s haunted hotels.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book direct for Room 16. Call or text the hotel on 928-776-0900 and ask for it; third-party sites cannot assign a room number.
• Plan your arrival. The front desk usually closes at 5pm, or 6pm on Fridays and Saturdays, so arrange a late check-in ahead of time.
• Know the layout. There is no elevator; rooms are on the ground floor and the second floor, reached by the original fir staircase.
• Walk Whiskey Row after dark. Prescott’s old saloon strip is a few minutes away, and the Hassayampa Inn, another haunted hotel, is a few blocks away.
• Leave pets at home. The hotel does not allow them, which also means any cat you feel on the bed is not a real one.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Hassayampa Inn, Prescott: Faith the young bride and the bell tower suite, a few blocks away
• Connor Hotel, Jerome: a haunted mining town hotel about an hour north
• Jerome Grand Hotel: Jerome’s former hospital, on the hill above town
• Hotel Monte Vista, Flagstaff: one of Arizona’s most famous haunted hotels, about 90 minutes away
• Haunted hotels in Arizona

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.

• Wikipedia: Hotel Vendome (Prescott, Arizona)
• Sharlot Hall Museum: The Hotel Vendome in Prescott (2024)
• Sharlot Hall Museum: Old ghosts I have known hereabouts (2001)
• Sharlot Hall Museum: Haunted Prescott
• Legends of America: Sleeping With Ghosts in Arizona
• Hotel Vendome: official site
• Hotel Vendome: FAQ and policies

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