The Haunted Hotel Majestic, San Francisco: The Lady of Room 407

The Hotel Majestic stands on the corner of Sutter and Gough Streets on the edge of Pacific Heights, a cream-colored Edwardian building with rounded bay windows that has been taking guests for well over a century. It survived the 1906 earthquake and fire with the flames stopping two blocks away at Van Ness Avenue, and it calls itself the oldest and longest-operating hotel in San Francisco.

It is also one of the city’s best-known haunted hotels in San Francisco. Guests and staff describe a young woman on the fourth floor, usually linked to the family who built the hotel, and Room 407 is the room people ask for. Bathtubs that fill on their own, keys jingling in empty hallways and a clerk who felt two hands push her in Room 408 complete the picture.

The ghosts of the Hotel Majestic

The young woman on the fourth floor

The Majestic’s ghost is a young woman, and the most common version of the story ties her to the Schmitt family who built the hotel. Long-time neighbors say she was the daughter of Milton Schmitt, a state legislator who lived in the building, and that she simply refused to leave when the family sold up. She is most often named Lisa, and a portrait of a young woman in the lobby is said to be her.

The details shift depending on who tells it. The San Francisco Chronicle has described her as Schmitt’s granddaughter. Records show Milton was born in 1878 and built the house with his parents, Maurice and Ella, which makes a grown daughter living here in the early 1900s hard to square. One local blogger who went looking for the famous portrait noted that a second, larger portrait of a different woman hangs on another wall. The name and the family tie are best treated as legend.

Room 407

Room 407 is said to have been her room, and it is where most of the activity is reported. Guests describe a woman in old-fashioned dress, footsteps outside the door, keys jangling in the hallway, and faucets turning on in the middle of the night. The claw-foot bathtubs come up again and again: guests say they have woken to find the tub filling with nobody near it.

A production manager working on the film Sweet November, which shot in San Francisco, is said to have felt her bed shake so hard she assumed it was an earthquake. There had been none. In 2017 UC Berkeley’s North Gate Radio featured Room 407 in a segment on the city’s haunted hotel.

The push in Room 408

The most often repeated staff account comes from next door. A clerk delivering pillows to Room 408 said she felt two hands on her shoulders pushing her backward, though she was alone. It is the only story at the Majestic with anything like a hostile edge, and most people who tell it still describe the ghost as playful rather than angry.

The skeptic's view

Skeptics point out that the building’s plumbing is more than a century old and that changes in water pressure can make taps run and old tubs fill. That is a fair point, and it is worth knowing before you spend the night listening for the bath. The hotel itself has leaned into the stories over the years and treats the ghost as a friendly part of the house.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 407: The young woman’s room and the one guests ask for. Reports of footsteps, running taps, tubs filling and a figure in period dress.
• Room 408: Next door, where a clerk said two unseen hands pushed her.
• The fourth-floor hallway: Footsteps and keys jingling outside the rooms at night.
• The lobby portrait: The painting of a young woman said to be the ghost. Find it before you go up.

History of Hotel Majestic

The Majestic was built in 1902 for the Schmitt family: Maurice and Ella Schmitt and their son Milton, who later served in the California legislature. Architect Malcolm Cressy designed it on what had been the family’s estate on Sutter Street, and it was soon turned into a hotel. Most accounts date the Hotel Majestic name to around 1904.

On April 18, 1906, the earthquake struck and fires burned across much of the city for days. The Majestic came through undamaged. Firefighters made their stand along Van Ness Avenue, two blocks east, and the destruction stopped there. That is why so much of the neighborhood around the hotel still looks Edwardian, and why the Majestic can claim a longer run as a hotel than almost anything downtown, where nearly every building is a post-fire replacement.

Its history is not entirely unbroken. For a stretch of the 20th century the building was converted to apartments, before being renovated and restored as a hotel. Owners Adrian and Jacquelyn Scharlach carried out an extensive renovation in 1965 that added a fifth floor, and the hotel was restored again in 1985. In 2002 Senator Dianne Feinstein issued a proclamation recognizing it as the longest-operating hotel in San Francisco.

C. B. Patel bought the hotel in 2011. It still trades on its antiques, French and English decorative pieces and early 20th-century details. One older guide places the young woman’s room on the second floor, in Room 207, but nearly every account, including the hotel’s own staff stories, puts her on the fourth floor.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book, then call the hotel and ask for Room 407 by number. If it is taken, ask for another fourth-floor room or Room 408 next door.
• Look for the portrait of the young woman in the lobby before you go upstairs, and see if you agree with the blogger who thinks it is the wrong painting.
• Have a nightcap in the Butterfly Lounge off the lobby; it is open Tuesday to Saturday evenings.
• There is no hotel parking. Use a nearby garage or come by bus; the hotel is on Sutter Street a short ride from Union Square.
• Pair your stay with the Queen Anne Hotel, about a block west on Sutter Street, for a two-night Pacific Heights ghost weekend.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Queen Anne Hotel: Miss Mary Lake’s Victorian school, a short walk along Sutter Street
• Haunted hotels in San Francisco: every haunted stay in the city
• Claremont Club and Spa: the haunted hillside resort across the bay in Berkeley
• Haunted places in San Francisco: from Alcatraz to the city’s old mansions
• Haunted hotels in California
• Haunted hotels in San Francisco

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 Majestic (San Francisco)
• Hotel Majestic: about
• Atlas Obscura: Hotel Majestic
• San Francisco Chronicle: The creepiest places to fall asleep in California
• North Gate Radio (UC Berkeley): San Francisco's haunted hotel
• Haunt Jaunts: The 3 haunting hotels of Sutter Street

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