Haunted hotel guide · Glenwood Springs, Colorado

The Haunted Hotel Colorado, Glenwood Springs: Walter's Cigar, Nurse Bobbie and Room 661

Two presidents summered here, the Navy turned it into a hospital, and its basement served as a morgue. The Hotel Colorado is one of the few historic hotels that tells its own ghost stories.

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

4.2/5Haunted Rooms Score

1893Year opened

Suite 661Most requested room

Check availabilityMeet the ghosts

The Hotel Colorado rises over Pine Street in Glenwood Springs, a cream brick Italianate resort with twin bell towers, built by silver magnate Walter Devereux and opened on June 10, 1893. It sits across the river from the Glenwood Hot Springs pool that Devereux also developed, and it has welcomed guests for more than 130 years. It is one of the standout stays on our list of haunted hotels in Colorado.

Unlike many old hotels, this one is happy to talk about its ghosts. Its own blog describes cigar smoke credited to a gentleman called Walter, a gardenia perfume linked to a wartime nurse, a woman in a floral dress in tower suite 661, and an old woman seen at a basement window. Local press add elevators that move on their own and a woman’s scream heard between 2 and 4 a.m.

The ghosts of Hotel Colorado

Walter and the cigar smoke

The hotel’s best-known spirit is a gentleman guests call Walter, named after founder Walter Devereux. He is said to be seen in the halls and lobby in the evening, and his calling card is the smell of cigar smoke, even though nobody has been allowed to smoke indoors for years.

Not everyone agrees on who he is. Local author Kathy Rippy Fleming believes the smoker is really E.E. Lucas, who joined the hotel as controller in 1893, became general manager in 1905, bought the place in 1916 and owned it until his death in 1927.

Bobbie, the Navy nurse

During World War II the hotel was a naval hospital. The story told by the hotel is that a nurse called Bobbie was killed by a jealous lover, an officer stationed there, and that both were quietly shipped out to hide what happened until hospital workers let the story slip. There is no record that confirms it, so treat it as hotel lore.

What guests report is a perfume. Diners and staff have noticed a sweet scent drifting from one table to the buffet and back at lunch and dinner. Some guests have named it as Gardenia, a perfume popular in the 1930s and 1940s that is no longer made.

The woman in tower suite 661

Suite 661, the larger of the tower suites, is the room people ask for. The hotel tells of a man who fell ill here in 1993. His wife kept opening the windows for fresh air, and another woman, whom nobody else could account for, kept closing them, telling her the draft was bad for him. It went on for the three days he was sick.

Many guests since have described waking to find a woman in a floral dress standing over the bed. Wikipedia’s summary of the hotel’s reports also mentions a female figure peering over sleeping male guests, which fits the same story.

The old woman at the basement window

In 1993 a houseman called Dave was on his rounds when he saw an elderly woman peering into a basement window with her hands cupped around her face. The window well was deep, and he worried she had fallen in. He switched on the light, looked back, and she was gone.

The basement has another story. A security guard leading a night tour of six people outside the executive housekeeper’s office says the whole group heard two women talking and a typewriter clicking next door. The room was empty, and there is no record of a typewriter ever being kept there.

A girl with a ball, a scream and a moving elevator

Other reports collected over the years include a young girl in Victorian clothes playing with a ball, a male presence on the fifth floor, and an elevator that travels between floors with nobody in it. The Denver Gazette has reported guests hearing a woman’s scream, knocks and flickering lights between 2 and 4 a.m. The scream is often linked to a chambermaid said to have been murdered in a love triangle; the room tied to the story is now used for storage.

Some people also repeat a legend that the Ute people, forced off this land in 1880, cursed the site. That is a story told about many Western towns, and nothing in the record supports it.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Tower suite 661: The larger bell tower suite, home of the woman in the floral dress. Request it by number when you book.
• The fifth floor: Where a male presence is most often reported.
• The dining room: Look for the gardenia perfume around lunch and dinner.
• The lobby and halls: Evening cigar smoke from “Walter”.
• The basement: The wartime morgue, the window where the old woman was seen and the room where voices and a typewriter were heard.

History of Hotel Colorado

Walter Devereux made his fortune in Aspen silver and turned his attention to Glenwood Springs, where he opened the hot springs pool in 1888. Construction of the hotel began in 1891 at a cost of $850,000. New York architects Boring & Tilton modeled it on the Villa Medici in Rome, using local cream Roman brick and Peach Blow sandstone. It opened on June 10, 1893, with fireworks, a ballroom orchestra and a midnight dinner for 300 couples. The grounds had a Victorian garden, a bird sanctuary, tennis courts, a tall fountain and an indoor waterfall.

It quickly became the summer retreat of the West. Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft made extended stays, giving it the nickname “the little White House of the West”. The hotel says Molly Brown and several notorious gangsters were guests, and Wikipedia lists visitors from Buffalo Bill to Tom Mix, who filmed a movie here in 1926. A popular story says the teddy bear was born here in 1905, when maids gave Roosevelt a stuffed bear sewn from scraps. It is a charming claim, but the more widely accepted origin of the teddy bear is elsewhere, so take it as local legend.

The Navy leased the hotel in 1942, and the U.S. Naval Convalescent Hospital opened in 1943, treating more than 6,500 patients by the end of 1945 before it closed in 1946. The basement was used as a morgue. During recent restoration work, crews found that the Navy had poured concrete into most of the old fireplaces, and they uncovered a Navy brig in the basement.

The hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 and joined Historic Hotels of America in 2007. In 2018 it was bought by the Melville family, who started a $10 million restoration. Meeting spaces reopened in 2019, and from 2022 guest rooms were remodeled half a floor at a time, with historic furniture set aside for signature suites and a planned hall of history.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for tower suite 661 or a fifth-floor room when you book, and accept that room numbers cannot be guaranteed.
• Most reports come between 2 and 4 a.m., so a late night in the halls is your best chance.
• Eat in the dining room and see if you notice a perfume nobody is wearing.
• The Glenwood Hot Springs pool is a short walk over the river, so pack a swimsuit.
• Pair the trip with a night at the Hotel Jerome in Aspen, about an hour up the valley.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Hotel Jerome, Aspen: a silver boom hotel about an hour away
• The Delaware Hotel, Leadville: Mary Coffey and the silver camp at 10,000 feet
• The Stanley Hotel, Estes Park: Colorado’s most famous haunted hotel
• Haunted hotels in Colorado

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.

• Hotel Colorado: Ghost stories of the Hotel Colorado
• Wikipedia: Hotel Colorado
• Colorado Meetings + Events: Hotel Colorado embarks on major guest room upgrade
• 9News: Renovation reveals Hotel Colorado's hidden history
• Denver Gazette: Colorado's most haunted hotels

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