The Haunted Lakeside Inn, Mount Dora, Florida

The Lakeside Inn has been taking guests since 1883, when it opened as a ten-room wooden hotel looking out over Lake Dora. It has survived changing fashions, a donation to a college, a foreclosure and a near miss with the wrecking ball, and it is now known as the oldest continuously operating hotel in Florida. Calvin Coolidge spent a month here, and the long veranda and lakefront lawn still look much as they did in the photographs on its walls.

A hotel with that much history collects stories. Mount Dora’s ghost walks stop here, and the guides talk about a barkeep who never left the old speakeasy, a heartbroken chambermaid in Room 300 and a pair of 1930s lovers who still stroll the halls arm in arm. The inn itself keeps its marketing on the history rather than the hauntings, so this is a stay for people who like a quiet ghost story with their porch and their lake view.

The ghosts of the Lakeside Inn

The barkeep from the speakeasy

The story most guides tell first starts below the lobby. In 1952 the inn opened the Kumquat Lounge in its basement, in the space now known as the Speakeasy, and local legend says the room served drinks long before that, during Prohibition. A wooden panel in the floor marks the old way down.

According to Andrew Mullen, who led the inn’s ghost tour when Bay News 9 joined it in 2014, the barkeep from those days is said to rise up through the floor and wander over to Tremain’s, the bar at the north end of the lobby, where he takes a seat and orders a drink of his own. Nobody claims to know his name. The lounge moved upstairs and became Tremain’s in 1986, so if the story is true, he simply followed the bar.

The chambermaid in Room 300

Room 300 is the room every ghost walk mentions. The tale told by guides is that a chambermaid died there on the bed, of a broken heart, after a book she was holding fell to the floor. It is a sad, odd little story with no name or date attached, and there is no record we could find of a death in the room. Treat it as the folklore it is.

Guests who ask for Room 300 tend to report the usual signs that come with a haunted reputation: a feeling of being watched and small noises at night. None of that has been documented, but the room’s place in Mount Dora’s ghost lore is secure.

Al Capone's quick exit

Room 300 has a second story attached. Guides say Al Capone stayed in it because it was close to an exit, ready for a quick getaway, and FOX 13 noted in 2021 that there is talk of Capone spending a night at the inn. No guest register or newspaper report confirms it, and similar Capone stories are told about hotels all over Florida, so it belongs firmly in the legend column. It does explain why people ask for the room.

Two lovers from the 1930s

The Orlando Sentinel’s 2013 roundup of local hauntings added a gentler pair: two doomed lovers from the 1930s who are still seen strolling arm in arm through the halls and passing straight through doors. The story fits the inn’s golden era, when the Gables and Terrace buildings had just opened and the hotel was full of winter visitors, but no names are attached to it.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 300: The room in the chambermaid and Capone stories. Request it by number when you book directly with the inn.
• Tremain's Tavern: The lobby bar where the speakeasy barkeep is said to take a seat. Open to non-guests, so anyone can come for a drink.
• The Speakeasy below the lobby: Home of the 1952 Kumquat Lounge and, legend says, a Prohibition bar before that. The floor panel is the barkeep’s way up.
• The guest hallways: Where the 1930s lovers are said to walk and vanish through doors.

History of Lakeside Inn

In 1882 four Mount Dora boosters, John Alexander, John and Annie Donnelly and Colonel John McDonald, formed a partnership to give the young town a hotel. The two-story, ten-room Alexander House opened in 1883, built from termite-resistant Georgia pine. Emma Boone, an experienced hotel keeper from Boston, took charge in 1884, bought the place in 1893 and renamed it the Lake House. When she married George Thayer in 1903, the couple renamed it the Lakeside Inn. The railroad had reached Mount Dora in 1887, and the inn grew with it: a three-story south wing in 1905, the Gatehouse in 1908, a big boathouse in 1910 and the Sunset Cottage in 1914.

In 1924 Charles Edgerton, a longtime guest, bought the inn with partners and about 100 local investors. Their $250,000 renovation, finished in 1930, added the Gables and Terrace buildings, a swimming pool, a new lobby and dining room, and formal gardens. That January, former President Calvin Coolidge and Grace Coolidge stayed for a month after he left the White House, and Coolidge dedicated the new buildings. The Edgerton family also entertained visitors such as Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Dwight Eisenhower, according to a history of the inn published on FamousHotels.org.

Dick Edgerton took over management from his father in 1935 and ran the inn for decades. The Kumquat Lounge opened in the basement in 1952, and in 1979 the inn appeared in the film Honky Tonk Freeway. That same year Dick Edgerton donated the property to Berry College in Rome, Georgia. A run of owners followed: Richard Lee and Associates renamed it Lee’s Lakeside Inn in 1980 and put it up for sale in 1984.

The low point came in 1985, when an investor group led by brothers Richard and Jim Ferrell bought the inn less than 90 days before it was due to be demolished, and renovated it. The lounge moved upstairs as Tremain’s in 1986, and the inn was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. After a foreclosure, James Barggren and John Dempsey bought it at a sheriff’s auction in 1990.

Jim and Alexandra Gunderson bought the Lakeside Inn in 2010 and have been restoring it ever since, from the dock to the guest rooms and a collection of postcards and memorabilia. The same team later restored the 1927 Hacienda Hotel in New Port Richey, which has ghost stories of its own. Today the inn has about 90 rooms, a lakefront pool and dock, and the Beauclaire restaurant beside the veranda.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for Room 300 by number and book directly with the inn if you want it. Third-party bookings only promise a room type.
• Take a Mount Dora ghost walk. Local walking tours cover the inn and the nearby Donnelly House; FOX 35 listed tickets from about $25, and reservations are required.
• Have a drink in Tremain’s Tavern after dark. It is the barkeep’s favorite seat, and the bar is open to non-guests.
• Look at the walls. Historic photos and postcards are displayed through the public rooms, and the Coolidge Room has its own display about the 1930 stay.
• Mount Dora is about 45 minutes from Orlando, so the inn makes a quiet base away from the theme parks. See our guide to haunted places in Orlando for more nearby.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Casa Monica, St. Augustine: an 1888 castle hotel in America’s oldest city, about two hours northeast
• The Vinoy, St. Petersburg: the 1925 resort where visiting ballplayers report ghosts
• Haunted places in St. Augustine: the most haunted town in Florida
• Haunted hotels in Florida
• Haunted places in Orlando

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.

• Lakeside Inn: History
• Lake & Sumter Style: Lakeside Inn, Florida's oldest hotel, thrives in Mount Dora
• FamousHotels.org: Hotel History, Lakeside Inn
• Bay News 9: Mount Dora ghost walk (2014)
• Orlando Sentinel: Hunting for a local haunting? Here are spirits' hangouts (2013)
• FOX 13: Historic Mount Dora hotel makes a point to keep past alive
• FOX 35: Book a ghost tour in this Florida town

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