Haunted hotel guide · Livingston, Montana

The Haunted Murray Hotel, Livingston: The Mistress, the Girl in White and the Peckinpah Suite

A 1904 railroad hotel across from the old Yellowstone depot, with a hand-cranked elevator, a suite once home to Sam Peckinpah, and owners who will happily tell you about the guests who never checked out.

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

3.5/5Haunted Rooms Score

1904Year opened

1905Hand-cranked Otis elevator

Visit hotel websiteMeet the ghosts

The Murray Hotel sits on the corner of Park and Second streets in downtown Livingston, directly across from the Northern Pacific depot where Yellowstone-bound passengers once stepped off the train. It opened in 1904 as the Elite Hotel, still runs a hand-cranked Otis elevator from 1905, and has a guest list that runs from Will Rogers and the Queen of Denmark to Sam Peckinpah, who lived in its largest suite. It is one of the liveliest stops on our list of haunted hotels in Montana.

Unlike many hotels, the Murray does not shy away from its ghosts. Owners Dan and Kathleen Kaul heard the stories from the previous owner when they bought the hotel in 1991, and Dan Kaul told Bozeman Magazine that guests often ask for “a room with a ghost.” Here are the stories staff and guests tell, the history behind them, and how to book the suite at the center of it all.

The ghosts of the Murray Hotel

Walter Hill's mistress in the Peckinpah Suite

In the late 1930s or early 1940s Walter Hill, a son of railroad builder James J. Hill, kept a suite at the Murray made from three rooms, with hand-painted French wallpaper, crystal chandeliers and gold leaf ceilings. The hotel’s own history says he and Will Rogers once tried to bring a saddle horse up to the third floor in the elevator.

According to Dan Kaul, one of Hill’s mistresses haunts that suite. The story goes that she died young, of a broken heart, and is still upset about it. The suite later became the home of film director Sam Peckinpah, and it is now the Peckinpah Suite. There is no record we could find of who the woman was, so treat her as the hotel’s legend rather than history.

The girl in the white dress

A former employee who was living in one of the upstairs two-room suites heard a young girl giggling at night. When she opened the door, she saw a girl of about 11 or 12 in a white dress, who faded away in front of her. She heard the giggling again later in the same part of the hotel but never saw the girl a second time.

Other guests have since described being woken by the sound of girls giggling in the hallways.

The woman in the window

People walking along Park Street have reported a woman standing in a second-story window of the hotel. When they look again, she is gone, and staff say the room behind that window is always empty when they check.

The man in the bathroom doorway

In 1999 a guest from Columbus, Ohio, was sharing an upstairs two-room suite with her sister when she woke to see a man in old-fashioned clothes, with dark facial hair, standing in the bathroom doorway. He moved toward the bed, and she felt her covers being pulled up toward her neck. She fled to her sister’s room. Years later she wrote to the hotel to ask whether anyone else had had the same experience in that room.

Moans in the basement

Employees have heard moaning in the basement, sometimes when the elevator is not moving, although the old machinery could explain some of the sounds. A former bartender said he saw an old man and an old woman together down there, and hung prayer flags in the space afterward.

Writer Stephen Byler, who bought the Peckinpah Suite as a place to write, later told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle he could not get any work done there: “there’s too many ghosts. I can’t concentrate.”

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The Peckinpah Suite: The former Walter Hill suite and Sam Peckinpah’s home from 1979 to 1984, said to be haunted by Hill’s mistress. Bullet holes are said to remain in the bedroom ceiling. Book by phone.
• The upstairs two-room suites: Where the girl in white was seen and where the 1999 guest woke to a man in the bathroom doorway. The hotel does not publish which suites, so ask staff.
• The second-floor windows on Park Street: Look up from the sidewalk at night for the woman in the window.
• The basement and elevator: Moans and an elderly couple reported by staff, beside the 1905 Otis elevator machinery. Not a guest area.

History of The Murray Hotel

Livingston grew up as a Northern Pacific Railway town, and it became an early rail gateway to Yellowstone National Park. In 1904 Josephine Kline opened the two-story Elite Hotel on the corner of Park and Second, across from the new Italianate depot completed in 1902. Its construction was financed by the Butte family of James E. Murray, who later became a U.S. senator for Montana. In 1905 the hotel installed a hand-cranked Otis elevator, for years the only elevator in Livingston, and it is still in use.

In the early 1920s, with Murray family money, the hotel was raised to four stories and grew to about 66 rooms. In 1925 the Murrays foreclosed on Kline and renamed the building the Murray Hotel; she contested the foreclosure until 1934. A cafe and lunch counter had opened in 1912, and in 1937 the hotel added a lounge with Art Deco banquettes. From 1956 to 1963 it was listed in the Green Book travel guide for Black motorists.

Passenger trains to Yellowstone ended in 1948 and Amtrak service to Livingston stopped in 1979, and the hotel declined along with rail travel. Cliff and Pat Miller bought it in 1978. Sam Peckinpah moved into the old Walter Hill suite in 1979 and stayed until 1984. Guests over the years have included Robert Redford, Jack Palance, Whoopi Goldberg, Margot Kidder, Rip Torn and Robert Wadlow, the world’s tallest man, who stayed in 1939.

A renovation around 1990 combined the old 66 rooms into 29 larger rooms and suites. Dan and Kathleen Kaul bought the Murray in 1991 and restored it, and in 2001 they began selling some suites to individual owners. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 as part of the Livingston Commercial Historic District. In 2015 Anthony Bourdain named the Murray one of his top 10 places to stay in the world, and filmed at the hotel and the Murray Bar for Parts Unknown. Kathleen Kaul still owns it today, alongside the Murray Bar, 2nd Street Bistro and the other businesses of the Murray Block.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Call (406) 222-1350 to book the Peckinpah Suite; it is the largest suite and cannot be booked online. In summer it starts at around $649 a night.
• Ask staff which upstairs suites have the most stories. Kaul has said guests often ask for “a room with a ghost.”
• Ride the 1905 hand-cranked Otis elevator at least once, and ask about the horse.
• The Murray Bar hosts live music and events; if you want a quiet night to listen for ghosts, ask for a room away from it.
• Livingston is about an hour north of Yellowstone’s north entrance at Gardiner. Winter rates are much lower than summer.
• Pair your stay with a soak at Chico Hot Springs in Paradise Valley, or a Haunted Rooms ghost hunt in Butte or Virginia City.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Chico Hot Springs, Pray: Percie Knowles and the rocking chair, in Paradise Valley south of Livingston
• Sacajawea Hotel, Three Forks: another railroad hotel, about an hour west
• The Pollard Hotel, Red Lodge: George in the lobby and the lady in yellow
• Haunted hotels in Montana

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.

• The Murray Hotel: official site (Murray Block)
• The Murray Hotel: Rooms and suites
• Wikipedia: The Murray Hotel
• SAH Archipedia: Murray Hotel
• Historic Montana: Murray Hotel
• Bozeman Magazine: A haunted hotel over the hill (2015)
• KULR-8: Historic Murray Hotel in Livingston offers charm, authenticity (2025)
• OnlyInYourState: The historic (and haunted) Murray Hotel

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