The Haunted Hotel Andaluz, Albuquerque: Conrad Hilton's 1939 Hotel and Its Ghosts

Hotel Andaluz stands on Second Street in downtown Albuquerque, a ten-story Territorial Revival tower that opened in 1939 as the Hilton Hotel. Conrad Hilton, born in the small New Mexico town of San Antonio about 90 miles to the south, built it as his fourth hotel and the first Hilton outside Texas. It was the tallest building in the state and the first with air conditioning and elevators. After decades as the Hotel Plaza and La Posada de Albuquerque, it reopened in 2009 as Hotel Andaluz and is now part of Hilton’s Curio Collection.

The hotel does not market its ghosts, but Albuquerque does. The Albuquerque Journal named it one of the city’s most haunted places in 2024, with a nervous young woman in 1940s clothes on the seventh floor, an older woman in pink on the fourth, and a ghostly party in the ballroom late at night. Here is what guests report, the history behind the building and how to plan a stay at one of the most stylish haunted hotels in New Mexico.

The ghosts of Hotel Andaluz

The young woman on the seventh floor

The best-known story is about a young woman in 1940s clothing seen on the seventh floor. She looks nervous and out of place, as if waiting for someone. The story told in Albuquerque is that she stayed here with her sweetheart before he left for the Second World War, and that he never came back. Some believe she returned to the place where she was happiest.

Nobody has put a name to her, and there is no record of who she might have been, so she remains a story. The seventh-floor hallway is still where people go looking for her.

The lady in pink on the fourth floor

A second woman is described on the fourth floor: older, wearing an old-fashioned pink dress, and usually seen around sundown. Accounts are brief. She is seen, and then she is not.

The party in the ballroom

Late at night, guests report a group of former guests in the ballroom, as if a party from the hotel’s heyday never quite ended. For a hotel that hosted Albuquerque’s society events for decades, it is a fitting legend.

Room 611

One guest story, retold by the Albuquerque Journal, comes from Room 611. Around midnight, a woman heard a loud bang from a corner of the room. She asked whatever it was to leave, and the noise stopped. In the morning the closet door she had shut was standing open. “I never felt threatened, so it isn’t a mean ghost,” she said.

Older accounts shared online over the years also mention jewelry moved around guest rooms and screams in the night. We could not trace those to a named source, so take them lightly.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The seventh floor: Where the young woman in 1940s clothing is seen. Ask for a room on this floor.
• Room 611: The room in the best-documented guest story: a bang at midnight and a closet door that opened itself.
• The fourth floor: Home of the older woman in pink, said to appear around sundown.
• The ballroom: Listen for the party late at night. It is used for events, so you may also catch a real one.
• The lobby and mezzanine: The original 1939 lobby, with carved wood panels and the old red chairs by the elevator. Open to anyone, day or night.

History of Hotel Andaluz Albuquerque, Curio Collection by Hilton

Conrad Hilton was born in San Antonio, New Mexico, when it was still a territory, and bought his first hotel in Texas in 1919. Twenty years later he came home to build a showpiece. The Hilton Hotel opened in Albuquerque on June 9, 1939. Architect Anton F. Korn designed the 160-room, ten-story building in the Territorial Revival style, with brick coping along the roofline and Southwestern woodwork inside. It was the first modern high-rise hotel in New Mexico.

The hotel is woven into Hilton family lore. Hilton is said to have won some of the lobby’s hand-carved wooden panels in a bet, and he stayed here the night before his 1942 wedding to Zsa Zsa Gabor; a suite now carries her name. For three decades it was the city’s grand hotel, until a newer Hilton opened by the Big I freeway interchange in 1971.

The old building was sold in 1974 and renamed the Hotel Plaza. It was sold again and closed in 1981, and plans to reopen it as the Hotel Bradford never happened. After a renovation that cut the room count to 114, it reopened on August 3, 1984 as La Posada de Albuquerque. It had been added to the New Mexico State Register in 1983 and to the National Register of Historic Places on March 2, 1984, as the Old Hilton Hotel.

Developer Gary Goodman bought it in 2005. In 2008 he closed it for a $30 million restoration, which stripped paint from covered-over murals and kept much of the original architecture. It reopened on October 1, 2009 as Hotel Andaluz, and joined Hilton’s Curio Collection in 2019, bringing it back into the family that built it. The same year, it was used for scenes in season five of Better Call Saul.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for a seventh-floor room, or Room 611, when you book, and confirm before arrival.
• Spend some time on the mezzanine above the lobby after dark; it is the best place to soak up the 1939 building.
• Ask about the Zsa Zsa Gabor suite if you want the hotel’s most historic room.
• The KiMo Theatre, a few blocks away on Central Avenue, has a famous ghost story of its own.
• Hotel Parq Central, another haunted Albuquerque hotel in a former hospital, is a short drive east on Central Avenue.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Hotel Parq Central, Albuquerque: a former railroad hospital on Central Avenue
• La Posada de Santa Fe: Julia Staab’s mansion, an hour north
• Shaffer Hotel, Mountainair: a 1923 folk art hotel about 90 minutes southeast
• The Lodge Resort, Cloudcroft: the mountain resort Conrad Hilton managed in the 1930s
• Haunted hotels in New Mexico

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.

• Albuquerque Journal: 5 of the most haunted places in Albuquerque (2024)
• Wikipedia: Hotel Andaluz
• Travel Weekly: Hotel Andaluz carries on Conrad Hilton's New Mexico vision
• Hotel Andaluz: official site

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