Haunted hotel guide · La Grande, Oregon

The Haunted Hot Lake Hotel, La Grande: Hot Lake Springs Resort's Ghost Stories

A 1906 brick lodge beside a steaming lake in eastern Oregon that has been a resort, a famous sanatorium, a nursing home and a vandalized ruin, and is now a hot springs hotel again.

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

3.5/5Haunted Rooms Score

1864First hotel at the lake

1906Brick lodge completed

Visit hotel websiteMeet the ghosts

The Hot Lake Hotel stands about eight miles south of La Grande in the Grande Ronde Valley, beside a lake fed by one of the largest hot springs in the Pacific Northwest. Travelers have stopped here for more than 160 years. The 1906 brick lodge was once a sanatorium so well known it was called the Mayo Clinic of the West; it later became a nursing home, then sat abandoned and broken-windowed for years. Since 2020 it has been run as Hot Lake Springs Resort, with rooms and suites, outdoor mineral pools, a pub and a small movie theater.

Its ghost reputation grew in the empty years, and in 2001 it was featured on the TV series The Scariest Places on Earth. Stories tell of former patients, old vacationers and a gardener who never left, along with piano music with no player and fog that forms indoors. Recent owners have called the rumors false, so this is a place to come for the history and the hot water, and to make up your own mind about the rest. It is one of the most historic haunted hotels in Oregon.

The ghosts of Hot Lake Springs Resort (Hot Lake Hotel)

Patients who never left

Most of Hot Lake’s ghost stories go back to its medical years. For decades sick and injured people came here for treatment, and some of them died in the building. Those deaths, and the long years it later spent as a rest home for the elderly, are what storytellers point to.

OPB reported in 2014 that the building was rumored to be haunted by former patients, by old vacationers from its resort days and by a gardener. No particular patient or room has ever been named in the published stories.

Piano music and running footsteps

The most repeated stories, told in older ghost guides including the first version of this page, describe footsteps running away down empty corridors, piano music when no one is playing, and apparitions glimpsed in the halls.

These are the kinds of stories that grow up around a large empty building, and Hot Lake was empty for a long time. Treat them as local legend rather than reported fact.

Fog in the corridors

One of the stranger stories is of clouds of fog forming inside the hotel. Given that the lodge sits beside a lake of near-boiling spring water, and that the building was heated by geothermal water for decades, there may be a simple explanation. It is still one of the images people associate most with Hot Lake.

The typhoid foyer

That Oregon Life reported a story that, during a local typhoid epidemic, the hotel’s foyer was used to hold the bodies of victims until graves could be dug. It is offered as part of the building’s lore, and many guests have since sent in stories of unexplained experiences.

Some visitors dismiss the stories as campfire tales, and the article leaves the question open. So do we.

Was Hot Lake an insane asylum?

No. Many ghost websites, and our own earlier guide, called it an insane asylum. The records show a hot springs resort, a medical sanatorium under Dr. W.T. Phy, a flight school and nurse training center from 1939, and a rest home for the elderly until 1974. 1859 Oregon’s Magazine notes that the rumors of hauntings spread in the 1990s, after the building was abandoned, and that the owners at the time called them false.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Rooms in the 1906 lodge: Every room and suite is in the restored brick lodge, and each is different. These are the rooms closest to the corridors where the stories are set.
• Suites with soaking tubs: Some suites have their own tubs. Ask when you book if you want to soak in mineral water without leaving your room.
• The foyer and corridors: Not rooms, but the spaces linked to the typhoid story and the running footsteps. Walk them after the pub closes.
• The outdoor pools: Nine mineral pools with views across the valley. Overnight guests have all-day access until 8 pm.

History of Hot Lake Springs Resort (Hot Lake Hotel)

The Nez Perce knew the lake as Ea-Kesh-Pa, and members of the Astor expedition under Robert Stuart recorded the hot springs in 1812. Oregon Trail emigrants passed through the valley, and in 1864 Samuel Fitzgerald Newhart built the first wooden hotel at the lake. Later owners included future Oregon governor Walter M. Pierce.

Work on a hotel addition and bath houses began in 1903, and the main brick wing was completed in 1906, designed by John V. Bennes of Baker City and covering about 65,000 square feet. With 105 guest rooms in the brick wing alone (Wikipedia says the whole complex had nearly 300 rooms before 1934), a surgical ward, a dance hall, a post office and a barber shop, it was called the town under one roof. In 1917 Dr. W.T. Phy bought the property and renamed it the Hot Lake Sanitorium. By 1924 the Mayo brothers were said to be frequent visitors, and it became known as the Mayo Clinic of the West.

Dr. Phy died of pneumonia in 1931, and on May 7, 1934, a fire destroyed most of the west wing and the wooden buildings. The brick lodge survived. A flight school and nurse training center opened there in 1939, A.J. Roth acquired the property in 1941, and it became a nursing home for the aged in 1951, running as a rest home until 1974. A short-lived restaurant and nightclub followed. By 1991 the building was abandoned, and by the time it was sold in 2003 all 368 of its windows were broken or missing. It had been listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 15, 1979.

David Manuel bought the building from Charles and Louise Rhea in 2003 and restored it as a bed and breakfast with a spa, restaurant, bronze foundry and museum, though the old west wing collapsed in 2008. In April 2020 Mike and Tamarah Rysavy, who had run the neighboring Grande Hot Springs RV Resort since 2013, took over. Fifteen rooms were ready for guests by May 2021, followed by the pub and movie theater, and it now operates as Hot Lake Springs Resort. The Rysavys told Go Eastern Oregon they modeled it on McMenamins’ historic hotels.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Stay overnight rather than coming for a day soak: overnight guests get all-day access to the pools.
• Book about six weeks ahead for a regular weekend and eight weeks for holiday weekends, the owners told Go Eastern Oregon.
• Children 11 and under cannot use the soaking area, and soaking ends at 8 pm.
• Catch an evening film in the 60-seat theater (Thursday to Sunday), then walk the lodge corridors on the way back to your room.
• Pair it with the Geiser Grand in Baker City, under an hour southeast, for two haunted historic hotels in one trip.
• Dogs must be leashed and cannot be left alone; check pet rules with the resort before you book.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Geiser Grand Hotel, Baker City: the lady in blue on a gold-rush staircase, under an hour away
• Historic Wolf Creek Inn: Oregon’s oldest hotel, with Clark Gable’s room
• Haunted places in Oregon: more ghost stories across the state
• Haunted hotels in Oregon

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.

• Hot Lake Springs Resort official site
• Wikipedia: Hot Lake Hotel
• Go Eastern Oregon: Hot Lake Springs Resort (2025)
• That Oregon Life: The Lodge at Hot Lake Springs reopens (2021)
• 1859 Oregon's Magazine: Hot Lake Springs Hotel (2016)
• OPB via JPR: Oregon's most haunted places (2014)

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