Haunted hotel guide · Chicago, Illinois

The Haunted Congress Plaza Hotel, Chicago: Room 441, the 12th Floor and Peg Leg Johnny

Built for the 1893 World’s Fair and still facing Grant Park, the Congress Plaza is the Chicago hotel with the most ghost stories, from the shadow woman of Room 441 to a sealed room on the 12th floor.

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

4.5/5Haunted Rooms Score

1893Year opened

Room 441Most requested room

Check availabilityMeet the ghosts

The Congress Plaza Hotel fills a whole block of South Michigan Avenue, two linked towers of limestone and brick that look out over Grant Park and Lake Michigan. It opened in 1893 as the Auditorium Annex, joined by a marble tunnel called Peacock Alley to the Auditorium Hotel across Congress Street, and it has hosted presidents, political conventions, big bands and, in World War II, the U.S. Army. It is still an independent hotel with 871 rooms, and still one of the best located in the Loop.

It also has more ghost stories than any other hotel in Chicago. Guests and staff talk about a shadowy woman in Room 441, a room on the 12th floor said to have been sealed shut, a one-legged drifter called Peg Leg Johnny, a gloved hand that pushes out of a wall, an elevator that stops on the eighth floor on its own, and voices in empty ballrooms. This guide collects every story worth knowing, separates the legends from the records, and explains how to book the rooms people ask for.

The ghosts of the Congress Plaza Hotel

The shadow woman of Room 441

Room 441 is the most famous room in the hotel, and the one people ask for by number. The story repeated in guides to the hotel is that security is called to this room more than to any other. Guests describe a dark female figure standing at the foot of the bed, bedding that is pulled or disturbed in the night, and a shape that seems to move toward the bathroom before it fades.

Nobody has put a name to her, and there is no recorded death linked to the room. Part of the room’s reputation comes from its odd window, which looks out at a solid wall only a few feet away. Another part comes from a popular claim that Stephen King stayed here and based his story 1408 on it. King set that story in a fictional New York hotel, and there is no record that he ever stayed in Room 441, so treat that one as hotel folklore.

The sealed room on the 12th floor

The darkest Congress Plaza legend belongs to the 12th floor. The story says one room there became so frightening that the hotel fastened the door shut and papered over it. Time Out Chicago names it as Room 1252. Guests on the floor talk of whispers in the hallway and objects that move, and the Chicago Architecture Center mentions reports of whispers and moving objects on both the fourth and the 12th floors.

The 12th floor story is usually tied to a real tragedy. On August 6, 1939, Adele Langner, a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia, jumped from a high window of the hotel with her two young sons, aged six and four. The family had fled the Nazis and feared being sent back when their visitor visas ran out. Contemporary reports said she fell from the 13th floor, not the 12th, and that a letter offering the family permanent refuge in Canada arrived while she was out with the boys. Many guests believe she and her children are the presence felt on the upper floors. If you stay, remember that this is a real family’s story.

Peg Leg Johnny

Staff have their own name for one of the hotel’s ghosts: Peg Leg Johnny. The story says he was a homeless man who was killed on the hotel grounds many years ago. Nobody has found a record of the death, but sightings of a one-legged figure in the South Tower have been told for decades, and he has become the hotel’s best-known nickname ghost. Guests who report him describe a man who appears in a corridor and is gone before they can look again.

The hand of mystery and the Gold Room

The Gold Room is the hotel’s gilded ballroom, and it has two stories of its own. The first is the ‘hand of mystery’, a gloved hand that is said to push out of a wall in the closets behind the Gold Room balcony. Legend says it belongs to a workman who was sealed inside a wall while the hotel was being built. The second comes from weddings: bridesmaids who posed around the piano for photos are said to have been missing from the prints afterward.

Staff and security also report voices and music from the ballrooms when they are locked and empty, and an older story says the sound of skates can be heard in a ballroom that was once used as a roller rink.

The eighth-floor elevator and the man in the hall

A lone man is said to walk the eighth floor, and one of the elevators has a habit of stopping there when nobody has pressed the button. It is the kind of story every old hotel has, but at the Congress Plaza it is one of the most often repeated, and the Chicago Architecture Center lists the eighth-floor elevator among the hotel’s best-known oddities.

Al Capone, and what the records say

No Chicago ghost story is complete without Al Capone. Local legend says Capone used the Congress as a base and that his footsteps, in two-tone wingtips, can still be heard in the halls. It is worth being clear: there is no record that Capone ever owned the hotel. Its owners over the years were developer R.H. Southgate, national hotel groups, the federal government during World War II, the Pick Hotel Corporation and, from 1987, a group of investors. The Capone story is a legend, not history, but it is one guests still love to repeat.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 441: The most requested room in the hotel, linked to a shadowy woman at the foot of the bed. You can ask for it by number after booking.
• The 12th floor: Home of the sealed room legend (Time Out names Room 1252) and the floor most often tied to the Langner family. Ask for any room on this floor.
• The South Tower: Built in the 1900s expansion and the part of the hotel where Peg Leg Johnny is said to appear.
• The Gold Room and Peacock Alley: The gilded ballroom with the ‘hand of mystery’ and the vanishing bridesmaids, and the old marble corridor that once linked the hotel to the Auditorium. Both are easiest to see when no event is booked.
• The eighth-floor elevator: Ride up in the evening and see if it stops on eight without being asked.

History of Congress Plaza Hotel

The hotel was built by developer R.H. Southgate and opened in 1893 as the Auditorium Annex, a companion to Adler and Sullivan’s Auditorium Building across Congress Street. Architect Clinton J. Warren designed the north tower, and the two hotels were joined under the street by a marble passage known as Peacock Alley. It opened just in time for the World’s Columbian Exposition, when the city was full of visitors who needed rooms.

Holabird and Roche expanded the hotel in 1902 and 1907, adding the South Tower and the grand public rooms, including a banquet hall the hotel describes as the first air conditioned ballroom in America. By 1908 it had more than 1,000 rooms and was known as the Congress Hotel, after Congress Street and the Congress Plaza section of Grant Park. It became known as the ‘home of presidents’: Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Roosevelt all stayed or visited. During the 1912 Republican convention, Theodore Roosevelt spoke to a crowd in Grant Park from his room’s balcony.

The hotel moved with the times. In the 1930s a former Elizabethan room became a nightclub, and Benny Goodman broadcast an NBC radio show from it. Painter E. Martin Hennings decorated the Florentine Room ceiling around 1918, and Louis Grell later painted murals and lunettes for the lobby. In World War II the federal government bought the hotel and used it to train Army Air Forces personnel, and it reopened to civilians in time for the 1944 political conventions.

The Pick Hotel Corporation bought the property in 1950 and ran a major renovation, and for years it was the Pick-Congress. A group led by Albert Nasser owned it from 1987 to 2012, a period remembered for one of the longest strikes in American history: about 130 hotel workers walked out on June 15, 2003, over a proposed wage cut, and the strike did not end until May 30, 2013. Today the Congress Plaza is independently owned, not part of a national chain, with 871 rooms and suites, the Gazebo and Rafael’s restaurants and the Congress Lounge.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book a standard room, then call the hotel with your confirmation number and ask for Room 441 or a 12th-floor room. Be polite and flexible: requests are noted, not promised.
• Ask for the South Tower if you want Peg Leg Johnny territory, or a Lakeview room for the best view in the building: Grant Park, Buckingham Fountain and the lake.
• Walk the lobby, Peacock Alley and the ballroom level in the evening when there is no event on. Do not wander into private functions or staff areas.
• Pets are not allowed (service animals are welcome), self-parking runs about $62 a night, and a $25 per night incidentals deposit applies, so budget for extras.
• Pair your stay with the Art Institute, the Field Museum or a walking ghost tour of the Loop, all close by on foot.
• Be respectful about the 1939 Langner story. It is a real family’s tragedy, not a prop for a ghost hunt.

More haunted hotels nearby

• The Drake Hotel, Chicago: Gold Coast landmark with the Lady in Red
• Hotel Baker, St. Charles: 1928 riverside hotel an hour west of the Loop
• DeSoto House Hotel, Galena: Illinois’ oldest operating hotel and its Lady in Black
• Haunted hotels in Illinois
• Haunted hotels in Chicago

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.

• Congress Plaza Hotel: Our History
• Wikipedia: Congress Plaza Hotel
• CityPASS: Chicago's Haunted Hotel, the Congress Plaza
• Time Out Chicago: The most haunted spots in Chicago
• Chicago Architecture Center: 5 haunted places in Chicago
• JTA archive: Czech refugee mother leaps to death with 2 children in Chicago (1939)
• Cornerstone Mansion: Unlocking Room 441's secrets
• Congress Plaza Hotel: Hotel policies

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