The Haunted Faust Hotel, New Braunfels: Mr. Faust in the Elevator

The Faust Hotel has been the landmark of downtown New Braunfels since 1929. It opened as the Travelers Hotel, a four-story brick hotel built by local citizens to draw tourists and conventions after a drought hit the area’s farms, and took the Faust family name in 1936. After sitting empty for more than two years, it reopened in May 2026 after a two-year restoration, with 45 rooms, a new restaurant and the original Spanish-tile lobby floor.

Through all of that, the hotel kept its ghost. Local guides and guests talk about a gentleman in a three-piece suit and bowler hat who chats with people in the lobby elevator, then vanishes, and most say he is Walter Faust Sr., the man the hotel’s own story calls its founder. Guests on the second floor have also described the sound of children running in the hall. It is about 30 miles from downtown San Antonio and one of the best day-trip stays in our guide to haunted hotels in and around San Antonio.

The ghosts of The Faust Hotel

The gentleman in the elevator

The Faust’s best-known story was told to the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung in 2023 by Anita Carrera, who runs New Braunfels Ghost Tours. Her daughter worked at the hotel, and a guest told her that a man with a pocket watch had chatted with him in the elevator about the weather. Later the guest’s wife looked through a hotel pamphlet, pointed at a photo and said that was Mr. Faust, the man who built the hotel.

Other guests describe the same figure, a man in a three-piece suit and a bowler hat who greets them and is gone when they look back. Kitchen staff told KSAT in 2016 of a figure in a long dark coat and hat they believed was Walter Faust, and an older Herald-Zeitung piece tells of a woman playing the lobby piano around 10 p.m. who watched the elevator door open and shut eight to ten times. The hotel seems to enjoy the story. When it reopened in 2026, its bar menu included a cocktail called the Elevator Operator, a nod to one of its ghostly former employees.

Hello, Mr. Faust

Carrera ends her tours outside the hotel by looking up at the sign and saying hello to Mr. Faust. She told the Herald-Zeitung that on one tour the F in the sign flickered as a child greeted him. She says the presence at the Faust is never anything scary, and she believes his blood, sweat and tears are in the building.

The same paper’s earlier ghost roundup says Walter Faust lived on the fourth floor in rooms 402 and 404, later combined into a suite, and remembers him as a prankster.

Children on the second floor

Most guest reports come from the second floor. In a 2016 KSAT report, guests and staff described children playing and giggling at night when no children were booked, with most activity at the end of the second-floor hallway near rooms 215 and 217. One employee told the station that “an 8-year-old girl” lives on the second floor, and the bar manager said glasses had fallen off the shelves by themselves.

The 2026 restoration reworked the floors and left the hotel with 45 rooms, so those room numbers may have changed. The corridor is the same, and so is the reputation.

What changed in the restoration

Restorations sometimes stir up ghost stories, and sometimes quiet them. At the Faust, the two-year project refurbished the Spanish-tile lobby floor and kept original stairway tiles, doors, the front desk, sconces and the exterior fountain, along with a vintage phone booth and an original cash register whose bell still rings when the drawer opens. It is too soon to say whether the gentleman in the bowler hat approves, but guests who know the old stories will find the lobby familiar.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The lobby elevator: The setting for the best-known encounter. Ride it alone late in the evening and see who joins you.
• The second-floor corridor: Where guests hear children running. Ask for a second-floor room when you book.
• Former rooms 215 and 217: Named most often before the renovation. The layout has changed, so ask the front desk which rooms now sit in that part of the floor.
• The lobby: Original Spanish-tile floor, a vintage phone booth, the old cash register and the elevator where the best-known story is set.
• Rooms 402 and 404: Where the Herald-Zeitung says Walter Faust lived, later combined into a suite. Ask whether the fourth-floor suite survived the renovation.

History of The Faust Hotel

In the mid-1920s a drought hit the farms around New Braunfels, and local citizens looked to tourism and conventions to keep the town’s economy moving. Their answer was a modern hotel downtown. According to its National Register listing, as summarized by Wikipedia, the land came from the estate of Senator Joseph Faust, the builder was Walter Sipple and the architect was Harvey Partridge Smith of San Antonio. The four-story masonry building has some Spanish Renaissance Revival detailing.

It opened in 1929 as the Travelers Hotel, just before the stock market crash, and was renamed in 1936 in honor of the Faust family. The hotel’s own story, and local ghost lore, name Walter Faust Sr. as its founder. A cocktail on the new menu, The Move, tells how he moved his family home across the street on logs, and the basement speakeasy is named for him. The National Register summary is less clear about his role, describing the hotel as planned by a group of citizens on land from Senator Faust’s estate, so we describe Walter as the hotel’s lore does.

The Faust became a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1984 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 2, 1985. It has been renovated several times since.

In the 2020s the hotel closed and sat empty for more than two years. Owner Andy Duettra and a group of New Braunfels locals, working with Lark Hospitality, carried out a two-year restoration, and the Faust reopened on May 19, 2026, with 45 king rooms including six corner suites and nine junior suites, the restaurant Wilhelm and Werner and a basement speakeasy named Walter’s in the works.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for a second-floor room; that is where most guests report the children.
• Ride the lobby elevator late at night and keep an eye out for a gentleman in a bowler hat.
• Book a downtown walking tour with New Braunfels Ghost Tours, which ends outside the Faust.
• Order the Elevator Operator at the bar and ask the staff what they have heard.
• Pair your stay with a visit to the Haunted Magnolia Hotel in Seguin, about 15 miles away, whose story is tied to a New Braunfels murder of 1874.
• Check the pet policy before you book; the hotel has not listed pets as allowed.

More haunted hotels nearby

• The Haunted Magnolia Hotel, Seguin: an 1840s stagecoach inn whose owners count at least 17 spirits
• The Kendall, Boerne: an 1859 Hill Country inn
• The Menger Hotel, San Antonio: Texas’s most famous haunted hotel, 30 miles away
• Haunted places in Texas: more of the state’s ghost stories
• Haunted hotels in Texas
• Haunted hotels in San Antonio

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.

• New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung: Phantom of the Faust (2023)
• New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung: The hauntings of NB
• KSAT: Ghosts of children past, owner haunt Faust Hotel (2016)
• CultureMap Austin: The Faust Hotel reopens after renovation (2026)
• Texas Monthly: The Faust Hotel in New Braunfels (2026)
• Wikipedia: Hotel Faust (New Braunfels)

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