Haunted hotel guide · Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Is the Old Faithful Inn Haunted? The Headless Bride of Yellowstone and Other Stories

The most famous log hotel in America has the most famous ghost in Yellowstone, a headless bride on the crow’s nest stairs. The twist is that the man who first told the story later said he made it up.

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

3.0/5Haunted Rooms Score

1904Year opened

Room 127Most asked-about room

Visit hotel websiteMeet the ghosts

The Old Faithful Inn stands a short walk from Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park. Its seven-story log lobby, giant stone fireplace and gnarled lodgepole railings have drawn visitors since 1904, and it is one of the best-known haunted hotels in Wyoming.

Its ghost lore centers on one figure, the headless bride said to haunt Room 127 and the crow’s nest high above the lobby. Staff have also passed on smaller stories over the years: a woman in a white dress glimpsed by a waitress, a figure in 1890s clothing at the foot of a bed, and a door in the 300 wing that opened and closed by itself. Here is where each story comes from, what the records say, and how to plan a stay.

The ghosts of the Old Faithful Inn

The headless bride of Room 127

The story goes like this. In the early 1900s the teenage daughter of a wealthy shipping-company owner married a man who had worked as a servant in her family’s home, against her father’s wishes. The couple honeymooned at the Old Faithful Inn in Room 127, near the crow’s nest. The husband gambled their money away, and when the bride asked her father for more, he refused and offered her a train ticket home instead. After a violent argument the husband left and was never seen again. A maid later found the bride dead in the bathtub, her head missing, and days later the head turned up in the crow’s nest, the platform high in the lobby where an orchestra once played. Guests have described a woman in a white gown walking down from the crow’s nest with her head under her arm.

Where the bride story really comes from

In a 1991 Deseret News feature, assistant manager George Bornemann described closing the inn at the end of the 1983 season, hearing someone running down an empty hallway, and seeing a white, ghostly figure coming down the crow’s nest stairs. He said that library research in Missoula, Montana, had turned up a 1915 murder in the inn, in Room 127. (A 2024 Cowboy State Daily retelling gives 1982 and 1914.) In 2006 Bornemann told Shellie Larios, author of Yellowstone Ghost Stories, that visitors had pressed him for a ghost story for years and he had created the headless bride, though the running footsteps in the deserted hotel were real. Neither article cites a newspaper report or any other record of the murder. So the headless bride is best understood as Yellowstone folklore that took on a life of its own. Some visitors still insist they have seen her.

The woman in the white dress

The same 1991 article quoted Gretchen May, a waitress from Provo, Utah, who said she saw something out of the corner of her eye, turned quickly and saw a woman in a frilly white dress, and then nothing. It is the kind of sighting that has kept the bride story alive.

The figure at the foot of the bed

Lindy Berry, an activities agent at the inn, told the Deseret News that a guest in Room 2 woke one night to see a woman in 1890s clothing standing at the foot of the bed, and dug her nails into her husband’s shoulder in fright.

Doors, footsteps and a tilting extinguisher

Other staff stories from the same article include a bellman who watched his door open and close by itself late one night in the 300 wing, and an inspector who said a fire extinguisher hanging in a hallway swung up vertically as she passed, then slowly settled back. Bornemann’s own view was that anybody who sees anything at the inn is mostly using their imagination.

Mattie Culver and the old Firehole Hotel

People who want a real history behind the stories sometimes point to Mattie Culver, the wife of a park transportation official, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 30 in March 1889 at the old Firehole Hotel, where her husband was winter keeper. Her grave is in what is now the Nez Perce picnic area, north of the inn along the Firehole River, and Cowboy State Daily has retold the legend that she still wanders the riverbank at dusk. Nothing links her to the Old Faithful Inn itself, but she is part of the area’s lore.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 127: The legendary honeymoon room of the headless bride, near the crow’s nest. You can ask for it, but it is not marketed as haunted.
• The crow's nest stairs: Where the bride is said to descend. The crow’s nest has been closed to guests since timbers were twisted in the 1959 earthquake, but you can see it from the lobby.
• The Old House: The original 1904 log section, with the most character and the most stories. Room 2 is here.
• The 300 wing: Where a bellman said his door opened and closed by itself.
• The lobby balconies: Quiet late at night, with views down to the great fireplace.

History of Old Faithful Inn

Robert Reamer was 29 when he designed the inn for the Yellowstone Park Company, which was affiliated with the Northern Pacific Railway. Crews built it over the winter of 1903 to 1904, largely from logs and stone found within the park. It opened in spring 1904 with electric lights and steam heat, a luxury deep in the park.

The gable peak of the lobby rises 92 feet above the floor, and the stone fireplace is about 85 feet tall and weighs some 500 tons. The East Wing was added in 1913 to 1914 and the West Wing in 1927 to 1928, taking the inn far beyond its original 120 or so rooms.

On August 17, 1959, the Hebgen Lake earthquake damaged the lobby fireplace, brought down the dining room chimney and shook the building partly off its foundations. The crow’s nest timbers were twisted and access to the upper lobby has been restricted ever since. In 1988 the North Fork Fire came close to the inn; firefighters, volunteers and a rooftop sprinkler system installed the year before saved it.

The inn was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 23, 1973 and named a National Historic Landmark on May 28, 1987. It is still run under a park concession, is the park’s most requested lodging, and opens for the summer season only.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book early. Old Faithful Inn rooms open for reservations about 13 months ahead and the Old House rooms go first.
• Ask for Room 127 or an Old House room when you book, and again at check-in. Nothing is guaranteed.
• Old House rooms come with a private bath or without one; the cheaper rooms use bathrooms down the hall, which makes a late-night walk through the old corridors part of the stay.
• Come down to the lobby after the day visitors leave. It is at its most atmospheric when it is quiet and the fire is lit.
• Bring warm layers: nights in the Upper Geyser Basin are cold even in summer.

More haunted hotels nearby

• The Irma Hotel, Cody: Buffalo Bill’s haunted hotel by the park’s east entrance
• Historic Hotel Greybull: a former bank with a Prohibition speakeasy
• The Sheridan Inn: Miss Kate’s room, across the Bighorns
• Haunted hotels in Wyoming

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.

• Cowboy State Daily: Haunted Wyoming, the headless bride of Yellowstone's Old Faithful Inn (2024)
• Deseret News: Ghost stories give Old Faithful Inn a haunting reputation (1991)
• Yellowstone National Park Lodges: Old Faithful Inn (official site)
• Wikipedia: Old Faithful Inn
• Travel Wyoming: 15 haunted places to visit in Wyoming
• Cowboy State Daily: Yellowstone ghosts, Mattie Culver died but she never left (2022)

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