5. The Hotel Bethlehem in Pennsylvania
The Hotel Bethlehem in the Pennsylvania town of that name is haunted by several ghosts, according to members of its staff and guests who have stayed there over the years. Officially the hotel claims to be the host of at least four ghosts, though there have been numerous reports of strange sightings and events in the hotel’s long history. Rather than having to deal with frightened guests and staff, the hotel openly touts its presumably non-paying residents, and offers one room – called the room with a boo – as known to be haunted. Room 932 has been reported as haunted and the hotel acknowledges it so, with tales of unexpected flashes in mirrors, a bathroom which temporarily changes its appearance, and according to one guest a man dressed in boxer shorts standing at the foot of the bed demanding to know why other people were in his room.
Paranormal researchers and ghost hunters have claimed to have recorded voices in room 932, and there are reports of other ghosts within the hotel, including a man wearing a tricorn hat and a woolen cape in a boiler room, a barefoot woman who welcomes guests in a ballroom, and the ghost of a woman who danced and sang for guests in the middle of the nineteenth century. She later married the owner of the Hope diamond, though she abandoned him, and when she became later abandoned she was poverty stricken. Spirits waiting in the subterranean rooms of the building have been explained by psychics as being those of runaway slaves, given shelter as they passed through on the Underground Railroad. The ghosts of the Hotel Bethlehem are given free rein, since they don’t seem to be possessed of any evil intent.