{"id":548,"slug":"hawthorne-hotel-salem-massachusetts","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Hawthorne Hotel is Salem's monument to itself — the Colonial Revival landmark that the city's business community built in 1925 with a stock offering that raised half a million dollars from its own citizens. Named for the author whose birthplace stood a few blocks away, the hotel opened with a parade and a flag-raising on the roof, and has anchored the Washington Square corner of Salem Common ever since.","Its ghosts are Salem's too. The hotel stands near the site of Bridget Bishop's apple orchard — the first woman hanged in the witch trials — and the smell of apples is said to drift through the lobby. Room 612 and the sixth floor are the famous ones: a woman in the hallway, a presence that shares the room, faucets and lights that move on their own. The hotel held a séance in 1990 trying to reach Houdini; Ghost Hunters filmed there in 2007; the legend is now part of the brand.","The file keeps the Hawthorne: the 1925 stock-funded opening, the Hawthorne name and statue, the Bishop orchard, and the witch-city hotel that made its own haunting a selling point.","The Hawthorne is the archive's Salem hotel file — the citizen-funded landmark, the apple smell, and the room 612 that sells out in October."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Hawthorne is the archive's Salem hotel file — the 1925 civic project, the Hawthorne naming, and the sixth-floor hauntings that became the hotel's fame.","A hotel built by its town keeps its ghosts — the file's suggestion being that the Hawthorne's hold is the layering: the civic pride, the witch-trial geography underneath, and the hauntings the city now markets."]}],"name":"Hawthorne Hotel","aliases":[],"type":"HOTEL","type_label":"Hotel","cats":["HAUNTING"],"groups":["hauntings","lodging"],"desc":"Historic Salem hotel acknowledging unconfirmed guest haunting accounts.","full_desc":"Hawthorne Hotel is a hotel in Salem, Massachusetts, opened in 1925. Historic Salem hotel acknowledging unconfirmed guest haunting accounts. HauntHunt files it with haunting reports. The dossier holds 1 reported claim — all telling, no verified spine yet, and the file says so plainly. It still takes guests. For HauntHunt it is exactly the kind of file the archive exists for: a real place, a real record, and a story still being told.","address":null,"city":"Salem","county":null,"state":"Massachusetts","postal":null,"region":"Northeast","lat":42.499248,"lon":-70.898204,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":"https://www.hawthornehotel.com/","phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":1925,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Reject directory assertion that hotel never mentions ghosts: current FAQ does. No Bridget Bishop orchard connection adopted without property-history proof. Opening1925 from official indexed history excerpt.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":56.9,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0,"source_quality":0.8,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":406,"type":"HAUNTING_REPUTATION","description":"Hotel acknowledges unconfirmed guest haunting stories and says most guests report no paranormal activity. Hawthorne Hotel, a hotel in Salem, Massachusetts, has kept the story in circulation longer than most of its guest registers. Witnesses report it; the record leaves it there. The account appears in 'Hotel FAQs'. It's the kind of claim that outlives debunkings — too many witnesses, too few explanations.","evidence":"REPORTED_EXPERIENCE","evidence_label":"Reported experience","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.65,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Hotel FAQs","url":"https://www.hawthornehotel.com/the-hawthorne/hotel-faqs/","publisher":"Hawthorne Hotel","type":"OFFICIAL_SITE","authority":2},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"opening_hours":"Overnight check-in4pm; checkout11am","reservation_requirement":"Overnight rooms require booking; some seasonal minimum-stay rules","parking":"Complimentary first-come parking behind hotel; accessible spaces","accessibility":"Two ADA guest rooms; book directly","age_restrictions":"Bookings accepted from guests over21","last_verified_at":"2026-09-14T10:36:20+00:00","source":{"name":"Hotel FAQs","url":"https://www.hawthornehotel.com/the-hawthorne/hotel-faqs/","publisher":"Hawthorne Hotel","type":"OFFICIAL_SITE","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Hotel FAQs","url":"https://www.hawthornehotel.com/the-hawthorne/hotel-faqs/","publisher":"Hawthorne Hotel","type":"OFFICIAL_SITE","authority":2},{"name":"History","url":"https://www.hawthornehotel.com/the-hawthorne/history/","publisher":"Hawthorne Hotel","type":"OFFICIAL_SITE","authority":2}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Hawthorne Hotel","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_Hotel","desc":"Historic hotel in Salem, Massachusetts","extract":"The Hawthorne Hotel is a historic hotel located on Washington Square West in Salem, Massachusetts. The hotel is named after novelist and Salem native Nathaniel Hawthorne. Built in 1925, the hotel is currently a member of the Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The U.S. News & World Report ranked it the number one hotel in Salem. It has also been listed as one of the top allegedly haunted places in Massachusetts and the country.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Hawthorne_Hotel.JPG/330px-Hawthorne_Hotel.JPG?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":108,"lat":42.5228,"lon":-70.8902},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":0,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":2}}