{"id":2067,"slug":"hotel-del-coronado-coronado-california","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Hotel del Coronado opened in 1888 — the Victorian beach resort where 'Some Like It Hot' was filmed, where the Prince of Wales met Wallis Simpson's circle, where the American resort hotel reached its most photographed form. And in November 1892, a guest registered as Kate Morgan was found dead on the stairs to the beach — ruled suicide, debated ever since.","The file's spine is the hotel's glamour with the death at its center: America's grandest beach resort keeping one guest's documented death as its permanent register."]},{"heading":"Kate Morgan in 3327","paragraphs":["Kate Morgan checked in alone, waited days for a man who never came, and was found dead on the beach stairs — the death ruled suicide, the circumstances debated for over a century. Guests and staff report her — cold spots, moved objects, a woman in period dress — in Room 3327 and the halls. The hotel keeps the account on its own materials.","Room 3327 is the file's geography — the room where Morgan stayed being the hotel's most requested and most reported, the guest who never checked out reportedly still in the building."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Del is the archive's most famous hotel-ghost file — a documented 1892 death, a debated verdict, a named ghost in a specific room, and a hotel that keeps the account on its own materials. The suicide ruling is the record; the debate and the reports are the legend's hundred-year run.","A resort where a guest died waiting for someone who never came keeps her — the file's suggestion being that Kate Morgan's wait never ended, Room 3327 holding the guest the stairs couldn't release."]}],"name":"Hotel del Coronado","aliases":[],"type":"HOTEL","type_label":"Hotel","cats":["HAUNTED_PLACE","HISTORIC_HOTEL","MYSTERIOUS_DEATH"],"groups":["hauntings","lodging"],"desc":"1888 beachfront icon haunted by Kate Morgan, the \"beautiful stranger.\"","full_desc":"A hotel in Coronado, California, built in 1888, Hotel del Coronado is filed here for what the record attaches to it. 1888 beachfront icon haunted by Kate Morgan, the \"beautiful stranger.\". Its signature presence is Kate Morgan — the figure the file’s accounts keep returning to. The dossier holds 1 reported claim, 1 legend and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. It still takes guests.","address":null,"city":"Coronado","county":null,"state":"California","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":32.6809,"lon":-117.1784,"coord_kind":"EXACT","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":1888,"year_opened":1888,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"New record from encyclopedia/official-source pass; VERIFY task auto-queued for primary-source corroboration.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":70,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0.85,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":1302,"type":"NAMED_GHOST_LEGEND","description":"Guests and staff report Kate Morgan—cold spots, moved objects and a woman in period dress—in Room 3327 and the halls. Hotel del Coronado, a hotel in Coronado, California, has kept the story in circulation longer than most of its guest registers. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. The name travels further than the proof; the sightings keep renewing the lease.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":"Kate Morgan","where":"Room 3327","first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":"Whether Morgan died by suicide or murder remains unresolved.","source":{"name":"Hotel del Coronado","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_del_Coronado","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"Opened in 1888; the November 1892 death of guest Kate Morgan on the beach stairs was ruled suicide but debated ever since. A hotel with this much documented history gives the dossier real substance underneath the lore. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. Sources including 'Hotel del Coronado' carry the record. The date is part of the site's documented spine.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1888","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Hotel del Coronado","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_del_Coronado","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"Guests and staff report Kate Morgan—cold spots, moved objects and a woman in period dress—in Room 3327 and the halls. The hotel keeps the account on its own record — the sort of haunting a building earns one guest at a time. It's a documented legend: the telling is real, the contents remain folklore. Every community keeps one story like this; this is theirs.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Hotel del Coronado","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_del_Coronado","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[{"name":"Kate Morgan","claimed_identity":"Kate Morgan","verified":null,"summary":"Guests and staff report Kate Morgan—cold spots, moved objects and a woman in period dress—in Room 3327 and the halls. A hotel in Coronado, California with more than a century of check-ins gives the reports plenty of rooms to work with. The lore has a face now: Kate Morgan. The file stays open on it.","behavior":"Guests and staff report Kate Morgan—cold spots, moved objects and a woman in period dress—in Room 3327 and the halls.","area":"Room 3327","first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Hotel del Coronado","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_del_Coronado","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"events":[{"name":"Kate Morgan dies","type":"DEATH","date_start":"1892-11-29","date_end":null,"description":"On November 29, 1892, the body of a young woman registered as 'Lottie Bernard' was found on the beach stairs below the Hotel del Coronado — a gunshot to the head, a pistol nearby. Identified weeks later as Kate Morgan, a 24-year-old bookkeeper, her death was ruled suicide; mystery fans have argued murder ever since. She is the Del's official resident ghost.","evidence":"DEATH","source":{"name":"Hotel del Coronado","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_del_Coronado","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Operating or preserved hotel property; public areas vary—check directly for tours or overnight stays.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Hotel del Coronado","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_del_Coronado","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},{"name":"Hotel del Coronado — official site","url":"https://hoteldel.com","publisher":"Hotel del Coronado, Curio Collection by Hilton","type":"OFFICIAL_SITE","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Hotel del Coronado","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_del_Coronado","desc":"Hotel in California, United States","extract":"The Hotel del Coronado, also known as The Del and Hotel Del, is a historic beachfront hotel in Coronado, California, just across San Diego Bay from San Diego. A rare surviving example of an American architectural genre—the wooden Victorian beach resort—it was designated a California Historical Landmark in 1970 and a National Historic Landmark in 1977. The Hotel del Coronado was inducted into Historic Hotels of America, an official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, in 2018. It is the second-largest wooden structure in the United States.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f2/Hotel_del_Coronado_logo.svg/330px-Hotel_del_Coronado_logo.svg.png?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":108,"lat":32.6809,"lon":-117.1784},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":2}}