The Elms Hotel & Spa
The Elms Hotel & Spa is a hotel in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. Hotel associated with documented cultural history. The archive files it under haunting reports. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 legend — all telling, no verified spine yet, and the file says so plainly. Access details are unverified — research before visiting. The dossier keeps the place and the story in the same record — which is what the archive is for.
· in your passport — stamped · open it
Is The Elms Hotel & Spa haunted?
The record holds 1 claim, 1 legend — filed as reported, not verified. The heaviest filing is classed local folklore. The archive documents the claim; it takes no position on the ghost.
The record — long form
Excelsior Springs grew up around mineral waters credited with cures, and The Elms became its grand hotel. The first Elms — a 200-room wooden resort — opened in 1888 and burned to ash on May 9, 1898. The rebuilt hotel opened July 31, 1909, and burned again on October 30, 1910; no fatalities were recorded in either fire. The third Elms, built with limestone salvaged from the ruins, opened September 7, 1912, and still stands as a National Register property in the Elms Historic District.
The 1920s made it a resort with an undercurrent — the lap pool area is said to have run as a speakeasy and gambling den — and election night 1948 made it famous: Harry Truman slipped away from the press in Independence and spent the night at The Elms while returns came in, waking to learn he had beaten Dewey. A 2013 episode of Ghost Hunters put the hotel's reputation on television.
The pool, the maid, the third floor
The hotel's own published haunting history identifies the legend spots: the lap pool, where a gambler tied to the Prohibition-era games is said to linger — some versions have him killed by the mob; a maid in a 1920s-style uniform who assists or annoys housekeeping; and a woman reported roaming the third floor looking for her child. Paranormal teams that worked the building concentrated on the pool and Room 214 — the 'Al Capone room' — and filed no definitive evidence.
The file notes the symmetry worth keeping: two documented fires with no recorded deaths, a real speakeasy layer, a genuine presidential footnote — and a ghost population the hotel itself describes as friendly.
The record of claims
Guest reports associate paranormal activity with the lap pool. The hotel keeps the account on its own record — the sort of haunting a building earns one guest at a time. The claim is neighborhood knowledge — retold locally, verified nowhere. It's the kind of claim that outlives debunkings — too many witnesses, too few explanations.
Guest reports associate paranormal activity with the lap pool. A hotel in Excelsior Springs, Missouri with more than a century of check-ins gives the reports plenty of rooms to work with. Local lore carries the account; no documentation has ever caught up with it. The story outranks the documentation, which is how you know it's folklore.
Sources on file
- 01Missouri's Most Haunted PlacesMissouri Division of Tourism · tourism · A3
Field notes & open questions
Discovery pass. Earliest attestation, primary history, precise location and current access require independent enrichment.