8 haunted hotels in San Antonio, with the stories checked

The Menger opened on Alamo Plaza in 1859, and some of its ghosts have real names. Rancher Richard King, founder of the King Ranch, died at the hotel on April 14, 1885. Theodore Roosevelt came here in 1898 to recruit men for his Rough Riders. Ghost tours say neither man ever checked out.

The hotel plays along. Its Room With A Boo package calls the Menger “famously haunted.” You get two tickets to a Sisters Grimm ghost walk, a signed copy of Haunted History of Old San Antonio and a $15 food credit per night. The owners of Sisters Grimm wrote that book, so read it as tour lore, not history. For a separate outing, their ghost bus tour leaves from the Menger. The bus tour is different from the walk included in the hotel package.

Want King’s room? The hotel sells a King Ranch Signature Suite. No record we found says he died in it, but that hasn’t slowed demand. General manager Garvin O’Neal told The Texas Bucket List in 2022 that it’s the most requested room in the hotel “because people want to go and have Richard King visit.” He isn’t sold on ghosts himself. “I think when it comes to paranormal, it’s the power of suggestions,” he said.

One more twist. The State of Texas now owns the Menger. The General Land Office bought it in 2025 for $40.5 million, and it still runs as a hotel.

The Gunter opened on Houston Street in 1909. Its famous story is a crime, and the outline made the news.

In February 1965, a man checked into Room 636 under a false name. Over the next few days, he was seen with a woman who never checked in. Then a maid walked in on him standing beside a blood-soaked bed. He left with a bundle. Police tied the case to a man named Walter Emerick. Days later, as officers closed in, he shot himself at the St. Anthony Hotel. The woman was never identified. No body was ever found.

Retellings disagree on the dates and even on the fake name he used. The core facts hold. The hotel tells the story itself in a May 2025 post that calls the case “grisly and unsolved.” It says guests report a woman’s voice and footsteps when no one is there. It also says Room 636 “has since been remodeled.”

The Gunter’s other famous room is easier to prove. Blues legend Robert Johnson recorded in Room 414 in November 1936. Those were his first recording sessions. (His last were in Dallas in 1937.) The hotel’s Bar 414 is named for that room.

Marriott runs the Gunter now. It reopened in 2025 after a $57 million renovation and joined the Tribute Portfolio brand in June 2026. Some booking sites still call it the Sheraton Gunter.

The Emily Morgan fills the old Medical Arts Building, a 13-story Gothic tower that opened beside the Alamo in April 1926. Doctors kept offices here for 50 years. The Handbook of Texas says the top floor held a hospital, with space for 30 patient rooms and five operating rooms. The building became offices in 1976 and a hotel in 1984. Today it’s a DoubleTree by Hilton.

The hotel’s haunted history page goes further. It says the building “also had a morgue and crematorium.” We found no record of either. The Handbook of Texas mentions only a boiler room in the basement. The National Register nomination mentions neither.

Now the part that holds up. The hotel skips the 13th floor. With 13 stories and no floor labeled 13, the floor labeled 14 is most likely the top story. That’s the floor where the hotel says guests smell antiseptic. It’s also where the records put the hospital.

That floor has one more quirk. There’s no Room 1408. The hotel says the numbers stop at 1407 and the next door is the Duke Suite. General manager Kole Siefken told KSAT in 2024, “Most people think our ghost stories come from the Alamo, but all of our haunted stories come from the medical arts building.”

Even the hotel’s own page hedges. It asks whether all this means the hotel is haunted, then answers, “Probably not.”

The St. Anthony opened across from Travis Park in 1909. A real death ties it to the Gunter case. Walter Emerick, the man police linked to Room 636, shot himself here in February 1965.

The hotel’s own ghost story has nothing to do with him. Ask about the Lavender Lady instead. “Bartenders can tell you about the Lavender Lady,” senior sales manager Debbie Gonzalez told KSAT in 2024. She said guests could walk into a bathroom by the Cavalier room and smell lavender.

The hotel used to lean in harder. San Antonio Magazine reported in 2016 that its bar, Haunt, served a cocktail called The Emerick, with cherry juice snaking through the glass to look like blood. We found no ghost content on the hotel’s current Marriott pages.

The tour version of the hotel’s ghost is a mess. She wears red on one site, black on another and white on a third. When the details drift like that, you’re reading lore.

The Odd Fellows laid the cornerstone of this building in April 1909. The National Register nomination says it was “erected on a portion of the original Alamo grounds.” Historic Hotels of America, the hotel’s trade group, says hundreds of troops moved onto the spot where the pool is now on the night before the battle.

That’s the whole premise of the Crockett’s ghost stories, Alamo soldiers who never left. Yet the hotel’s website says nothing about ghosts. The one on-record hint came from assistant general manager Patricia Santiago Larios. She told KSAT in 2024 that “sometimes on our fourth floor, we have strange things that happen.”

Like the Menger, the Crockett now belongs to the State of Texas. The General Land Office paid $21.5 million for it in 2025. Rockbridge runs both hotels, and both still take guests.

La Mansión sits right on the River Walk in buildings that started as a Catholic boys’ school. A Texas historical marker says the Brothers of the Society of Mary came to San Antonio in 1852. They finished St. Mary’s Institute here in 1853. A law school used the site after 1934. The buildings were sold in 1967 and turned into a hotel.

The ghost is a student. “The ghost’s name is supposedly Little Jimmy,” area managing director Rusty Wallace told KSAT in 2024. “They think he was a precocious young Catholic student.” He’s said to haunt the old school gym, now an event space, where one window kept breaking. “It’s the last window on the left,” Wallace said. Then he added that it “hasn’t broken in a year.”

We found no record of a student named Jimmy. Still, most hotel managers won’t point you to a specific window.

The Gibbs Building went up in 1908 and 1909, across from the Alamo, on the site of the old Maverick homestead. While builders dug the foundation, they hit buried brass cannon. The San Antonio Conservation Society says those cannon were “used in defense of the Alamo.” New owners turned the building into a boutique hotel in 2010.

The hotel’s website says nothing about ghosts. It does say the hotel stands “on the grounds of the original Alamo compound.” Ghost City Tours goes much further. It claims Alamo commander William B. Travis died right where the front desk is now. It also ties Room 412 to the ghost of a 1920s detective.

The Handbook of Texas says only that Travis “died early in the battle from a single bullet in the head.” We found no historian who puts that spot under this hotel.

This one surprises people. The Holiday Inn Express at 120 Camaron Street fills the old Bexar County Jail. Architect Alfred Giles designed the first two-story limestone jail in 1878. It held prisoners until 1962. A third floor came in 1912 and two more in 1926. The building became a hotel in 2002, and the hotel’s own listing still mentions the jail.

The ghost stories all come from one place. Ghost City Tours says prisoners were hanged on a “hanging floor” on the third level. It suggests Rooms 312, 503 and 517 for “maximum paranormal activity.” The sources we checked don’t mention hangings in this building. They also show the third floor wasn’t built until 1912, 34 years after the jail opened.