The scariest place I’ve ever slept was a former jail cell, renovated as part of a cheap hotel in Germany, where I refused to shut the door for fear I wouldn’t be able to open it. If you ask my wife, she’ll say the worst overnight was the time we arrived at a backcountry campsite in the middle of Great Smoky Mountains National Park to find it posted as closed for bear activity, and I insisted we pitch our tent anyway.
I didn’t get much sleep in those situations, and I’m not sure if I’m brave enough to bed down in the hotels on this list either.
As Halloween approaches with its delicious chills, I’ve found a mix of lodging that either offer exhilarating adventure or are downright terrifying. Fear of heights? Check. Fear of tight spaces and isolation? Check and check. Fear of the dead visiting you in the dark? Triple check.
So, are you bold enough to sleep 1,300 feet underground? Or in a room where a ghost might tickle your feet in the night? Or in a bedroom beneath the sea?
The SkyLodge ϳԹ Suites, Peru
Climbers on multi-day ascents sleep in portaledges that dangle off the side of the walls. The are built for the rest of us, who might want to experience a similarly precarious perch but without quite the effort to get there.
These glass domes, available for overnights, are built into the side of a cliff 400 feet above the ground near the Sacred Valley of Cuzco, in Peru. The solar-powered capsules are 24 feet long, eight feet tall, and eight feet wide, and offer 360-degree views of the beautiful valley below. If you’re lucky, you’ll see condors soaring around you looking for prey. The cost of $386 per person, per night, includes transportation to the site, dinner, breakfast, and all requisite gear.
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For this lodging, just getting there is adventure aplenty. There are only two ways to reach your bedroom at the SkyLodge: climb the 400-foot via ferrata, a series of iron rungs built into the rock face, or take a series of ziplines. Whichever way you choose, you can tack on the other adventure for $25.
Omni Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina
The , nestled into the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains on the edge of downtown Asheville, is an opulent resort with a history to match. The 500-plus-room inn opened for guests in 1913, and has seen its share of dignitaries visit over the years. Ten U.S. presidents, from William Taft to Barack Obama, have stayed here. The Grove Park also housed high-ranking prisoners of war from the Axis countries during WWII, and legend has it that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote some of The Great Gatsby at the inn.
But the most famous guest might be the “Pink Lady,” a ghost said to haunt the historic halls, playing pranks on guests and entertaining children. She wears a pink gown.
The Pink Lady’s back story is fuzzy. Most accounts agree that she was a guest at the Grove Park in the 1920s, staying in room 545, and fell from its balcony to her death. Some say her demise was an accident, others insist on murder or suicide. Multiple guests in a variety of rooms throughout the decades have reported walking into cold spots, lights turning on and off, and doors closing randomly, while a few who have stayed in room 545 say they were awakened in the middle of the night by someone tickling their feet. Some visitors to the palatial inn claim to have seen the Pink Lady: a friendly woman in a pink gown who was playing with their children. Rooms are from $369 per night.
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Bring your road bike. The Grove Park Inn sits on the flank of Sunset Mountain, a quick spin from the a scenic 469-mile two-lane road that connects Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah National Parks.
The entire road is bucket-list territory, but the 30 miles from Asheville to Mount Mitchell, with 6,000 feet of climbing, is primo thanks to multiple overlooks and the 360-degree view from the top of Mitchell, the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi.
The Muraka at Conrad Maldives Rangali Island, the Maldives
Apparently, sleeping underwater is a thing, with multiple hotels boasting submerged bedrooms, from those of Key Largo’s , a former research pod turned into a lodge complete with underwater pizza delivery, to Sweden’s, which sits in a lake that freezes every winter.
But for my money, the most stunning and potentially disturbing lodging beneath the sea has to be , located off the edge of Rangali Island in the Maldives. It’s a two-level cabana with the entire master bedroom set 16 feet below sea level, so that you are sleeping inside an acrylic tube with continual 180-degree Indian Ocean views. There are even a bathroom and walk-in closet. The price for sleeping with the fishes? Rates start at $9,999 a night.
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If you think sleeping underwater is fun, then you might want to spend your days on Rangali Island diving. The Conrad Maldives has dive-certification programs and can guide you on underwater adventures exploring the life thriving around the “thila,” rock pinnacles that rise from the ocean floor to crest the surface of the water.
Crescent Hotel and Spa, Eureka Springs, Arkansas
Billed as the “most haunted hotel in America,” the Crescent Hotel embraces its ghostly reputation. The place, built from 1884 to 1886, hosts nightly ghost tours of the building, annual paranormal conferences, and Halloween dinner seances.
Multiple ghost sightings in the Crescent have been reported over the years, with guests saying something touched them when they were alone or that they heard whispers when no one was near. Two apparitions have been identified repeatedly—Michael, an Irish stonemason who died in the 1800s while helping build the hotel, and Theodora, a patient when the hotel was a hospital in the 1930s, who is occasionally seen looking for her keys near room 419. Yes, the Crescent was a hospital at one point, and the ghost tour culminates with a visit to the old morgue. Rooms from $231 per night.
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Bring your mountain bike. Eureka Springs is surrounded by the Ozark Mountains, which are in the midst of a . The 1,600-acre Lake Leatherwood, a city park, has 21 miles of trail alone, including several gravity-specific paths. Another park, Passion Play, has 18 miles of purpose-built bike trails. Check out , at Passion Play, for a fun and flowy intermediate downhill full of optional jumps and drops.
The Deep Sleep Hotel, Wales
Claustrophobes beware: the , located in the Snowdonia Mountains of North Wales, has guest rooms 1,375 feet below ground. The new “hotel” is the brainchild of the British caving-guide company Go Below, who took on the endeavor after fielding a number of requests from guests about sleeping in a cave. The company has developed four guest cabins, a kitchen, and a large bedroom dubbed “The Grotto” at the bottom of a Victorian-era slate mine near Snowdonia National Park. The mine dates back to the 1800s but was last operational in the mid 20th century.
Billed as the “deepest hotel in the world,” the place opened in April, with overnight trips running every Saturday. Reaching your bedroom might be the most intimidating part, as it requires a 45-minute hike into the mountains followed by a caving adventure complete with sketchy bridges, down climbing, and rock scrambling. Once you reach your digs, battery-operated lights fight off the complete darkness, you drink water from a spring inside the cave, and expedition-style meals are served for dinner. There are no ghosts (that we know of) but sleeping in a hole 100 stories below ground with the weight of the earth on top of you is scary enough, right? From $450 per night for two people.
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Just getting to your bedroom is a legit caving excursion. And you have to retrace your steps to get out the following morning. But we will add that as long as you’re there, Snowdonia and Llanberis Pass are among the most spectacular places in the United Kingdom for hill walking, scrambling, and trad climbing.
The Stanley Hotel, Estes Park, Colorado
You can’t discuss scary hotels without mentioning , a stately lodge near Rocky Mountain National Park that served as the inspiration for Stephen King’s The Shining. The original building was constructed in 1909 to offer a restorative environment for guests looking to heal in the clean air up there at 7,800 feet.
The hotel thrived as a tony destination for decades, but had fallen into disrepair by the time King stayed in room 217 during the early 1970s. According to King, he and his wife checked into the hotel on the last day of the season, as the staff was leaving for winter, and essentially had the entire place to themselves. That night, the author had a dream about a fire hose coming to life and chasing his son down the long, empty hallway of the Stanley, and The Shining was born.
But paranormal instances had been reported in the Stanley for years before King showed up with his overactive imagination. In 1911, a gas leak caused room 217 (yes, the same room King would later stay in) to explode. The force of the explosion sent a maid hurtling through the air, sustaining extensive injuries. That same maid returned to work a couple of years later after recovering and stayed on the staff until her death in the 1950s. Customers have reported seeing her ghost around room 217 and, apparently, she still feels like she’s on duty; guests wake to the room being tidier than when they went to sleep. That’s my kind of ghost.
Ghostly accounts from the Stanley are too numerous to recount here, but guests and staff have also reported piano playing while nobody was near the instrument, or the laughter of children in hallways that were empty. A cowboy supposedly haunts room 428. And how’s this for creepy: the Stanley is hosting a just before Halloween this year, like in the book and movie.
Also of note, if I may interject it, the Stanley’s Whiskey Bar has the state’s largest collection of the thing it is named for.
Rooms in the main building are from $289.
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Bring your hiking boots. You’re a couple of miles from Rocky Mountain National Park. Don’t spend all your time looking for ghosts and drinking whiskey in the Stanley. Check out a handful of gorgeous high-elevation lakes on the , a popular but stunning 3.1-mile out and back.
Graham Averill is ϳԹ magazine’s national parks columnist. He believes in ghosts and a variety of other things he can’t see or touch. But he’d rather sleep in a haunted house than under the ocean.
