Reviewed by Josh N · Updated October 20, 2026 · How we verify
Reported Phenomena
- Woman in white
- Phantom footsteps
- Flickering lights
- Sudden cold drafts
- Disembodied weeping
- Jingling keys
Reported by visitors & local legend. Stories, not verified claims.
Two hotels burned to the ground on this hillside before the current one was built, and the Elms Hotel ghost stories that circulate today tend to skip straight past that fact. The resort stands at Regent and Elms Boulevard in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, in the mineral-water country northeast of Kansas City, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of The Elms Historic District. It is a working hotel and spa, not a ruin, which means anyone curious about its reputation can simply book a room.
Quick Facts About the Elms in Excelsior Springs
- Where: Regent and Elms Boulevard, Excelsior Springs, Missouri
- First hotel on the site: a 200-room resort opened in July 1888, with a 75-room annex added in 1889
- Current building: built of native stone by the Elms Realty Company, opened September 7, 1912
- Listed: National Register of Historic Places, within The Elms Historic District
- Notable guests: Al Capone during the speakeasy years, Harry S. Truman on election night 1948
- Current status: open, sold to Hilton properties in 2019
The Two Elms Hotels That Burned
The resort has been destroyed by fire twice, and both times quickly. The first Elms, a 200-room resort, opened in July 1888 and gained a 75-room annex the following year. It lasted less than a decade. Fire destroyed it on May 9, 1898.
The second attempt fared worse. A 300-room hotel opened on July 31, 1909, and burned on October 30, 1910, just over a year into its life. The public record in the Wikipedia account does not assign a death toll to either fire, and no verified casualty figures accompany the ghost stories that later attached themselves to the property. That is worth holding onto: the most dramatic events in the site’s documented history are also the ones the folklore says least about.
The third building, the one guests sleep in now, was the Elms Realty Company’s answer to that record. It was built of native stone and opened on September 7, 1912.
Speakeasy Years Under the Pendergast Machine
During the 1920s and 1930s the region around Kansas City was a wide open town under the crime boss Tom Pendergast, and the Elms prospered accordingly. The hotel operated as a speakeasy, and Al Capone was a frequent visitor. Much of the hotel’s modern reputation leans on this period, and for once the legend and the record are pointing in roughly the same direction.
Ownership moved fast. In 1922 the Elms Realty Company sold the hotel to Dr. A. S. McCleary, who ran a Kansas City sanitarium. McCleary sold it on in 1925 to the Roberts Hotel Company of Chicago. Then the business model collapsed from underneath the whole town: in 1932 the American Medical Association published research stating there was no scientific evidence supporting the claimed health benefits of mineral water. That same year the hotel was declared bankrupt and was bought by the Eppley Hotel Company chain.
Between the mineral baths and the liquor, the Elms also served as a training camp for the boxer Jack Dempsey and as summer camp for the 1948 New York Giants football team.
Election Night 1948, and the Room Where Truman Slept
The best documented night in the hotel’s history involved no ghosts at all. In 1948, Harry S. Truman predicted victory to his staffers at his headquarters at the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City, then slipped out to the Elms to avoid the press attention gathering around his house in Independence. He went to bed while the country assumed he had lost. In the morning he was woken with the news that he had won the election.
Truman’s stay is the hotel’s proudest piece of provenance, and staff and guests have folded it into the atmosphere of the place ever since. It is history, not haunting, but it explains a good deal of why the Elms is talked about at all.
Bankruptcies, Sheraton and a Long Run of Renovations
The second half of the century was rougher. The Eppley chain sold the hotel to the Sheraton Corporation in 1956 as part of what was then the second largest hotel sale in United States history. Sheraton sold it again almost immediately, then bought it back in 1960 when it went bankrupt, renaming it the Sheraton-Elms Hotel. In 1968 Sheraton offloaded it with seventeen other aging properties to Gotham Hotels, and the original name returned. It stayed open until 1971, then sat closed for several years before local citizens bought it and reopened it in 1977.
Another bankruptcy came in 1991, though the hotel kept operating. The city of Excelsior Springs bought it in 1995 and handed it to new owners, who spent $16 million on a renovation in 1998. The Elms closed again in 2011 for a $20 million overhaul and reopened in 2012 for its centennial. Hilton properties bought it in 2019, with further renovations scheduled for 2021.
That is a lot of gutting, rebuilding and emptying out for one building. People inclined to believe that disturbance stirs up activity tend to point at exactly this sort of timeline.
What People Say They Encounter at the Elms
None of the following is verified. It is local lore and guest report, and it should be read that way.
The accounts that circulate most often describe flickering or failing lights, footsteps in corridors with nobody in them, and sudden cold drafts in rooms and stairwells. Two figures recur in the retellings: a young woman in a white gown said to move along the hallways, sometimes accompanied by the sound of weeping, and a former bellboy whose presence is supposedly announced by jingling keys and footsteps that pass and fade.
Neither figure can be matched to a named individual in the hotel’s documented history. No record in the available history of the property identifies a guest or employee who died here, and the frequently repeated claim that the hotel sits on burial ground has no support in anything on the public record. The stories are old enough and widely enough repeated to be part of the place’s identity, but they remain stories. Anyone arriving expecting the folklore to be backed by names and dates will leave disappointed.
Staying at the Elms Hotel and Spa
Unlike most sites with a haunted reputation, this one wants your booking. The Elms is a full operating resort hotel with a spa, open to the public, roughly half an hour northeast of Kansas City in the small town of Excelsior Springs. Rooms are bookable in the normal way, and guests are free to wander the public spaces, the stone-walled corridors and the grounds.
Two things worth knowing before you go. First, the building you are walking through is the third Elms, dating from 1912, not the 1888 or 1909 hotels, both of which burned. Second, repeated multimillion dollar renovations mean the interiors have been reworked several times over, most recently after the 2011 closure. Whatever the Elms was in Capone’s day, it has been scrubbed, rebuilt and refitted since.
See The Elms Hotel and Spa for Yourself
Sources
- NPGallery NRHP Archive Search (National Park Service)
- National Register of Historic Places – Missouri (MO), Clay County
- Historic Hotel in Missouri | The Elms Hotel & Spa
- Wikipedia: The Elms Hotel and Spa
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you visit The Elms Hotel And Spa?
The Elms Hotel And Spa is a place where you can stay overnight. Always follow posted rules and respect private property.
Reader sightings
Nobody has reported anything here yet. If you have been, you would be the first.
Report your own visit to Elms Hotel Ghost Stories: Capone, Truman and Two Fires
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