Room 301 and the Elevator Shaft: The Victor Hotel Ghost

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated November 14, 2026 · How we verify

Most haunted hotel stories begin with a death that nobody can document. The Victor Hotel ghost is no exception, but the building underneath the legend is unusually well recorded: a four-story Victorian brick pile in the old gold camp of Victor, Colorado, built in 1899 and 1900 by the town’s founders, the Woods brothers, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It has been a bank, a hospital, a morgue, a boarding house for miners, and a derelict. It is now a hotel again, and the elevator at the center of the ghost story still runs.

The Woods Brothers Struck Ore in Their Own Foundation

Frank and Harry Woods owned land at 4th Street and Victor Avenue and meant to put up a building on it. In March 1894 they broke ground, and while excavating they found a body of rich ore. Construction stopped. They opened the Gold Coin Mine instead.

The mine’s tunnels ran directly under the Victor business district, and a total of $6 million in gold came out of it. One account repeated about the bank that later occupied the site holds that “one of its depositors mined directly beneath the bank at five hundred feet from the surface.” In August 1899 fire destroyed the entire business district. The original wooden Hotel Victor, which stood across the street from the present hotel, was leveled, and so was the shaft house on the site the hotel occupies today.

Bank, Hospital, Morgue: What Happened on Each Floor

Out of that ash the Woods brothers raised the four-story Victor Bank building, completed on December 24, 1899. The Italianate structure, with bays, large storefront windows and cornice work, is the largest building in Victor, and it was once considered the most modern edifice in the Cripple Creek District. At opening it held the brothers’ own First National Bank of Victor along with lodging rooms and consulting and retail businesses.

The Woods fortune did not hold. Bank examiners found the bank insolvent and closed it on November 4, 1903, and the brothers sold the building. The Citizen’s Bank of Victor followed. Tenants over the years included Western Union Telegraph Company, H.H. Rosser and the Colorado Telephone Company, and among the men with offices here was Dr. H.G. Thomas, father of the broadcaster Lowell Thomas. A.E. Carlton later bought the building and ran the City Bank out of it.

The detail that ghost tours seize on is a matter of record. A hospital was operated on the fourth floor by 1906, and during one difficult winter it also functioned as a morgue. The ground frozen too hard for burials is the usual explanation offered, though the source says only that the two uses overlapped.

The City Bank closed during the Depression. Bill Lehr’s photography studio and the Brass Rail Cafe and Bar occupied the first floor in the 1930s. By the 1960s the businesses had closed, the building stood vacant, and it fell into disrepair over the next two decades.

Eddy, the Iron Gates, and the Oldest Elevator in Colorado

For a period the building served as a boarding house for miners. The legend attached to it concerns one of them, a man remembered only as Eddy, who lived in room 301. The story goes that he left his room and pressed the call button for the elevator. The iron gates opened, but the car had not arrived. Not realizing it, Eddy stepped into the shaft and fell to his death.

That account is folklore as it is handed down, not a verified incident. No date, no surname, no inquest is attached to it in the available record. What is verifiable is the elevator itself: the bird cage elevator preserved in the 1990s renovation is the oldest operating elevator in Colorado and is still in service.

What Guests Report in Room 301

The reported phenomena here are narrow and all point one direction. Guests and visitors describe sightings of Eddy, and on the strength of those reports ghost hunters ask specifically to sleep in his room. That is the extent of what the record supports: visitations associated with room 301 and with the elevator he is said to have died in. Nothing in the documented history of the building confirms the death, and nothing confirms the sightings. They are reports, repeated often enough to shape how rooms get booked.

Booking a Night at the Victor Hotel

The building was bought in October 1991 by the Victor Hotel Limited Liability Company. Marjoe D. Bandimere of Arvada, Colorado supervised the work, aiming to keep the historic integrity of the building while adding modern conveniences, and the renovation was finished in August 1992. Preserved elements include the bird cage elevator, the bank vault, the original woodwork, and the steam radiators, which were fitted with individual thermostat controls.

The Victor Hotel takes overnight guests, with private baths, wireless internet, telephones and cable television, and a restaurant operates in the lobby. Room 301 is a real room you can request. Whether anything requests it back is a separate question.

Address: 4th Street and Victor Avenue, Victor, Colorado

See Victor Hotel for Yourself

Sources

• History
• Ghost Towns of the Mountain West: Your Guide to the Hidden History and Old West Haunts of Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and
• NPGallery Asset Detail (National Park Service)
• Wikipedia: Victor Hotel

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