6 of our favorite haunted NC hotels and inns (that you can actually spend the night in)

We’ve heard the expression, “to sleep like the dead,” but it’s almost Halloween and we’re wondering: Could you sleep among them?

Visitors to some inns and hotels across North Carolina have reported encounters during their stays suggesting not all guests were properly registered.

Not anymore, anyway.

In these places, where the term “skeleton key” may have a darker meaning, hosts typically are aware of the stories and even highlight them in hopes that the haunts might earn their keep.

Here are six tantalizing tales.

The Carolina Inn, Chapel Hill

This hotel on the hill bills itself as such a desirable destination that some guests never want to leave, and it claims, “Some never do.”

Built in 1924 and donated to UNC in 1935, the elegant hotel is a town hall of sorts, attracting university alumni, faculty and townspeople.

One alum, Dr. William Jacocks, moved into the hotel in 1948, aged 71 and retired from a series of public-health jobs in the U.S and around the globe. The hotel says he lived in room 252 for 17 years, until his death in 1965.

Though his body was buried in the Episcopal church cemetery in his hometown of Windsor, in Bertie County, Jacocks’ spirit is said to wander the halls of the Carolina Inn. Reports are that he goes around testing guest room doors, and likes to lock guests out of their accommodations.

Some guests have reported feeling a sudden chill in the air, or the scent of fresh flowers.

A hotel renovation years ago subdivided Jacocks’ original room, but the inn says Room 256 still includes his old abode and is available for reservation.

To stay there: hyatt.com/en-US/hotel/north-carolina/the-carolina-inn/rdudc

The Lodge on Lake Lure

This inn was built by members of the N.C. Highway Patrol in 1938 to serve two purposes: to give troopers a place to vacation with their families, and to honor one of their own, Patrolman George Penn, a 23-year-old officer who was killed in a 1937 shootout with what turned out to be two escaped convicts.

The criminals — who were later captured and accused in a string of kidnappings and bank robberies so numerous they couldn’t even remember them all — both were convicted and executed at the state prison in Raleigh in 1938.

It’s said that Penn, who never visited the building, has been seen in Rooms 4 and 2 of the lodge.

Or, if his granddaughter is right, the spirit really is that of Jesse A. Sullins, who was a trooper stationed in Buncombe County and had served as caretaker of the lodge for a time. Sullins is said to have been upset that the Highway Patrol donated the lodge to the Town of Lake Lure in 1967 and that it was subsequently sold to private owners.

To stay there: lodgeonlakelure.com

Lake Lure Inn & Spa

For a small resort town, Lake Lure has a lot of ghost stories.

Dr. Lucius Morse, a Missouri physician who came to the N.C. mountains to recover from tuberculosis, fell in love with the place and recognized its business potential. He built the Inn in 1927, about the same time he dammed the Rocky Broad River to form the lake that, along with Chimney Rock, Morse believed would become a popular tourist attraction.

The stock market crash in 1929 halted development in the area, but the Lake Lure Inn survived.

One of the guests of the inn may not have.

▪ It’s said that in the 1930s, a jealous husband murdered his bride in room 217 or 218, and that she is sometimes glimpsed in the hotel wearing a lace dress.

▪ Former workers at the Inn have said they felt they encountered another spirit there they believed to be Dr. Morse, a benevolent but firm presence who likes to keep an eye on the place.

▪ Ghost-hunters also say they have identified the spirits of some World War II-era officers who convalesced in the hotel when the U.S. Air Force leased it for that purpose.

▪ Housekeepers also have reported the sound of a ball bouncing in the basement, and said sometimes it felt like a little boy was playing tricks on them, pulling their hair and the like.

To stay there: lakelure.com

Duke Mansion B&B, Charlotte

The original house was built in 1915 by Zeb Taylor in what was then the new Myers Park neighborhood. James B. “Buck” Duke, the tobacco and electric power industrialist, bought the house four years later and tripled it in size.

The story goes that he was working in the solarium at the house when he had the idea to create the philanthropic Duke Endowment.

After Duke’s death in 1925, the house was sold several times and eventually was put into the hands of the nonprofit that runs it as a bed-and-breakfast today, using the proceeds to maintain the property.

Queen City Ghosts tells a story about a spirit said to wander about the property.

The tale is that a man named Jon Avery moved into the house with his wife, Anastasia, in the late 1920s, only to see his wife’s health decline, requiring her long-term hospitalization.

In her absence, the stories go, Avery offered a room for rent and took in a writer named Maggie, with whom he began an affair.

When Maggie realized Avery would not divorce his wife, she ended the affair, but the night before she moved out, Avery made her promise to come back and meet him at the house a year hence, “dead or alive.”

She supposedly made her way back for the rendezvous, but only Avery’s specter showed up to meet her. His recent death had not kept him from keeping his promise.

Visitors to the inn have reported sudden cold chills and the occasional shadowy shape, presumably Avery’s, in different parts of the old mansion.

To stay there: dukemansion.com

Balsam Mountain Inn, Balsam

The hotel was built from 1905 to 1908 by a pair of brothers-in-law who had been taking tourists on hunting and fishing expeditions into the nearby mountains.

By the 1980s, the inn’s 100 rooms had gone dark.

In the 1990s, a new owner bought and rehabbed the building and reopened its rooms and expansive porches to guests.

The new owner initially shrugged off the stories she heard about the hotel being haunted, but has told local reporters she became a lot more open-minded after her first night alone in the place.

She said she was awakened by someone pulling the covers off her bed, and later heard what sounded like fingernails scratching on the wall of the adjacent — unoccupied — room.

Local lore holds that a number of spirits occupy the building, including one of a former sheriff who was shot outside the building and was brought inside, where he died. Guests have reported unexplained sounds such as footsteps, banging sounds and doorknobs being jiggled or turned.

The inn closed to overnight guests in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. A voice recording at the hotel says it will reopen. In the meantime, it hosts live music and other entertainment. Scheduled events are posted on its website.

To stay there (soon, we hope): thebalsammountaininn.com

The Grove Park Inn, Asheville

One of the most famous hotels in the state, the Grove Park Inn, now owned by the Omni Hotels chain, has hosted a Who’s Who of presidents, entertainers, inventors and industrialists since it was built by aspiring pharmacist Edwin W. Grove in 1913.

The name of its most notorious guest is unknown.

She’s called The Pink Lady, because she wears a pink dress or because she appears sometimes as a pink mist with a faint female form. That’s all that remains of woman who may have been “the guest of a guest” in Room 545 when she was pushed or fell over a railing onto the interior Palm Court, two floors down, in the 1930s.

Slightly mischievous, she has been blamed for tossing women’s cosmetics onto the floor of Room 545, as well as tickling the feet of guests sleeping in the bed there.

Guests have reported seeing her elsewhere in the hotel as well. Like the other hotel-dwelling apparitions, it seems she is the consummate traveler: here one minute, then gone.

To stay there: omnihotels.com/hotels/asheville-grove-park