Ask which rooms are haunted at the Hotel Monte Vista and the answer arrives with room numbers attached: 210, 220, 305, and 306, plus a basement and a cocktail lounge with long files of their own. Few buildings carry as much of Flagstaff’s haunted history under one roof, and none carry it as publicly. Everything below is reported lore, gathered from decades of guest accounts, and every room here has a longer story than the one we can print. The full versions get told from the sidewalk, after dark, where they belong.
A hotel built by the whole town
The Hotel Monte Vista opened on January 1, 1927, at the corner of San Francisco Street and Aspen Avenue, financed by public subscription after Flagstaff decided it needed a modern hotel of its own. The name, Spanish for mountain view, came out of a community naming contest. Most of its 73 rooms had a private bath and toilet, a real luxury at the time, and the location a block from the depot kept the register full. When film crews came north to shoot Westerns, the stars stayed here, and the hotel still names rooms for its famous guests. Nearly a century later the Monte V, as locals call it, remains a working hotel with a lounge downstairs and its rooftop sign burning over downtown.
Room 210: the phantom bellboy
The hotel’s signature story is a knock. Guests in Room 210 report a rap at the door and a muffled voice announcing that room service has arrived. When they answer, the hallway is empty. No cart, no tray, no bellboy, and no room service ordered. The reports run back decades and stay strangely consistent, which is what separates this story from most hotel lore. The story goes that John Wayne himself heard the bellboy during one of his stays in the hotel’s Hollywood years and took the visit in stride. Who the bellboy might be, and why he still makes his rounds, is a question our guides take up standing in front of the hotel.
Room 220: the room locals call the Meat Man’s
Room 220 belonged to a long-term boarder remembered for one unsettling habit: he hung raw meat from the chandelier of his room. In the early 1980s he died there, and by most accounts several days passed before anyone found him. The strangeness started almost immediately. Workers readying the room reported the television blaring behind a locked door and the linens pulled from the bed, and guests since have described cold hands and electronics with a will of their own. The file has kept growing; we collected a renovation-era episode from the same wing in our Monte Vista ghost stories. How the room earned its nickname in full is a story our guides tell in person, and quietly.
Room 305: the rocking chair
Room 305 is the hotel’s most requested room, and the reason is a piece of furniture. The story goes that an elderly woman boarded here for years and spent her days in a rocking chair by the window, watching the street below. Long after her death, housekeepers report finding the chair moved back to the window on its own, and guests describe waking to see it rocking, sometimes occupied by a figure gazing out at San Francisco Street. Of all the hotel’s reported residents she may be the gentlest, which is probably why so many visitors ask for her room by number.
Room 306: the two women
The saddest story in the building belongs to Room 306. Local accounts say that in the early 1940s two women died there, after a night that ended at the third-floor window. Most tellings connect them to the red-light district that once operated south of the tracks, and the surviving record is thin in the way old records often are for women the town preferred not to name. We tell their story on the tour with the care it deserves, not for shock. What guests report in 306 today is specific: men in particular describe waking to the feeling of a hand near the mouth, or the sense of being watched from the corner of the room.
The basement and the lounge
Not every story lives upstairs. For decades, staff and guests have reported the sound of an infant crying in the basement, with no child in the building and no origin story anyone has managed to pin down, which somehow makes it worse. The cocktail lounge keeps a different regular. In the 1970s, the story goes, a wounded bank robber slipped into the bar after a holdup, ordered a last drink, and died before finishing it. Bartenders and managers have reported a cheerful greeting ever since, a voice offering a good morning with nobody on the stool. The lounge pours for the public, so you are welcome to listen for yourself. Basements are where Flagstaff’s underground stories tend to begin, and the documented history of the steam mains and reported passages beneath downtown is on our Flagstaff tunnels page.
What the reports have in common
What makes the Monte Vista’s file unusual is not volume but consistency: the same knock at 210, the same chair at 305, the same unease in 306, reported by guests decades apart who had no way of comparing notes. Our co-founder Susan Johnson spent years in the archives separating the documented record from the campfire versions for her book Haunted Flagstaff, and the hotel fills a chapter. Our guides log fresh guest reports every season, and the newest accounts still rhyme with the oldest ones.
Staying the night
The Monte Vista is a living, working hotel, and it wears its stories comfortably. If you want a storied room, book directly with the front desk and ask for it by number; 305 and 210 are requested often, and the staff are used to the question. Our guide to the haunted hotels in Flagstaff covers how to plan the stay, and the Weatherford Hotel, a block west, offers a second historic option with a honeymoon legend of its own. Either way you will be sleeping in the middle of downtown, a short walk from everything on our list of things to do in Flagstaff at night.
Questions people ask
Which rooms are haunted at the Hotel Monte Vista?
Guest reports cluster around four rooms: Room 210 and its phantom bellboy, Room 220, the room locals call the Meat Man’s, Room 305 with its rocking chair, and Room 306, tied to a tragedy from the early 1940s. The basement and the cocktail lounge carry long-running reports of their own.
Can you stay in a haunted room at the Monte Vista?
Yes. The Monte Vista is a working hotel, and the front desk will book a specific room when it is open. Call the hotel directly and ask by number. Rooms 305 and 210 are the most requested, a detail light sleepers may want to weigh before asking.
Which famous guests stayed at the Hotel Monte Vista?
The hotel’s own roster runs from the Hollywood decades on: John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Jane Russell, and Esther Williams among them, with later guests including Michael J. Fox and Michael Stipe. The Monte Vista still names rooms for its famous guests, and the story goes that John Wayne reported the phantom bellboy himself, which has never slowed the bookings.
Hear the full stories from the sidewalk
The Monte Vista is a signature stop on the Flagstaff Haunted History Tour: 75 minutes through downtown with evening departures at 7 PM, $29 for adults, $25 for students, and $22 for children. We tell the documented versions outside the doors where they happened and save the parts that do not fit on a webpage for the walk. 1,000+ five-star reviews. Best of Flagstaff three years running.
