Eldridge Hotel

The Eldridge Hotel stands on the site of the Free State Hotel, built in Lawrence in 1855 by New England settlers and named to signal that Kansas should enter the Union as a free state. The hotel was burned in the 1856 attack on Lawrence, rebuilt as the Eldridge House, and burned again in Quantrill's raid in 1863, and the present building carries that history forward. The hotel's own account of its ghost centers on Colonel Shalor Eldridge, who ran the hotel and died in 1899, and on room 506, where the original cornerstone is said to rest. Guests and staff report water bottles crackling in the night, an air conditioner switching itself on, luggage shaking, and housekeepers' key cards going missing, and the hotel has offered tours of the room. The Eldridge was featured on the Biography Channel's My Ghost Story and still operates as a hotel.