Historic Anchorage Hotel

The Anchorage Hotel opened in 1916, a year after the town was chartered, and added the annex next door in 1936. The 1916 building was sold and demolished in 1960, so the hotel that trades today as the Historic Anchorage Hotel is that annex, restored in 1989. It has collected ghost reports ever since, enough that staff keep a guest log for them. On the evening of February 20, 1921, John J. "Black Jack" Sturgus, the city's first police chief and at the time its entire police department, was found shot with his own gun a few steps from the hotel, six weeks into the job. The death was treated as an unsolved murder for a century; research published in 2021 by an Anchorage historian and a ghost-tour operator concluded he had most likely taken his own life, and that friends concealed it to protect his widow's insurance. Guests describe a young girl in old-fashioned clothes on the second-floor hall who glances back before turning a corner, a woman in what looks like a wedding dress, and a man some take to be Sturgus. In rooms 215 and 217, televisions switch on and change channels by themselves, and taps run with no one near them, despite repeated plumbing checks. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.