Jerome Grand Hotel

Guests at the Jerome Grand Hotel report a woman in a white gown who stands at the end of the bed waving her finger, a woman in a nurse's uniform, a figure in a long coat taken for a doctor, a child of four or five running down the third-floor hallway crying or laughing, and a ghost cat. The best-known spirit is Claude Harvey, the hospital's maintenance man, found pinned by the neck in the old elevator in the spring of 1935 in a death never settled as accident, murder or suicide; the elevator moves unbidden at all hours, strange noises come from the shaft, and sneezing and coughing are heard in the laundry room. Room 32, tied to two reported suicides during the hospital years, is considered the most active room: doors open and close, faucets turn on and off, and there are source-less noises. Built in 1926 as the United Verde Hospital, the five-storey building was the most modern medical facility in Arizona by 1930, fireproof, earthquake-braced, with an elevator, an X-ray laboratory and operating theatres for the mining company's injured men. It closed in 1950, stood empty for 44 years, and reopened in 1996 as the Jerome Grand Hotel; many miners died here over its years as a hospital, though the often-repeated claim of nearly a death a day does not stand up against the size of the town it served. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.