The Cavalier Hotel

A grand 1927 hotel on a hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Famous guests included seven U.S. Presidents, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Adolph Coors, who died there mysteriously in 1929.

The Cavalier Hotel has towered over the Virginia Beach oceanfront since 1927, its half-million red bricks forming an Art Deco monument to Roaring Twenties glamour. Ten U.S. presidents have walked through its grand entrance—Truman, Kennedy, Roosevelt among them. F. Scott Fitzgerald swam laps in the saltwater pool, Judy Garland and Bette Davis danced until dawn to Cab Calloway and Glenn Miller, and notorious gangster Al Capone warmed himself by the Hunt Room's enormous fireplace. But the hotel's most enduring guests are celebrated less for their stardom than their sheer staying power.

On the morning of June 5, 1929, Adolph Coors Sr., the 82-year-old founder of Coors Brewing Company, sat in the Pocahontas Room having breakfast with his wife Louisa and daughter Augusta. The family had traveled from Colorado on doctor's orders—Coors was recuperating from a nasty bout of influenza, and the Virginia sea air was meant to restore his strength. He and Louisa had recently celebrated their golden anniversary.

Then, without explanation, Coors excused himself and returned alone to Room 606 at the end of the sixth-floor hallway. Moments later, a caretaker's morning silence was shattered by a loud thunk followed by her own scream. The crushed body of Adolph Coors lay sprawled on the hotel's concrete patio.

Whether he jumped, fell, or was pushed remains one of Virginia's most enduring mysteries. Coroner R.W. Woodhouse deemed an investigation unnecessary and never conducted an autopsy. Some speculate Coors took his own life—Prohibition had forced his company to manufacture pottery and cement instead of beer, and author Dan Baum notes it "was probably a combination of not being able to make beer and being a miserable son of a bitch." Others point to the locked windows and conflicting newspaper accounts as evidence of foul play. In his will, Coors stipulated only that his hotel bill be paid in full. He left no suicide note.

Today, Room 606 and the entire sixth floor remain a hotbed of paranormal activity. Guests report persistent cold spots, windows that open by themselves in the dead of night, and creepy whispers emanating from empty corners. Most disturbing are witnesses who claim to see a replay of that fatal plunge—the apparition of a falling body followed by that sickening thud against the pavement. The front desk regularly receives calls from the sixth floor, only to find silence or faint jazz music on the other end. During the 2016-2017 renovations, when that floor was completely sealed off and uninhabited, the phantom calls continued.

Some have seen Coors himself wandering the halls in the wee hours. Tour guide Chewning once held up a photograph of Coors during a tour, and a woman shrieked in recognition. She had attended a wedding at the Cavalier in the 1970s, and an older gentleman no one recognized kept appearing in the photographs. She was certain the mysterious figure was Adolph Coors. The lingering smell of cigar smoke—Coors was a known smoker—still wafts through the sixth floor despite the hotel's strict non-smoking policy since 2018.

An elderly African American bellman in an old-fashioned uniform appears at the top of the stairs leading to the sixth floor, warning guests not to proceed because "there are ghosts ahead." When they turn to question him, he vanishes. No employment records match his description for decades. A forlorn WWII soldier in military dress wanders the third floor—perhaps one of the trainees who lived at the hotel when the Navy commandeered it as a radar training facility in 1941.

One of the hotel's most poignant hauntings involves a little girl and her cat. According to historian Chris Bonney, the child's cat escaped from her guest room and fell into the hotel's saltwater swimming pool. The girl leaped in to save her pet, and both drowned. Today, guests hear scratching at doors and loud meowing with no cat in sight. Staff feel the heavy weight of an invisible feline lying on paperwork at the front desk—and if disturbed, the phantom cat has been known to scratch. During renovations in the 2010s, mysterious paw prints appeared in freshly-laid concrete. A child's apparition has been spotted searching near the pool area.

The Lady in White drifts through third-floor hallways in a flowing white gown. Once, she appeared at the foot of a terrified guest's bed before vanishing. Whether she is Ida Harrington, wife of the hotel's founder, or an unnamed Jazz Age socialite, she has also been spotted in the basement social club—now aptly nicknamed the Ghost Bar. An elderly woman with a ghostly dog frequents Becca Restaurant, gliding through without a reservation.

The opulent Crystal Ballroom's piano plays itself, keys moving to produce music with no one seated. A husband and wife staying in Room 606 recorded a spirit box session where an entity identifying himself as "Mike" stated there are "multiple" ghosts present, including murder victims. As the recording played, the chandelier began rocking back and forth. In Room 712, guests wake to the sensation of a hand on their shoulder and the overwhelming feeling of being watched.

The Cavalier has embraced its spectral reputation. In March 2010, it hosted the three-day Eastern Paranormal Investigators Co-Op Conference, drawing demonologists, paranormal researchers, and famous haunting survivors who inspired films like "The Sixth Sense" and "A Haunting in Connecticut." Producer Teddy Skyler chose the venue "because of its historical value" and "because it has been written up in books as having a haunted history."

Reopened in 2018 as a member of Marriott's Autograph Collection and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Cavalier offers 85 reimagined rooms. But some guests never checked out. The elevators still move independently between floors without anyone pressing the buttons, just as they did when the hotel sat empty during renovations—a reminder that in this Virginia Beach landmark, the dead have never stopped mixing with the living.