Historic Roads Hotel

A small-town hotel in Atlanta, Indiana, a village of about 700 people along the old Michigan Road. The hotel has become a destination for paranormal investigators who visit for overnight ghost hunts.

The Roads Hotel is an elegant Queen Anne-style mansion built in 1893 by Newton Roads and his wife Clara in the small town of Atlanta, Indiana. The twenty-two-room inn was originally designed to capitalize on the natural gas boom that gripped central Indiana in the late nineteenth century and served as a layover stop for the railroad, attracting a wide variety of travelers. During Prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s, the hotel was converted into a speakeasy and brothel, complete with hidden rooms and trick doors, and is said to have hosted notorious criminals including John Dillinger and Al Capone during that era.

The haunting of the Roads Hotel is rooted in the multiple deaths that occurred within its walls. Newton Roads, his wife Clara, their son Everett, and Newton's stepmother Catherine all died in the building, primarily from tuberculosis. Everett fell ill at the age of nineteen and was forced to live in isolation in one of the hotel's rooms until his death in 1909. Clara continued to operate the hotel as a brothel and speakeasy after Newton's death, and she herself died in the building in 1941. Added to these family tragedies is the story of Sarah, a prostitute who held a high status within the Roads Hotel during its brothel years but was reportedly murdered after a violent encounter with a customer.

Paranormal investigators who have examined the Roads Hotel report that the presences of Newton and Clara Roads are still in the building where they lived, worked, and died, forever tending to the needs of the hotel and keeping tabs on guests. A shadow figure commonly reported and occasionally captured on night vision equipment is known to lurk around the building's living room and is attributed to Newton. Everett's spirit is also sometimes detected in the room where he spent his final days. Sarah's room is a particular area of intense activity, home to a collection of dolls that have been observed moving or being thrown by unseen hands. Several disturbing EVPs have been captured by multiple independent investigators in this room, including a recorded feminine voice responding to a challenge with the words "you wish." Throughout the hotel, visitors experience doors slamming shut, random footsteps on the staircases, disembodied conversations on the second floor, and physical contact including hair pulling, clothes tugging, and arm grabbing.

The Roads Hotel has been featured on paranormal television shows including Ghost Hunters and Paranormal Investigators, and was ranked fifth on USA Today's list of the ten best haunted places in the United States. Current owner Mike Couch hosts overnight paranormal investigations at the property, with all proceeds benefiting his Lost Limbs Foundation, which provides financial assistance to help amputee children obtain prosthetics. The building is no longer a functioning hotel, but its doors remain open to those willing to spend a night in the company of Newton, Clara, Everett, and Sarah.