Surf City Hotel

One of Long Beach Island's oldest landmarks, famous for lavish pre-Prohibition parties. The hotel overlooked the site of the tragic Powhatan shipwreck that claimed over 200 lives in 1854.

The Surf City Hotel stands on ground steeped in tragedy. Before the current hotel, this site was home to the Mansion of Health, built in 1822 as Long Beach Island's grandest structure, featuring a distinctive balcony running along its entire top floor. The hotel's dark chapter began on April 16, 1854, when the packet ship Powhattan, carrying over 300 German immigrants from Le Havre to New York, encountered one of New Jersey's worst storms. The vessel struck Barnegat Shoals just 100 yards offshore and broke apart. Every passenger and crew member perished—between 250 and 311 souls lost.

The hotel's manager, Edward Jennings, served as the state-appointed wreckmaster responsible for salvaging valuables and managing the deceased. As bodies washed ashore, they were laid outside the Mansion of Health. When the coroner examined them, he noticed something suspicious: none possessed money-belts, though immigrants typically wore them containing their life savings. Months later, another storm eroded soil near an old cedar tree, revealing Jennings' crime—dozens of money-belts, all cut open and empty. The grave-robber fled in disgrace and reportedly died in a San Francisco barroom brawl, haunted by nightmares until his end.

The hauntings began almost immediately. Guests at the Mansion of Health reported hearing sobs during the night and catching glimpses of shadowy figures walking on the balcony. The hotel emptied within a year and sat abandoned. In 1861, five young men dared to spend the night on the cursed third floor. As they drifted off to sleep, one glanced toward the balcony and saw a young woman holding a small child, gazing sadly out to sea. The moonlight seemed to pass through both figures before they vanished.

After the Mansion burned in 1874, the Surf City Hotel was built on the site. The spirits followed. Guests today report a transparent woman holding a baby at the window, her face frozen in terror as she stares toward the ocean. Staff hear the distant screams of drowning passengers. Cold spots appear on summer days, and glasses whip off counters by themselves. A 15-year employee initially skeptical changed their stance after witnessing unexplained phenomena firsthand. One visitor heard a woman speaking German in their room at 3:30 AM—sounding as if she stood right beside the bed. Others report footsteps in hallways, doors moving on their own, and whispers at their bedsides.

Additional spirits have been documented: a Union soldier missing an arm walks near the beach, four women linked arm-in-arm stroll together, and glowing orbs drift across the surrounding area. The victims of the Powhattan were buried in mass graves at three cemeteries—140 at Manahawkin Baptist Cemetery, 54 at Smithville Methodist Church, and 45 at Absecon—but many spirits seem drawn back to where their bodies first touched shore. New Jersey erected a memorial outside the hotel in 1904 to honor the victims and, some say, to appease their restless ghosts. The tragedy also prompted Congress to authorize the Absecon Lighthouse, which when lit on January 15, 1857, prevented a single shipwreck in its first ten months of operation.