• New York City is home to almost everything anyone could want: fine dining, shopping, financial districts, culture, universities, nature and sports. New York is also home to something a little different--a number of hotels which are supposed to be haunted. Haunted hotels are the sites of paranormal activity, such as weird sounds, apparitions, unexplainable cold spots and an an overall sense of fear by people who inhabit them. These are said to be caused by the ghosts of dead people, usually former guests, whose spirits are still active on the premises.
  
  

The Hotel Chelsea

• The Hotel Chelsea has long been famous for being the home, both long- and short-term, of a number of important and famous artists, including Mark Twain, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Eugene O'Neil and Thomas Wolfe. The residents of the Chelsea have been known for being eccentric; Sarah Bernhardt supposedly slept in a coffin while living there. The hotel has also been witness to its share of tragedy, however. In room 205, Dylan Thomas drank away his last days and collapsed unconscious before being taken to hospital to die, and doomed Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious may have murdered his girlfriend Nancy Spungeon in their room in 1978. Unsurprisingly, some believe the hotel in haunted. The ghost of Vicious is reputed to still regularly use the elevator, and the spirits of Wolfe and Thomas are said to remain in their former rooms.
  
  The Hotel Chelsea
  222 W. 23rd Street
  New York, NY 10011
  (212) 243-3700
  hotelchelsea.com
  
  

The Brittany Hotel

• The Brittany Hotel was built in 1929 and is reputed to have not only offered accommodations to weary travelers but also to have been quite the party place, hosting a speakeasy in the penthouse during the days of Prohibition. It was also the temporary home of various famous people, like Walter Winchell and Al Pacino. New York University eventually bought the Brittany and turned into a student residence hall. However, people who have lived there have reported strange happenings at the Brittany for years, including odd music, disembodied footsteps, and feelings of being watched or unseen presences moving around when no one else is there.
  
  The Brittany Hotel
  55 East 10th Street
  New York, NY 10003
  (212) 995-3090
  
  

The Algonquin Hotel

• The Algonquin Hotel would be famous even if it wasn't supposed to be haunted. During the 1920s, a group of writers, actors and editors calling themselves the Vicious Circle began meeting in the hotel regularly to discuss their latest projects. Members of the group turned out best-selling books, plays, newspaper columns and magazines. The group changed members over the years, but among them were Dorothy Parker, Harpo Marx, George S. Kaufman, Alexander Woollcott, Harold Ross, Robert Benchley and Margaret Leech Pulitzer. The hotel has been renovated since the days of the Vicious Circle, but some of its members are thought to still roam the site. Guests who have stayed at the Algonquin have supposedly sighted different people from the Circle hanging around the lobby and the dining room areas.
  
  The Algonquin Hotel
  59 West 44th Street
  New York, NY 10036
  (212) 840-6800
  algonquinhotel.com