public

Reported

Steam rises off a 200-degree lake at all hours, so the air around Hot Lake Hotel already smells like something cooking — which does nothing to calm your nerves when the second-floor piano starts playing and there is no one up there. Guests report disembodied voices, apparitions drifting near the old swimming pool, and fog that materializes from nowhere. The screams of former patients are said to echo in the hallways at night, and more than one visitor has described the distinct, prickling certainty that something in this building noticed them first.

Originally constructed in 1864 near geothermal hot springs used for centuries by Indigenous peoples as healing neutral ground, the property cycled through lives as a resort, a hospital, and — because why stop there — an asylum for the incurably insane. The current Colonial Revival brick building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and claims the distinction of being the first commercial building in the world to use geothermal energy. It is now a hotel, spa, and museum. The record is admirably tidy; the building, less so.