I love me a good ghost story. Especially one that is not just the alleged spirit of some unknown person, but the spirit of a person with a name and a story. Such as Kate Morgan, the 24 year old woman who died in the 1890s at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego. Did she kill herself? Was she murdered? Or was it a tragic accident? The truth will never be known, but those who stay in room 3327 have supposedly had some strange experiences…
Welcome to Hotel del Coronado’s Room 3327, where the spirit of the long-deceased Kate Morgan is believed to be resident. In 1892, the young woman — likely 24 years old at the time of her death — spent five days at the San Diego hotel, waiting, it is thought, for her lover, who never arrived.
Her death at the landmark hotel was declared a suicide. But “rumors persist about it being a murder,” said Hotel del Coronado historian Christine Donovan, who wrote the book “Beautiful Stranger: The Ghost of Kate Morgan and the Hotel del Coronado.” Another theory currently being investigated by Donovan and others is that Morgan’s death actually might have been accidental.
Whatever the cause of her passing, the spirit of Morgan seems pretty married to the Hotel Del. Staff maintain that her ghost has been spotted not just in her former room, but also in the hallways, the hotel’s gardens, the beach and the gift shop.
The shop Est. 1888, in fact, has difficulty “keeping glassware from ‘flying’ off shelves or pictures from falling off walls,” stated a hotel press release. “Because memorabilia related to Marilyn Monroe’s 1958 hotel filming of Some Like It Hot seems to be the most prone to tumbling, some long-time shop employees speculate that The Del’s resident ghost doesn’t like sharing the spotlight with Hollywood’s biggest star.”
