Haunted Hotel In St. John’s
Nearly every corner of old St. John’s holds a ghostly tale—but perhaps none is as mysterious as the story of the haunting of J.W. Foran’s Atlantic Hotel.
Ad for the Atlantic Hotel, The Colonist, October 22, 1887
The Atlantic Hotel opened in 1885 and was once called “the most awesome building” in St. John’s. It was located between Duckworth and Water Streets, opposite King’s Road.
When it opened in 1888, the hotel offered the height of modern comfort: steam heat, a passenger elevator, pneumatic bells, and speaking tubes that carried voices through the halls. Gaslight glowed in every room, hot and cold baths were on offer, and guests could take advantage of postal, telephone, hairdressing, and steam laundry services—luxuries that gave the place a hum of constant activity.
The Atlantic Hotel, owner J. W. Foran promised, compared favourably, “with the best hotel in England or America.”
It quickly became the place to be in St. John’s. Visitors praised its elegance, and the well-to-do kept its rooms busy.
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On of the earliest written records of this story (P.J. Kinsella, 1919) suggests the incident happened in Foran’s Hotel on Water Street West, on the site that would be occupied by the Post Office building. Others before me have pointed out, there’s no record of a hotel run by Foran on that site.
The most famous Foran-run hotel was The Atlantic, prior to that he ran the Toussaint’s Hotel opposite Holloway Street for a short while.
But Foran’s Hotel was short-lived. The building was gutted by the Great Fire of 1892. In its brief existence, though, it left a mark on the city—partly because of a terrible tragedy in its elevator shaft, and partly because it became the setting for one of St. John’s most retold ghost stories: a haunting so strange it was said to have claimed a guest’s life.
That story begins, as so many hauntings do, on what should have been an ordinary night.
The First Night
It was late. Hotel guests were in their rooms, when a strange sound broke the silence — a rapid knocking.
Again and again, the noise rang out up and down the corridors. It wasn’t the sound of a visitor knocking politely, but of something pounding from the wrong side of a door. Maybe something that wanted out of where ever it was.
Guests in robes, spilled into the hallways to find hotel staff as mystified as they were.
They followed the noise to a room on the top floor—a room that was supposed to be empty.
Hearts racing, they pushed the door open. Immediately, and without explanation, the knocking stopped.
There was nothing to amiss in the room. Inside there was nobody and nothing to explain the noise.
With the knocking stopped and no evidence of anything wrong, the guests returned to their rooms, albeit somewhat uneasily. Every groan of the timbers and rattle of the wind sounded like the start of that awful knocking again. Some lay awake until dawn, waiting for a sound that never came.
By breakfast, though, the spell had broken. In the bright, clear light of day, the mystery seemed almost laughable. Had they really been so frightened of some mystery sound? Surely there must be some mundane explanation… a loose shutter, or unsecured door swinging in the harbour breeze.
But, if it were only a shutter or door, why had it gone silent the moment the room was opened?
The Second Night
The next night, the scene repeated itself. In the dead of night, a sharp, knock, knock, knock echoed through the halls until, once again, the door to the top-floor room was opened. And just like before, the moment the latch turned, the knocking ceased.
No one could explain it. But this time, not a soul dared suggest it was only a shutter in the wind.
The Third Night
On the third night, it happened again—at exactly the same hour.
This time the knocking was faster, louder, insistent. A desperate fist, slamming, pounding—demanding to be let in.
And just as before, it stopped the moment the latch turned, as though the act of opening had satisfied it — or maybe warned whoever it was back into silence.
Speculation and Schemes
By the following morning the whispering had begun. Some guests were certain the hotel was haunted. They spoke of a ghost—or some other spirit— bound to that upstairs room. Fear turned quickly into resolve. Guests promised they would leave, vowing never to spend another night in Foran’s hotel.
But not everyone was convinced. Among the guests were skeptics, loyal patrons who feared the stories would ruin the hotel’s reputation and force it to close.
A compromise was struck. Everyone would stay one final night, and a watch party would be formed to keep guard over the top floor.
At the appointed hour, they took their posts. Hour after hour passed in tense silence. Nothing happened. When dawn broke, the halls were quiet, and the night had proved uneventful.
“It must have been a prankster,” they decided. Someone among them had been behind the noise, too frightened to continue with so many eyes watching.
Night after night, the room remained silent. Still, no one who’d heard the tale wanted to sleep in the top-floor room, so it remained vacant.
The Stranger
About six months after the mysterious knocking, a stranger arrived at the hotel, asking for a room.
There were no vacancies — except for a top-floor room; the room at the centre of the strange disturbances.
The man was new to St. John’s and knew nothing of the story — and the room had been silent for months — so the clerk handed him the key, with a nearly clean conscious.
Then, around eleven o’clock, it happened.
The noise ripped through the hotel, louder and more violent than ever before. To call it a “knock” would be far too gentle. It was a furious pounding—fists and feet hammering against a door, rattling the walls as though the very building might give way. It sounded desperate, insistent… as if something—or someone—was begging to be let in. Or perhaps, to be let out.
Staff and guests rushed upstairs. The door hung slightly ajar. The instant they reached it, the pounding ceased. Silence fell like a weight: thick and suffocating.
The stranger lay across his bed, fully dressed, but very much dead.
Doctors were summoned. Upon investigation they declared the cause a violent hemorrhage.
The man’s body was left in the room awaiting the undertaker, who would arrive in the morning.
When the corpse was lifted the next day, the knocking returned—pounding through the hotel until the body was carried out. After that, it was never heard again.
The stranger was never identified, though whispers claimed he had been an executioner, a hangman from Canada. He was buried in an unmarked grave, and the room on the top floor was sealed shut, never rented again.
Spirit of Newfoundland statue on the National War Memorial, with Sir Humphrey Gilbert Building in the rear.
Soon after, Foran’s Atlantic Hotel was lost in the Great Fire of 1892, along with much of downtown St. John’s.
Today, the Sir Humphrey Gilbert Building stands on the site.
In the years before his death in 1898, J.W. Foran was said to indulge requests to tell the tale, helping to weave it into the city’s folklore.
For all the stories told, the truth of the knocking remains a mystery.
Some say it was a summons from beyond, a call only the stranger could answer.
Others believe it was no summons at all, but the sound of something waiting for the right soul to set it free. And if they’re right, then perhaps what was set loose that night still moves through the shadows of St. John’s to this day.
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The Haunting on Site of Sir Humphrey Gilbert Building, The Evening Telegram, Sept 26, 2016
Atlantic Hotel, Times and General Commercial Gazette, July 11, 1885
J.W. Foran, Encyclopedia of NL
Hotels, Encyclopedia of NL
Foran’s, Some superstitions and traditions of Newfoundland, P.J. Kinsella, 1919
Foran, The History of Little Bay
The Oldest City: The Story of St. John’s, Paul O’Neill, 2003
