The Signal: 25 Officially Haunted Hotels, a Parapsychology Symposium in Halifax, and a Ghost Con in Wales

No new gear to report this week — we looked, and nothing crossed the line between a genuine new release and old stock relabeled for the season. Instead: a national preservation nonprofit put its name on 25 haunted hotels, a Nova Scotia paranormal symposium is leaning hard into actual parapsychology research, and Wales is getting its own convention headlined by a familiar face from British television. Every claim below is sourced — links at the bottom so you can read the original reporting yourself.

A Preservation Nonprofit Just Published an Official “Most Haunted Hotels” List

On October 5, Historic Hotels of America — the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, representing more than 300 member hotels — released its 2026 list of the 25 most haunted among them. Staff picked the list, the organization says, “based on the quality and quantity of their ghost lore, their openness to sharing these accounts with guests, and the Halloween-themed experiences they are offering in 2026.” That’s an unusually candid way to describe how a ghost story becomes a marketing asset, and we appreciate the honesty.

The list runs oldest to newest, from Colonial Williamsburg’s 1750-era taverns (where staff say Thomas Jefferson’s cigar smoke still lingers in the Market Square Tavern) to the Queen Mary, permanently docked in Long Beach since 1936 (Stateroom B340 and the sealed Door 13 are the two most-cited spots on a ship with no shortage of them). In between: Hotel del Coronado’s Kate Morgan, who died there in 1892 and has a room — 3327 — that’s been the subject of what the list describes as a year-long paranormal assessment logging more than 400 anomalous readings; the 1886 Crescent Hotel’s Theodora, a patient from the building’s years as a cancer hospital who reportedly still folds guests’ laundry; and the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, Massachusetts, where room 325 runs cold and smells like fresh-cut flowers for no reason anyone’s found. “More than merely ghost stories,” said Lawrence Horwitz, the organization’s executive vice president, “these enduring legends and folklore contribute to the unique character of the inns, resorts, and hotels inducted into Historic Hotels of America.”

We’ll say what Horwitz didn’t: a nonprofit built around historic preservation putting an annual, selection-committee stamp on ghost stories is itself worth noticing. It’s a different kind of legitimizing than a TV show or a convention — this is an institution that exists to protect old buildings, deciding that the stories those buildings tell about themselves are worth protecting too.

Nova Scotia’s Paranormal Symposium Goes Deep on the Research Side

The 2026 Halifax Paranormal Symposium runs October 17 and 18 at the Halifax Tower Hotel & Conference Centre, and this year’s lineup leans noticeably academic. Dr. Jim Houran, a psychologist known for his research into “haunted people syndrome” — the idea that some reported hauntings track more closely with a person’s own psychological profile than with a location — and Dr. Brian Laythe, who studies the relationship between electromagnetic fields and reported haunting activity, both have sessions, alongside Dr. Paul H. Smith, a former U.S. Army officer from the declassified Project Star Gate remote-viewing program, leading a remote-viewing session of his own. Jodi Russell (mediumship and psychometry) and Amy Murphy (scrying) round out a lineup that organizer Pierre Filiatreault will emcee.

Paranormal Phenomena Research & Investigation, the Halifax-based group behind the symposium, has spent the past few years building it into what it calls Atlantic Canada’s premier paranormal gathering, pulling attendees from across the Maritimes, Ontario, and the US in past years. We like that this lineup is weighted toward people with actual research credentials and testable — if contested — theories, rather than being built entirely around TV names. It’s a useful contrast to a lot of what gets covered in this space, including by us.

On the Calendar: Wales Gets Its Own Ghost Con

SpiritCon runs October 17 at the Newbridge Memo in Newport, Wales — itself a 1920s building with its own reported “shadow forms” seen in its halls. The headliner is Richard Felix, a longtime Most Haunted historian and presenter, alongside medium Leigh Gameson for an evening show billed as “Psychic and Science,” which organizers describe as inviting audience members into live paranormal experiments. The daytime program adds Dr. Jack Hunter, an academic researcher who studies the anthropology of paranormal belief, demonologist Andy Jones, and a UFO-focused talk from Emlyn Williams and Mike Maunder.

Small, single-building conventions like this one rarely make it into American paranormal coverage, but they’re exactly the kind of community-level event we’d rather flag than skip — the whole field runs on a lot more of these than it does on television specials.

Got a location, a case, or a strange find of your own? Send it our way — we go where the evidence points.

A Preservation Nonprofit Just Published an Official “Most Haunted Hotels” List

Nova Scotia’s Paranormal Symposium Goes Deep on the Research Side

On the Calendar: Wales Gets Its Own Ghost Con

Sources