YouTube video

All my life people have been telling me that Hotel Congress is haunted, but they can never explain why. Some say there are some visitors that never checked out when a fire in the basement traveled to the third floor of the hotel while authorities were trying to apprehend John Dillinger and his gang in 1934. I have never heard of the story behind Room 242 in 1993. Aric Allen filmed this hard boiled, noir Youtube video reminiscing what happen the night of the suicide.  

I travelled to Tucson in October to visit family, but I used that opportunity to check into the “Suicide Room” at Hotel Congress. I learned about the haunted room a few years back when I was trying to recall the events of a night that changed my life, I was at the hotel about twenty years ago when a woman in room 242 killed herself. 

One of the reasons he made video was because of all the ghost false conspiracies he read on the internet. “Once I started searching the event on Google I came upon many “paranormal investigators” looking into this ghost sighting, Allen said on his blog.”

I wanted to embed one of the videos from the investigators below so you can get a sense of the amateur, con-man bullshit that happens around things that are hard to explain. That’s one of the reason I wanted to tell my tale and show a little more respect for the unexplained.

YouTube video

I have stayed at the hotel and never experienced any kind of paranormal activity. But I haven’t stayed in room 242, or 212, or the infamous 220. Sometimes I think a ghost drinks my beer when I’m not looking, but I have yet to prove that.

This article appears in Nov 21-27, 2013.

20 replies on “Tucson Ghost Stories: Is Room 242 Really Haunted?”

  1. “when the authorities lit the hotel on fire to apprehend John Dillinger and his gang”. Are you stupid or just can’t read? It’s understandable that the Hotel Congress would want to promote bogus ghost stories to increase business. Apparently they and you never read the publication they sell at the front desk at the hotel about the Dillinger gang.
    John Dillinger never step foot into the hotel. Two of his gang members stayed there. And they had nothing to do with the fire.
    To state that the “authorities would set fire to the htel to get the gang ” is beyond stupid.
    The Tucson Police were already looking for the gang members but they didn’t know it was the Dillinger Gang. Then the fire broke out. The gang members tipped a couple of TFD members to get their luggage out of the hotel. The bags were heavy (full of guns) and the TFD guys saw the pictures of the gang in a crime magazine and alerted the police. For other reasons the police were already looking for them, but they didn’t know which gang they were.
    If te Hotel Congress wants you to write a “ghost story” they could have done better. Start looking for a job that does not involve reading or ANY kind of research. I hear WalMart is looking for workers.

  2. Fraser, if you think authorities wouldn’t set someplace on fire to arrest someone they want you must have slept through Waco 20 years ago. Or the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia 30 years ago. Or the Bonus March at the same time as Dillinger. He might not have been in the hotel but his partners were and that could well have served as excuse enough for either Hoover’s or Tucson’s finest to drop a cigarette in a pile of papers. It might not have happened that way but to dismiss the possibility out of hand ignores law enforcement’s long-established history of utilizing the tactic.

  5. RJFletcher:
    I will repeat what I said so even you understand. The TPD didn’t even know at the time of the fire that it was a portion of the Dillinger Gang. They found out later. This was the 1930’s Tucson, they were not going to torch a downtown Tucson hotel.
    Go and read the Smoke Signal Publication that the Hotel Congress sells in the lobby. It lays out the entire capture of the Dillinger Gang. Between you the writer of the bullshit puff-piece-suck up article on the Congress Hotel both of you would actually learn something.

  7. Since things need to be repeated, I’ll reciprocate: I said it might have happened that way (i.e. the possibility exists), not that it did. And I’m sure an article sold in the Hotel Congress lobby is a hard-hitting piece of journalism worthy of a Pulitzer in and of itself and in no way resembles a puff piece. Since, however, you were likely alive at the time of the incident, I’ll grant you the benefit of the doubt.

  8. I can tell you!
    I was at the bar with another person. Across from the then dance area. We went into the bar, talked to the bartender and ordered our drinks. Then, a man in a brown suit and fedora showed up all of a sudden. This man actually spoke with us. He said that he had been shot upstairs!
    I kid you not! This happened to me. This guy was as right as rain

  10. No this is real.I have stayed in room 242..I have proof!! Picture of the woman beside my.bed..

  18. im in room 242 and the door wont stop opening and closing and when i try to sleep there is a shadowy figure by my bed

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