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Hi Crime House Community, It's Heidi Wong looking for another Crime House original podcast to add to your rotation. You will love Clues with Morgan Abshur and Kaylan Moore. Every Wednesday, Morgan and Kaylin dig into the world's most notorious crimes, clue by clue. From serial killers to shocking murders. They follow the trail of clues, breaking down the evidence and debating the theories. It's like hanging out with your smart and true crime obsessed friends. Listen to clues on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you listen to your podcasts. This is crime house. Lights flickering on and off without warning. Books and lamps moving on their own, and footsteps and voices coming from nowhere. Imagine the most terrifying hotel stay where the impossible becomes real and terror lurks in the shadows. And a room is already occupied not by another guest, but by a ghost. And not just any ghost, but the cruel spirit of a hundred year old murder victim. How long could you last before you finally went mad? Welcome to Twisted, a Crime House Original. I'm Heidi Wong. Every week I'll take you deep into the true stories behind horror's biggest legends. From vengeful ghosts to bloody slashers to alien encounters and more, these real life accounts are guaranteed to keep you up at night. But scary stories aren't any fun if you're telling them alone. If you've ever had a haunted moment or a twisted tale of your own, I want to hear about it. Drop it in the comments. The creepier the better. Crime House is made possible by you. Follow Twisted Tales and subscribe to Crime House on Apple Podcasts for an ad free early access. And if you're into true crime as well as horror, go search and follow Crime House Daily. Our team's twice a day show bringing you breaking cases, updates and unbelievable stories from the world of crime that are happening right now. In this episode, we're looking at the real life inspiration for the horror movie 1408. Adapted from a short story by Stephen King, 1408 is about a writer who was driven insane while investigating a haunted hotel room. And while a lot of the details come straight from King's twisted imagination, the story is based on a chilling bloody reality. So come with me as we check into a world of lies, deception and murder, along with a paranormal investigation that gave truth to the line, you can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave.
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If you haven't seen 1408, I highly recommend it. Released in 2007, it's about a writer named Mike Enslin. He travels around the country staying in supposedly haunted places, and then writes about the experience. To him, it's a dream job. But at this point in his life, Mike is over it. He's been everywhere, seen everything, and his career is spiraling as a result. He even tells someone at a poorly attended book signing that he doesn't even think ghosts are real. He's just gotta pay the bills. But when someone hands him a pamphlet for a place called the Dolphin Hotel in New York, he decides to check it out. He's intrigued by the message do not stay in room 1408. And he thinks it's pretty clever that the numbers add up to 13. And when he gets there, though, the hotel seems surprisingly normal. But the staff is really determined not to let him stay in room 1408. The manager says no one has stayed there and lived through the night. In fact, nobody even makes it longer than an hour. Mike brushes them off, though he thinks it's some kind of gimmick to make sure the room seems extra scary. However, Mike soon finds out that room 1408 is no joke. At first, the room seems average and ordinary, like the rest of the hotel. But it's not long until things start to get weird. It starts off slow. Strange noises, random flashes. The thermostat malfunctions. And then the clock changes by itself to a countdown from 60 Minutes. Which is when the terror really starts. There's a ringing so loud it almost makes Mike go deaf. When he tries to open the window, his hand gets crushed. The water in the sink goes from ice cold to unbearably hot. And when Mike unplugs the clock and stops him from counting down, it just keeps going. Which is when the ghosts start to show up. Ghostly apparitions come out of the walls, some of them jumping out of the window in a recreation of their deaths. Mike is freaked out enough to try to leave, but no matter what he tries, the door won't open and he can't get anyone's attention from the street outside. Mike wonders if he's been drugged. The hotel's manager had given him some bourbon when he arrived and there were chocolates on the pillows. And then the haunting goes to another level as Mike is plagued with visions from his past, mostly of his daughter Katie, who died from an illness when she was young. Mike is able to call his ex wife from his laptop and asks her to send the police. But when they arrive, she calls Mike back and says that the room is empty. That's when he realizes the room isn't just haunted by ghosts. It's something far more evil. It's like some kind of alternate reality determined to drive him insane. And when the clock finally counts down to zero, it starts the terrifying loop all over again. The hotel operator says he has two choices. To keep experiencing this living hell on repeat or take the express checkout, which is a noose that's suddenly hanging over the bed. But Mike decides on a third option. He grabs the bottle of bourbon the manager gave him and turns it into a Molotov cocktail. Then burns the room down around him. And when he thinks it's the end, firefighters break into room 1408 and rescue him. This time it seems like he actually gets out. But for the person whose case inspired the story of 1408, there was no escape. The ghost story that inspired 1408 happened on the other side of the country from New York at the Hotel del Coronado, also known as the Dell. And unlike the Dolphin Hotel in 1408, the Dell was anything but ordinary looking. It first opened in 1888 on Coronado island across the bay from San Diego, California. The Dell was advertised as a modern, luxurious marvel with rooms running at $2.50 a day, which is only about $85 today. So not a bad deal. It was a place where people could escape the stress of everyday life and feel at peace. And peace was exactly what Kate Morgan was looking for when she arrived on the Coronado's doors on November 24, 1892. Kate's life hadn't been easy. Born as Kate Farmer in 1864 in Fremont County, Iowa, her mother passed away a year after Kate was born, and she was sent away to live with her maternal grandfather. Kate's dad didn't seem all that interested in raising her. He ended up getting remarried shortly after Kate's mom died and moved to Texas without his daughter. The details beyond that are pretty sparse. But in December 1885, when Kate was 21, she found some stability in her life when she married a Guy named Thomas Edwin Morgan. Although, unfortunately, it wasn't long before tragedy struck again. The next year, they had a baby boy who sadly died only two days after from an unknown illness. His death sent Kate into a tailspin. She looked for comfort in the arms of another man, and they ran off together. But the next time she resurfaced, she was alone. Kate ended up in Los Angeles, where she got a job as a domestic worker for someone named L. A Grant. Although she mentioned her husband Thomas a couple times, she seemed to have moved on from him and didn't even know where he was. And if Kate was struggling, she didn't show it. By all accounts, she was a model employee and had a great reputation. She didn't have men around and didn't stay out at night. So when she Left work on November 23, 1892, her boss had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. The next day was Thanksgiving, and he fully expected Kate to be there to help. Instead, she left all her belongings behind and booked a train to San Diego. She checked into the Dell the next day under the alias Lottie A. Bernard from Detroit. From the moment she arrived, Kate caught the staff's attention, but not in a good way. For one, she didn't have any luggage with her. She says she left LA with her brother, but he had to get off the train at the city of Orange, and when he did, he accidentally took their luggage claim checks. It doesn't seem like Kate really explained why he ditched her, but she must have seemed like she could afford to stay there because she was allowed to stay on credit. The Dell staff also noticed that Kate did not appear to be in good health. She was pale and sickly looking, and according to her, she had stomach cancer. But Kate didn't want them to fuss over her. She said her brother would be there soon, and luckily he happened to be a doctor. Over the next few days, she checked in with the front desk constantly to see if her brother had shown up. But he never did. And as she waited, her health seemed to be spiraling. Around noon on the fifth day of Kate's stay, November 28, 1892, Kate called the front desk. She asked for a bellboy named Harry west to come dry her hair after a bath, which I guess is the level of service you could expect back then. When Harry showed up, he noticed that Kate was in rough shape. She was really weak and said she'd fallen into her bath accidentally, which is why she needed her hair dried. Kate also made sure to mention to Harry that she was expecting her brother to join her at some point. But here's the thing. Kate had also been asking Harry to run other errands for her. Specifically, she asked him to get a couple drinks for her from the bar before her bath, a glass of wine and a whiskey cocktail, if you're wondering. And no matter how much the Dell's staff tried to get Kate to see a doctor, she refused. At this point, they started to think there was more to Kate's story. The hotel's clerk, AS Gohmer, even asked Kate if she had actually had the money to pay for her room. She told them to send a telegram to someone named G.L. allen in Hamburg, Iowa. Remember that name? We'll be coming back to it later. This was good enough for AS Gohmer, though. He sent the telegram and left it at that. But later that day, things kept getting weirder. On the afternoon of the 28th, Kate called down for the bellhop again. This time, she says she needed matches to burn some documents in her fireplace. And then, despite her seemingly poor health, she left the hotel sometime between 4 and 5pm she told another guest she was going to San Diego to get her luggage, but the first place she went was a gun shop. What are we doing? What are we doing, Kate? The owner later said Kate told him she wanted to buy a weapon as a Christmas present for a friend. He sold her a pistol and cartridges, no questions asked, and even showed Kate how to use it. After that, she went back to the hotel without stopping at the train station's luggage depot. Around 6:30pm the bellhop, Harry west, saw Kate standing on a balcony overlooking the ocean. After that, she went down to the front desk and asked as Gohmer if anyone had sent her a letter or telegram. But nobody had tried to contact her. The next time anyone saw Kate was at 7:30 the next morning on November 29, 1892, when the hotel's electrician found her dead body on an outside staircase leading down to the beach. The steps were covered in blood and there was a pistol lying next to her, the same kind she bought the day before. Working under the assumption this was a suicide, the hotel staff contacted the coroner, who came to remove Kate's body. That same morning, the funds for Kate's room came in from G.L. allen in Iowa. And here's where he starts to come into play. Gohmer sent a reply saying that Kate, or Lottie Bernard as he had known her, had died by suicide. But Gomer never heard from Allan. This is getting interesting. The next day, the coroner launched an inquest. Basically a formal investigation into the circumstances around Lottie Bernard's death. At this point, they had no idea that Lotte Bernard was an alias. Her dead was officially ruled a suicide. But that was hardly the end of Kate's story, because it would soon continue on into the afterlife. Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax. And let go of whatever you're carrying today.
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After Kate Morgan, aka Lottie Bernard, died at the Dell in November, 1892, the media latched onto the story. The tragic case of a lonely, melancholic woman who took her own life was enough to sell papers. Why is it always like a poetically depressed woman? But it came quickly that the authorities actually couldn't confirm her identity as Lottie Bernard. So the San Diego police sent a sketch of her around the country, and she became known as the Beautiful Stranger. At least until her real name was revealed. Shortly after Kate's death, someone sent the coroner in San Diego a letter saying Lottie Bernard was actually Kate Morgan. So that solved one mystery, but created a lot more questions. Why does she arrive at the Dell alone? Why didn't she have any luggage? Was she really sick? And who was this mysterious brother? Unfortunately, Nobody was coming forward with answers. Not Kate's husband and definitely not her brother, because it turns out Kate didn't even have a brother. And then there's the mysterious G.L. allen, who sent the money for Kate's hotel room. His situation is pretty murky, too, but without opening a whole can of worms, it seemed like he knew the real Lottie Bernard. That's right. It turns out Kate Morgan was pretending to be an actual person who disappeared from Detroit six weeks earlier. Apparently, GL Allen knew Lottie Bernard's husband, a gambler named Tom Bernard. And basically, Allen just sent the money because he recognized the name and wanted to be nice. And nobody gave any more of an explanation than that. So people started coming up with their own theories. Some witnesses came forward to say they'd seen Kate on a train to San Diego, arguing with a man, maybe a lover. So it's possible she was headed to the Dell for a little getaway, got into a fight with her boyfriend, then told the staff that he was her brother to avoid a scandal. T t and as for what the scandal might be, well, an unmarried couple spending the night together might be bad enough, and if the guy turned out to be married, even worse. But the worst thing of all could be related to Kate's mysterious illness, because some people wondered if her so called stomach cancer was actually a pregnancy. Unfortunately, none of this could ever be verified or denied. And before too long, the world moved on from this mystery. But Kate didn't. After her death, it's not clear for how long, but strange things started happening in her room. 3327. Some of it was small, like the chain from the fan moving like someone had brushed it. Or the lights flickering on and off. Classic stuff like that could be a sign of a haunting or easily explained away. But Kate didn't stop there. Many guests and staff have reported seeing an imprint of a woman on the bed that wouldn't go away no matter how much they tried to smooth out the covers. One man staying in room 3327 even said his blanket was ripped off in the middle of the night by what seemed to be a shadowy outline of a woman at the foot of the bed. Another guest in 3327, referred to as CCM, said that she woke up late one night to get a glass of water. While CCM drank, she decided to look out the window at the ocean waves below. That's when she noticed a woman walking down the outside stairs. Immediately, CCM thought something about her was odd. She thought the woman seemed to be in what she called a period dress, wearing a long white blouse and a long dark skirt. Then, as the woman walked down the stairs, she suddenly stopped. She turned towards CCM's room and looked right at her. If that's me, I'm getting right out of there. No packing, just straight through the door and grabbing an Uber. And CCM definitely freaked out. All the lights in her room were off. There was absolutely no way for this woman to know CCM was watching her. Unless she was a ghost. For years, the Dell wanted to keep these types of sightings under wraps. Even as late as the 1960s, management was actively trying to keep it quiet. But Kate's ghost was so active, there was no silencing her. And eventually, someone might have figured out why. In 1989, a lawyer named Alan May heard about the story of Kate Morgan and decided to book a room at the Dell. Sure enough, he had his own ghostly encounter with Kate. Allen said he saw a pair of eyes and a smiling mouth coming from the TV while it was turned off. The experience definitely freaked Allen out, but he couldn't stop thinking about it. He even went to stay in the room a second time later, in 1989, something about Kate was calling to Allen, like she wanted something from him. Once again, he saw the eyes and the. The smile, but not just that. He saw a shadowy apparition of Kate and heard a voice. When he asked Kate what she wanted from him, she told Alan, quote, at the end of your journey, you will understand why it was you. What? Checking out now. You can keep the money. I am leaving. Kate went on to tell Allen to use his training as a lawyer to discuss discover her true fate and that there was more to her story. Right after that, Allen went to the San Diego Historical Society and got a copy of the coroner's inquest into Kate's death. One detail stood out to him in particular. The gun that Kate brought was a.44 caliber. But the surgeon who examined Kate's remains said that she'd been shot by a.38 or.40 caliber bullet. And apparently, Kate's husband carried a gun that could use that kind of ammo. It's always the husband. Could this be why Kate's ghost had lingered at the hotel all these years? To try and get someone to realize that her death wasn't a suicide, but a murder? Unfortunately, that's not a question we may ever be able to answer. It doesn't seem like Alan May's investigation ever went further than that. With almost a hundred years having passed since Kate's death. At that point, it's not like there was much he could have done anyway. In any case, the Dell, which had published its own book on Kate Morgan, doesn't really consider any alternative theories aside from her death by suicide. But they do believe that Kate is haunting the Dell. And in 1992, a century after Kate's death, the hotel management even asked a famous ghost hunter to come see just how real her spirit was. That year, a paranormal researcher named Christopher Chacon started a long term study of the spiritual activity at the Dell. He monitored certain parts of the hotel 24 hours a day over the course of an entire year. Christopher used every type of equipment imaginable to record temperatures, electrostatic emissions, air currents, radiation, vibrations, light spectrums. And that's just some of it. He interviewed over 1,000 people, too, including visitors, staff, and contractors. Half of them had reported seeing some kind of paranormal phenomenon, while the other half was randomly selected. Once the investigation was over, Christopher had collected over 10,000 hours of material, and he decided it was an instance of what he called a classic haunting. Some of the more common occurrences were things like moving furniture, doors opening and closing on their own, faucets turning on and off, mysterious shadows, pockets of extremely cold air, and disembodied voices and footsteps. Not to mention things he couldn't record, like stories of guests and staff hearing and seeing things they couldn't explain. But the strangest thing about this is that none of it actually happened in the room where Kate had stayed. According to Christopher, most of the activity had came from the room where the maid who supposedly tended to Kate had lived. Honestly, that was a pretty surprising development. It's possible there could have been a connection between them that nobody knew about. Or maybe Kate's ghost didn't want to be the subject of that kind of scrutiny. It's one of those things that we'll have to chalk up to an everlasting mystery. But either way, the story caught the attention of one Stephen King and it inspired him to write 1408. Thankfully, Kate Morgan's spirit won't drive you to your death. The hotel staff says she's pretty harmless, and her old room is one of the most requested at the Dell, so you can stay there if you're brave enough. Coming up, the story of another haunted hotel whose most terrifying room has a strange connection to 1408.
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So let me just preface that this story doesn't have a direct correlation to the story 1408, but we're on the topic of haunted hotels, and the story behind this one happens to take place in room number 1046, so I couldn't do this episode without talking about it. On January 2, 1935, a man checked into the President Hotel in Kansas City under the name Roland T. Owen beyond an address in Los Angeles. He didn't give any other information, and his appearance was just as mysterious. He had one of those faces you just can't can't quite put an age on. Witnesses placed him anywhere from 20 to 35, like Kate Morgan. He didn't have any luggage on him, and he seemed to also have a mysterious past that he wasn't advertising. Several people noticed that he had a cauliflower ear, which meant he'd probably gotten his fair share of fights, and Roland definitely was acting like he was hiding something. Later that day, a maid named Mary Soptich went to Roland's room. He was inside, sitting in the dark with the curtains closed. The only light source was the small lamp on the desk. Mary thought Roland seemed worried, scared even, like he was dreading something. And when she left the room, he asked her not to lock it behind her, which hotel staff usually did back then. While she was cleaning, Roland headed out again, reminding her not to lock the door when she was done. When Mary came back the next morning, she noticed the door had been locked from the outside, so she figured Roland was out for the day. But when she entered, Roland was in his room, which meant someone else had locked it. No other staff member had gone up, and it doesn't seem like they'd given Roland an extra key. Which could only mean someone had locked Roland in. But who? And why? As Mary tidied up, the phone rang. Roland answered and said, no, Don, I don't want to eat. I'm not hungry. I just had breakfast. So that answered the first question. Roland's mysterious friend was probably this dawn guy. As for what he wanted with Roland, it wasn't anything good. When Mary came back that afternoon with some fresh towels, Roland wasn't alone. And when she knocked on the door, another man in the room yelled at her to go away. She wasn't about to push the issue over some towels, so Mary went on to the next room. And that night some weird snow stuff happened on Roland's floor. A woman staying in the room next to him heard a lot of commotion going on with men and women shouting about something. She thought about calling the front desk to complain, but she decided against it and just went back to bed. Then around 7am the next morning, the hotel operator noticed that the phone in Roland's room was off the hook and there wasn't an active call. After 10 minutes or so, the phone was still off the hook. So the operator sent a bellhop to take tell Roland to hang it up. When the bellhop knocked on Roland's door, a man inside told him to come in and turn on the light. The door was locked, though, and it seemed like the bellhop couldn't open it. Figuring that Roland was drunk, the bellhop shouted for the man to hang up the phone and went back down. But an hour went by and the phone was still off the hook. So the operator sent another bellhop up and this time he used a master key to see what the problem was. Like always, the room was dark and it was hard to see. But the bellhop could see that Roland was lying on the bed naked. He seemed to be passed out, drunk. The nightstand with the phone on it had been knocked over. So the bellhop put it back up again and finally got the phone back on the hook. But two hours later it was off again. So up went another bellhop, and this time when he opened the door, Roland was lying on the ground two feet away from the bed. He was on his knees and elbows with his hands on his head. And when the bellhop turned on the light, the room was covered in blood. Police rushed to the scene and they realized Roland was in such a weird position because he'd been restrained with a cord. He'd been stabbed multiple times in the chest, struck in the head so hard his skull was broken and bruising around his neck suggested he'd been strangled and somehow he was still alive. But Roland said that nobody had done done this to him. He claimed that his injuries were from falling on the bathtub. Yeah, okay. The police were definitely not buying it. And neither am I. With how Roland had been tied up, there was no way this was an attempted suicide. And there was a lot of stuff missing from his room, like his clothes and even all of the standard hotel supplies. Shampoo, soaps, towels. But Roland wasn't able to give any of them answers. He fell into a coma shortly after the police arrived and died from his injuries a few hours later. And when the police started investigating his murder, they realized Roland T. Owen was an alias. This is getting juicy. And as they tried to figure out his real identity, they were also trying to figure out who had killed him. Starting with identifying the mysterious Don he talked to on the phone. Unfortunately, the trail was found full of dead ends. A year and a half went by with no progress on the case until fall of 1936, when a woman in Birmingham, Alabama named Ruby Ogletree saw an article about the murder. The victim looked just like her 17 year old son, Artemus. She hadn't seen him since he left home in April 1934, about eight months before his death. But the thing is, in spring of 1935, after Artemis was killed, someone pretending to be him had sent Ruby a few typed letters saying he was headed to Europe. And that August, a man in Tennessee had called her to say that Artemis was in Cairo, Egypt. But Artemis himself couldn't write or call because he'd lost his thumb in a fight. It was a convenient story and Ruby wasn't falling for it. Unfortunately, when she did find her son, it was under tragic circumstances. Sadly, Ruby never found out why Artemis ended up in Kansas City, who killed him or why. And neither did anyone else. To this day, his death remains a mystery. And just like Kate Morgan at the Dell, his spirit is said to linger at the President Hotel. From cold spots to footsteps, to faint sounds of music, it seems like Artemis can't let go. And although his story hadn't been directly attributed to Stephen King's 1408, both Kate and Artemis story remind me a lot of the movie. Like Mike Enslin, both of our real world ghosts were haunted by a dark past. They checked into a hotel, seemingly trying to get away from it all. But in the end, the only thing they received was pain and suffering. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of Twisted, a Crime House original. I'd love to hear from you. What did you think about today's stories? Anything you're dying for me to COVID Leave a comment or review wherever you're tuning in. And be sure to follow twisted tales so we can keep building this community together. I'll be back next week with another unbelievable true story. Until then, stay curious and remember, there's no reason to fear the dark unless you try to hide from it.
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Episode: The Real Haunted Hotels That Inspired Stephen King’s 1408
Release Date: December 22, 2025
Host: Heidi Wong
Podcast Network: Crime House
This episode delves into the chilling true stories of real haunted hotels that inspired Stephen King’s horror classic, 1408. Heidi Wong unpacks the twisted lives and mysterious deaths behind these infamous locations, with special focus on San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado (the inspiration for 1408's cursed room) and the President Hotel in Kansas City. She explores the historical facts, legends, and ongoing paranormal reports, interweaving her signature darkly witty commentary.
(09:45 – 22:59)
(24:31 – 31:33)
Heidi Wong narrates with a sardonic, empathic, and slightly gothic sensibility—melding historical detail with humor, skepticism, and genuine fascination with the macabre. She brings to life the personalities behind the legends and the complexity beneath the horror—inviting listeners not just to shiver, but to reflect on the pain and mystery that often sit at the heart of famous hauntings.
Heidi draws clear connections between these real hotel hauntings and the themes in 1408—psychological dread, isolation, haunted pasts, and the inescapable nature of trauma. For true fans of both horror fiction and true crime, this episode offers an immersive mix of history, myth, and paranormal possibility.
[End of summary]