7 Eeriest Abandoned Hotels Still Standing In Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania’s landscape hides forgotten treasures of hospitality gone wrong. These abandoned hotels stand as eerie time capsules, their empty hallways and vacant rooms telling stories of bygone eras.
From historic inns to roadside motels, these crumbling structures fascinate urban explorers and history buffs alike with their haunting beauty and mysterious pasts.
1. Lake House Hotel – Saylorsburg’s Haunted Landmark
Creaking floorboards echo beneath hesitant footsteps as shadows dance across walls of a 200-year-old inn steeped in history.
Built in the early 1800s, its crooked halls and layered additions feel designed for disorientation, the perfect recipe for goosebumps. Each autumn the site awakens as the “Hotel of Horror,” luring thrill-seekers with cold drafts and whispers in empty rooms.
Paranormal enthusiasts claim former guests never left, spirits drifting between staircases and rafters. Lantern light flickers against worn wood, and air chills unexpectedly, fueling legends that keep this structure alive in ghost stories long after overnight visitors vanished.
2. Penn-McKee Hotel – Where History Meets Decay
Famous for hosting a 1947 debate between young politicians Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, this once-glamorous 1920s landmark now stands frozen in time. Broken windows stare like hollow eyes over McKeesport’s streets.
Redevelopment plans crawl forward while nature reclaims the grand structure bit by bit. Urban explorers occasionally sneak inside, documenting crumbling plaster and vintage fixtures.
How strange that a building where future presidents once spoke now speaks only through creaking floors and falling debris!
3. Monongahela Hotel – Brownsville’s Faded Yellow Giant
Constructed in 1911, this yellow-brick colossus once represented prosperity in coal country. After serving as a hotel, it transformed into Towne House Apartments before emptiness claimed it completely.
Today it looms over Market Street like a hollow ghost, its boarded windows concealing grand ballrooms where couples once danced. Fayette County residents pass by daily, barely noticing the sleeping giant.
Should you peek through gaps in the boards, you might glimpse peeling wallpaper and vintage fixtures frozen in a bygone era.
4. Hillcrest Hotel – Bedford’s Roadside Ghost
Highways once pulsed with families lured by glowing neon promising clean beds and hot showers, fathers stretching road-weary legs while children splashed happily in a turquoise kidney-shaped pool.
Today, silence reigns where laughter echoed. Rainwater fills the basin, leaves swirling in stagnant puddles. Rebranded later as an Econo Lodge, no discount saved its fate.
Roof tiles curl and peel like scabs, mildew perfumes the air, and ivy claws relentlessly at cracked walls. Nature, patient and hungry, reclaims each forgotten corner, transforming a mid-century stopover into a haunting tableau of vanished road trips and memories bleached by time.
5. Tower/Flamingo Motel Complex – Nanticoke’s Forgotten Roadside Cluster
Remember when family road trips meant quirky roadside motels with themed rooms? This cluster of abandoned lodgings on Nanticoke’s south side tells that story through broken windows and graffiti-covered walls.
Vandals have claimed much of what previous owners left behind. Mattresses rot in rooms where travelers once dreamed, while shattered television sets gather dust instead of broadcasting late-night shows.
The complex stands as a monument to changing travel habits, where chain hotels and online bookings replaced mom-and-pop hospitality and spontaneous stops.
6. Diamond Carlisle Inn – The Crumbling Castle
Turrets rise above Harrisburg Pike, stone and stucco recalling medieval fantasy even as time erodes the illusion. Once a Ramada buzzing with wedding receptions and corporate banquets, the fortress façade now guards only silence.
Rain seeps through broken roofing, musty dampness clinging to faded carpets while raccoons and birds nest in forgotten corners. Sunbeams filter through shattered panes, dust drifting like phantom guests on abandoned dance floors.
Drivers slow as they pass, curiosity stirred by architecture that refuses to vanish completely, a roadside castle caught between glory and ruin, stubbornly haunting the highway with echoes of its past splendor.
7. St. Mark’s Motor Inn – Hazleton’s Dangerous Beauty
Warning signs declaring “UNSAFE STRUCTURE” can’t diminish the haunting allure of this mid-century motor inn straddling West Hazleton and Hazleton. Locals whisper about black mold and collapsing floors, yet urban explorers still risk tetanus for a glimpse inside.
Vintage curtains flutter through broken windows like ghosts waving goodbye to better days. Rusty bed frames remain bolted to floors in rooms where traveling salesmen once laid their sample cases.
The parking lot where chrome-finned cars once gleamed now sprouts determined weeds pushing through cracked asphalt.
