The Ghost of the Hotel Del Coronado
What happened to Kate Morgan in November 1892?
Kate Morgan was born Kate Farmer in Fremont County, Iowa, around 1864. She was somewhere between 24 and 27 years old when she checked into the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, California, on November 24, 1892, under the name Lottie Anderson Bernard. Kate arrived alone and told hotel staff that her brother, a doctor, would be meeting her. In truth, the gentleman she was waiting for was her husband, Thomas Morgan, who was traveling under the name Dr. M. C. Anderson. Just five days later, on November 29, 1892, the young woman was found dead at the bottom of an outside staircase. The cause of death was a gunshot wound, which was determined to have been self-inflicted. The San Diego County Coroner ruled Kate's death a suicide. Sadly, Kate's meeting with her husband never took place. Or did it?
Kate Morgan and Thomas Morgan: A Love Story
Kate Morgan was a lovely young woman when she fell in love with Thomas Morgan, a business associate of her father's. By some accounts, Thomas Morgan was a dashing gambler and con man who promised the naïve young Kate a life full of fun and excitement. Together, Thomas and his blushing bride traveled all over the United States. Thomas was a great teacher, and Kate made an apt and willing student. The pair made a great con team. They traveled the country by train, posing as brother and sister. Thomas was adept at poker. Kate's task was to flirt with the other gentlemen players to distract them from the game. Thomas easily beat the distracted players, raking in a fortune from the unsuspecting marks.
The Romance Dims
Thomas and Kate's life together was a romantic adventure ... until Kate became pregnant. Feeling the pull of maternal instincts, Kate began to long for a stable home life. The settled life was not in the cards for Thomas, however. He refused to succumb to Kate's urging that they find a quiet little home. He eventually left a very pregnant Kate in the care of a minister and his wife in San Francisco, California. The birth of their child did nothing to tame Thomas, and Kate eventually left their young son with the minister and his wife so she could rejoin her husband on the road. (By some accounts, the child lived only two days and is buried in a cemetery in Riverton, Iowa.) Once again, life was happy, carefree, and romantic for the handsome young couple. Kate soon became pregnant with a second child, however. This time, her maternal instincts pulled at her with tremendous force. She became insistent that Thomas find a home for their family and settle down. Thomas would have no part of it, and the couple's once happy relationship began to deteriorate in the face of bitter arguments and Kate's unhappiness.
Kate Morgan and Thomas Morgan Separate
Thomas and Kate boarded a train southbound from Los Angeles. The couple argued aboard the train. Thomas got angry and got off the train in Orange, California, instructing Kate to go on ahead to San Diego and to wait for him at the Hotel Del Coronado, a luxurious, new, Victorian-style resort on the white sand beaches of Coronado, a small town on the tip of the Silver Strand Peninsula, just across the bay from San Diego.
Kate Morgan arrived at the hotel on Thanksgiving Day in 1892. Hotel staff noted that she seemed sad and forlorn. She told staff she was waiting for her brother to arrive, but after several days, Dr. Morgan had not arrived, and Kate seemed to fall into deeper and deeper despair.
Death Under Mysterious Circumstances
On the morning of November 29, 1892, Kate Morgan's body was discovered slumped dead at the Hotel on an outside stairway that led down to the beach. The sad and beautiful young woman was dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. Curiously, a hotel chambermaid that had befriended Kate Morgan during her stay disappeared the day after Kate's funeral. The Hotel staff and San Diego County authorities deemed Kate's death a suicide and theorized that the chambermaid had run off with a lover. Kate Morgan's death left many unanswered questions, however. The questions only became more urgent as strange occurrences began to take place at the Hotel Del Coronado, in the very rooms that had been occupied by Kate Morgan and her chambermaid.
Ghostly Disturbances
Not long after Kate's death in 1892, guests began complaining about strange disturbances that were taking place in room 302 (later renumbered to room 3312 and now room 3327). Some guests even saw the specter of a strikingly beautiful but sad woman dressed in turn-of-the-century clothing walking the halls of the Hotel.
A Curious Stranger
In recent years, Alan May, one of the guests at the Hotel Del Coronado became intrigued with the story of Kate Morgan. He began investigating the story behind Kate's tragic death and the haunting of the Hotel, determined to find out what had happened to Kate and to learn why her spirit could not rest. May's investigation eventually led him to discover something amazing: May came to believe that his grandfather had, in fact, been the son Thomas and Kate Morgan left behind in San Francisco. He believed he was Kate Morgan's great-grandson! This, he felt, explained his strange obsession with the circumstances of Kate's death. He felt that Kate's spirit was drawing him to the hotel. Still, Kate's spirit seemed to pull at him, and he could not help feeling that something was unresolved. May used his skills as a criminal attorney to conduct an investigation Kate Morgan's death. His investigation revealed discrepancies in the facts surrounding the death of the woman he believed to be his grandmother. Most significantly, the bullet that was found in Kate's head did not match the caliber of a gun that Kate had purchased in town in the days before her death. He also determined from information regarding the position of Kate's body when it was discovered on the Hotel's outside steps that she could not have inflicted the gunshot wound on her own. May came to the conclusion that someone, probably his grandfather, Thomas Morgan, had murdered Kate Morgan.
A Message From Kate Morgan's Chambermaid?
Years later, another guest was staying at the Hotel when he was awakened by the sound of crying coming from the hallway. He got up and opened his hotel room door and saw a young woman, dressed as a maid, kneeling down on the floor and sobbing. Half-asleep, he attempted to ask the young woman what the matter was, but she did not answer him, and he eventually stumbled back to bed. When he woke in the morning, he thought that, perhaps, it had been a dream, but then found his pants laying near the door, where he had dropped them when he went to the door in the middle of the night. The gentleman became convinced that the young woman had been trying to tell him something and began to look into the story of Kate Morgan's ghost himself. He came to believe that the spirit he saw was Kate's young chambermaid and that both Kate and the chambermaid had been murdered, probably by Thomas Morgan who, coincidentally, never showed up at the Hotel Del Coronado to claim his wife.
The History of the Hotel Del Coronado
The Hotel Del Coronado first opened on February 19, 1888. From the very beginning, it was a lavish, world-class Victorian-style resort hotel. The resort drew important guests from all over the world, including kings, presidents and Hollywood movie stars. During the late 1950s, much of the filming of Some Like It Hot, the classic 1959 film starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon, took place at the Hotel Del Coronado.
The Hotel Del Coronado Today
Today, the Hotel Del Coronado remains one of the premiere resorts of the world. Located on the pristine, white sand of Silver Strand State Beach in Coronado, California, the Hotel continues to play host to some of the most important and recognizable people in the world. Travelers from around the world visit the Hotel to vacation in the lap of luxury and sometimes for the opportunity to meet the Hotel's longest staying guests: the ghosts of Kate Morgan and her chambermaid.
My Connection to Kate Morgan
Kate Morgan’s story has fascinated me since I was a little girl growing up in Coronado. I once received an email from Terry Girardot, a distant nephew of Thomas Morgan, who argued that Kate committed suicide in an attempt to clear Thomas’s name. I’m lately inspired to dive more deeply into this story and to see if more research changes my conclusion.
I’ve written two short stories inspired by Kate Morgan’s story: one hasn’t been published yet and is based on my imagined answer to the question, “What if the famous ghost people think is haunting a seaside resort is really haunting some other place?” The other was published in Kelp Journal, is loosely linked to the other story, and imagines who the ghost haunting the seaside resort really might be. I took that idea and juxtaposed it against my love of exploring tidepools on a San Diego beach in my childhood and my fear of the jetty on that same beach. That story is called “The Jetty.”
NOTE: This article about Kate Morgan’s life and death is based on my own research, including a compilation of information and accounts from a variety of sources. However, it is important to note that there are differences of opinion regarding the facts and circumstances surrounding Kate Morgan's death.