The Lady in Red Haunts the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver

The Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, opened in 1939, is actually the third Hotel Vancouver, with the first two built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1888 and 1916 on the southeast corner of Georgia and Howe Streets. This building on Georgia Street, between Burrard and Hornby, is one of several chateau-style hotels built by the Canadian National Railway in the early twentieth century, like the Chateau Lake Louise and the Chateau Frontenac. It was restored in the mid-1990s and has a steep-pitched copper roof, ornate dormers, and gargoyles.

This hotel is known for a benevolent, elegantly dressed “Lady in Red.” She is often seen on the 14th floor and in the ground floor lobby near the guest elevator doors. She sometimes passes through elevator doors on those floors and glides along the hallways. The 1st and 14th floors are the only ones with elevator doors that lead to a dummy elevator shaft, and the ghost has been seen passing through those disused, locked doors.

The Lady in Red has also been encountered in guest rooms. One time, a Japanese family on the 14th floor called the front desk, asking if their room had been double-booked because they had seen the Lady in Red in the room. In another incident, a bellman escorting guests into room 1403 saw the Lady in Red follow them through the door into the room, but when he entered, she had vanished. More recently, security cameras have recorded disembodied footsteps and strange sounds in a stairwell near the 14th floor.

Some believe the Lady in Red is the ghost of Jennie Pearl Cox, a Vancouver socialite who regularly attended the hotel’s ballroom dances in the early 1940s. She reportedly took up eternal residence in the hotel after dying in a car accident in 1944. Whether it's Ms. Cox or not, the hotel staff knows this ghost well.