A Historic Ghost Story Wrapped in an Enigma

The legend of the ghost of the Hotel del Coronado has been floating around the landmark seaside resort ever since the mysterious death of a woman garbed in black more than 110 years ago.

The famous hotel near San Diego, a glamorous stopover for kings and presidents, isn’t the only one with a resident ghost. The Hollywood Roosevelt supposedly has at least two -- Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift. But the Hotel del Coronado, known to its fans as “the Del,” is probably unique in having a whole book dedicated to a single ghost.

Various “sightings” of the female apparition gliding down a corridor, or standing by the same window as if waiting for someone, fill a hefty file in the office of the 115-year-old hotel’s historian, Christine Donovan.

Intrigued by the mysterious death, Donovan spent more than a year researching newspaper accounts, coroner’s records and archives at several libraries, as well as the hotel’s own documents. She recently wrote “Beautiful Stranger: The Ghost of Kate Morgan and the Hotel del Coronado,” published by the hotel’s heritage department.

Donovan admits that she has never seen the ghost, but says she decided to set the record straight after so many different versions of the story began taking on lives of their own. “Our goal was to tell a true story, something a history department could stand behind,” she said,

According to Donovan, Kate Morgan was 24 when she showed up without any luggage at the hotel on Thanksgiving Day 1892. She registered under a false name and was assigned Room 302, which has since been changed to 3327. Five days later, she was found dead with a bullet in her head on the hotel’s staircase down to the beach.

The story of Morgan’s final days begins in Los Angeles, where she was a servant for Judge Robert Maclay Widney, “father” of USC, and later for L.A. Grant on South Hill Street. She gave both employers the name Mrs. Katie Logan and said she was from Omaha.

On Wednesday, Nov. 23, 1892, she told the Grants that she needed to go to San Diego to get some papers signed. Promising to return the next day to cook the Thanksgiving meal, she hopped aboard a train for San Diego, leaving all her possessions behind in a trunk.

On the train, she was seen and heard having a “lover’s quarrel” with a man later identified as Tom Morgan. He got off the train in Orange County. Kate continued on to San Diego and the Del, where she registered under the name Lottie Anderson Bernard, saying she was from Detroit. She paid $3.80 a day for her third-floor room, three meals included.

At the beginning of her stay, she reportedly went horseback riding and indulged in a few “whiskey cocktails.” Later in the week, according to various hotel employees who would testify at the inquest in San Diego, she appeared to be in ill health. One worker said she had confided that she was suffering from a “hopeless stomach cancer.” Another time she said she had neuralgia but added that her brother was a doctor who would be arriving any day. He never came; she had no brother.

The day before her death, she went shopping in San Diego, where she bought a .44-caliber American Bulldog pistol, saying it was a Christmas gift for a friend. A few shop owners would later testify how slowly she walked and how weak she appeared.

On Nov. 28, a stormy Monday night, she went out to the wooden stairs and apparently shot herself in the right temple. The hotel’s electrician found her body the next morning.

To help identify her, police circulated a sketch of her face along with a description of her black clothes, including her black underwear, and an expensive ring she wore. Although the sketch made her look nondescript, newspapers began calling her the “beautiful stranger” and speculated that she may have been pregnant, unmarried and deserted.

A few days later, the San Diego coroner received a letter from an unknown source that identified Lottie A. Bernard as Kate Morgan and said she was from a fairly well-to-do Iowa family. About the same time, the Grants in Los Angeles reported her missing, and the Los Angeles police began piecing together more information from items they found in her trunk.

Her marriage certificate stated that she was indeed from Hamburg, Iowa; that her maiden name was Katie K. Farmer; and that she wed Thomas E. Morgan in December 1885. A tin box marked with the name “Louisa Anderson” -- possibly another alias -- was also in her trunk.

It contained a letter of recommendation from a previous employer stating that she was “honorable and trustworthy.” There were also several photographs, including one of her husband.

Other servants at the Grants’ home told police that Kate was very private about her past, but had mentioned that her husband was a gambler and that she was unhappy in her marriage.

No one said anything about her being in ill health, as others in San Diego would later testify.

An Iowa relative stated in a cable that when Kate left Iowa she was carrying “quite a sum of money.” The relative declared, “You can rest assured it was no case of suicide.”

A hotel bellboy testified that Kate appeared to be “suffering a great deal.... She groaned a great deal and slept most of the day.”

An autopsy was never performed, and it’s unclear why. The coroner nonetheless declared that Kate did not have “cancer of the stomach” and that the wound to her head was self-inflicted. Her Iowa relatives paid for her burial in San Diego.

Her death only started the speculation. One theory was that she was a single girl named Lizzie Wyllie, who ran off with a married man and either committed suicide or was killed after becoming pregnant. Another is that Lizzie Wyllie and Kate Morgan were both running away from something, met on the train and switched identities. There was even a story that she was the mistress of a sea captain and was staying at the hotel when she was killed by the captain’s wife.

Donovan explains why theories abounded, writing in her book: “Although the inquest provides detailed information, it is clear that some of the testimony is contradictory, and in some places critical questions were never asked. Because of this, it is easy to see why so much remains uncertain.”

The lack of information did not bother Alan May. In 1989, May, a self-described “bizarre, eccentric” attorney, a former Green Beret and Nixon White House aide, insisted that he saw the woman’s ghost while staying at the Del.

He pieced together what he believed to be the true account of her death, which he published himself in several pamphlets. May refused to accept the popular belief that she had committed suicide, insisting that she was murdered by her card-shark husband.

May speculated that they had traveled by train across the country, hustling passengers and living the high life. When she got pregnant, he dumped her because a child would have been a liability in his line of work.

May also contended that, if she had committed suicide, the large-caliber bullet from such close range would probably have shattered her skull instead of lodging in her brain, as the coroner reported. In addition, he believed that Tom Morgan returned to Kate’s room after shooting her and took whatever money she may have had.

Regardless of May’s theory, Donovan and the hotel believe that their story is more accurate. “With witness after witness describing Kate’s ill health, her despair and her exhausting trip into San Diego (to purchase a gun), it seems almost certain that Kate did, indeed, kill herself.”

At any rate, the dead woman was buried two weeks later in an unmarked grave at Mount Hope Cemetery. May became so obsessed with her that he bought her a headstone and visited her grave frequently until his own death in 1991.

In 1982, a hotel guest identified only as “KL” reported seeing an apparition of a beautiful dark-haired woman. “But there was no color to her or her clothes,” the guest said. “It was as if there was no life.” KL sketched what she saw for the hotel’s files.

In 1983, a Secret Service agent guarding then-Vice President George Bush was assigned to Room 3519 and was spooked enough to call his superiors in the middle of the night, demanding another room. He got it.

Other hotel guests staying in Kate’s Room 3327 have shared their experiences -- the room’s doorknob rattling, bathroom lights dimming and flickering on and off, bedcovers being jerked off the bed in the middle of the night. In 1992, a parapsychologist and his crew were unable to detect any activity in Room 3327. But they did find “37 abnormalities in Room 3519.” Maybe Kate takes late-night walks?