Twin antebellum townhouses on Church Street, now a boutique hotel where guests report a woman in white pacing the Room 007 balcony.
359 Church Street, Mobile, AL 36602
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Boutique hotel room rates typically run $130-$220 per night depending on season and room type.
Access
Limited Access
Two-story historic townhouses with stairs; some ground-floor rooms available
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1862 · Twin antebellum townhouses · Civil War-era construction · Mobile downtown historic district · USA Today 10Best top-ten haunted hotel ranking
The Malaga Inn began as two mirror-image brick townhouses constructed circa 1862 along the 300 block of Church Street, just after Alabama's January 1861 secession ordinance and during the early years of the Civil War. According to the inn's own historical record, the buildings were commissioned by Goldsmith and Frohlichstein, brothers-in-law whose families lived in the twin houses for several decades. Construction during wartime is consistent with the architectural record of mid-century Mobile, a Confederate-held port whose mercantile classes continued to invest in fine residential properties throughout the conflict.
The twin houses changed hands multiple times in the early twentieth century, by which point the Church Street block had transitioned from residential to mixed commercial use. The current owners' family acquired the property in the mid-1960s and began a phased renovation that ultimately combined the two structures into a single 39-room boutique hotel arranged around a shared central courtyard.
The inn's own historical narrative also notes that brick tunnels run beneath the western townhouse. The owners interpret these as Confederate-era hiding spaces or supply tunnels, though no archaeological survey has confirmed wartime use; brick-arched basements and short underground passages are common features of mid-nineteenth-century Mobile commercial blocks and may have served storage or drainage functions as well as any wartime use.
Like most antebellum-era Mobile properties, the Malaga occupies a site shaped by the city's deep entanglement with slavery and the cotton trade. The Goldsmith and Frohlichstein households were part of a merchant class whose wealth was inseparable from the labor of enslaved people on Gulf Coast plantations and in urban Mobile itself, a context the property's interpretive materials acknowledge less directly than its ghost lore.
The Malaga is today an operating 39-room boutique hotel and event venue, with its original carriage house hosting weddings and other functions. WKRG reported in October 2023 that USA Today's 10Best readers' poll ranked the Malaga the sixth-best haunted hotel in America.
Sources
The Malaga Inn's signature legend centers on Room 007, where guests and staff have reported the figure of a woman in a long white dress pacing the small second-floor balcony that overlooks the central courtyard. The reports cluster on quiet nights and in early-morning hours, and witnesses describe the figure as motionless before slowly walking the rail and disappearing. According to WKRG's October 2023 reporting and the US Ghost Adventures tour-stop write-up, the inn's owners associate the apparition with Mayme Sinclair, an early-twentieth-century resident of the property; the room number itself is reportedly a James Bond reference Sinclair chose during a mid-century renovation. A separate strand of the local lore frames the Lady in White as the spirit of a young woman whose Confederate-officer lover never returned from the war, though no documentary record connects a specific Civil War casualty to the property.
Beyond Room 007, staff and guests have reported chandeliers swinging without apparent cause in common spaces, lamps unplugging themselves, and furniture rearranged between cleaning passes. Several of these accounts are summarized in the inn's own marketing materials and repeated in the WKRG features, which document interviews with current staff describing recurring small disturbances on the property.
The Malaga's brick tunnels — the owners' description, not an archaeological finding — are folded into the lore as a likely Civil War supply or hiding route. WKRG's on-camera tour of the underbuilding shows the brick arches and is presented as evidence supporting the wartime-tunnel framing, though the network's reporting does not independently confirm the dating or function.
The Malaga has been recognized by USA Today's 10Best readers' poll as one of the country's best haunted hotels, which has reinforced the property's tour-route status and contributed to a steady volume of guest-reported activity now documented on ghost-tourism listicles and paranormal blogs.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Overnight at one of Mobile's best-known haunted hotels, a 39-room boutique inn formed from two 1862 townhouses arranged around a central courtyard. Complimentary historic tours of the property are offered to guests, with discussion of the Civil War-era construction and the Room 007 lore.
The Malaga Inn is a regular stop on Mobile ghost-tour routes, where guides cover the Lady in White and the Confederate tunnel lore.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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