HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
+ 1 further entry on record
Historic Monterey Road Building in Downtown Gilroy
7365 Monterey Road, Gilroy, CA 95020
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The building is on Monterey Road in downtown Gilroy and visible from the public sidewalk. No longer operates as a hotel.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved downtown sidewalks
Equipment
Photos OK
Monterey Road Historic District · Early Gilroy Commercial Building
Gilroy is a city in southern Santa Clara County, California, founded in the mid-19th century as a stagecoach and railroad stop along the El Camino Real corridor through the Santa Clara Valley. Monterey Road serves as the city's historic main street and retains a concentration of 19th- and early-20th-century commercial buildings. The Old Gilroy Hotel building at 7365 Monterey Road is documented in regional ghost-tour materials and California paranormal collections as an early hotel structure on the street.
The building no longer functions as a hotel. Current use is ground-floor retail and commercial, and the upper floors that once held guest rooms are no longer accessible to the public. Detailed construction-history records for the building, including original owner and architect, are not surfaced in mainstream California historical-society materials and would require local archival research at the Gilroy Historical Society or Santa Clara County records.
Gilroy itself was incorporated in 1870 and grew as a regional agricultural center, eventually becoming known as the Garlic Capital of the World. The downtown historic district preserves a number of late-19th-century buildings; the Old Gilroy Hotel structure is among the older surviving commercial buildings on this stretch of Monterey Road.
Sources
The Old Gilroy Hotel is one of the most frequently retold paranormal locations in South Bay California folklore. Local tradition associates the building with two figures: a young woman in her early twenties and a small girl. The woman is most often described at the top of the stairway leading to the former guest rooms; the girl is typically reported in the hallway and occasionally seen looking out of upper-story windows toward Monterey Road.
A second cluster of reports concerns the building's electrical systems. Local accounts describe an electric piano that produced sounds without being plugged in, lights cycling on and off, and the recurring sensation of doors rattling as though someone were locked inside an upper room. A former employee report describes being touched briefly on the back of the neck while alone in the building.
The lore attributes the apparitions to a 19th-century violent crime on the upper floor of the then-operating hotel, in which a young woman and a child were attacked and killed by a male guest. The specific identification of victims, perpetrator, and date is not corroborated in primary historical sources accessible to HauntBound research; the account survives primarily in Gilroy oral tradition and in California paranormal compilations. Visitors should treat the violent-crime narrative as folkloric rather than as documented historical record.
Media Appearances
View the Old Gilroy Hotel building from the public sidewalk on Monterey Road. The hotel no longer operates; current tenants occupy the ground floor. Pair the visit with a self-guided walking loop of historic downtown Gilroy.
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