Spanish-Mediterranean Revival oceanfront hotel opened June 6, 1925 — host to Al Capone, Charlie Chaplin, FDR, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Machine Gun Kelly — Historic Hotels of America member with longstanding apparitional and pajamaed-man reports.
691 North 1st Street, Jacksonville Beach, FL 32250
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Active oceanfront hotel; nightly room rates vary. Restaurant and public spaces are accessible.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Restored historic hotel with elevators and ADA public spaces.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1925 · Opened June 6, 1925 — Jacksonville Beach's first major oceanfront hotel · Spanish-Mediterranean Revival fireproof construction with early automatic sprinklers · Guests included FDR, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Charlie Chaplin, Jean Harlow · Cited Prohibition-era hideout for Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly · WWII military housing · National Trust Historic Hotels of America member
The Casa Marina Hotel sits oceanfront at 691 North 1st Street in Jacksonville Beach. According to the hotel's own history and US Ghost Adventures' Jacksonville feature, the hotel opened June 6, 1925 to substantial fanfare as the crown jewel of Jacksonville's beaches. Built in two stories of stucco and concrete in Spanish-Mediterranean Revival style, the property was the first fireproof hotel of its kind in Jacksonville and featured an automatic sprinkler system uncommon in 1925.
Early guests included some of the era's most prominent families and entertainers — the Rockefellers; the Duke and Duchess of Windsor; the Roosevelts (including FDR); Charlie Chaplin; Jean Harlow; Buster Keaton; Mary Pickford; and Fatty Arbuckle. The hotel is also frequently cited as a Prohibition-era hideout for organized-crime figures including Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly.
During World War II, the Casa Marina was requisitioned by the U.S. government and used as military housing. It declined in the post-war decades before restoration efforts beginning in 1991 returned it to operation. The hotel is now a National Trust for Historic Preservation Historic Hotels of America member and continues to operate as a boutique oceanfront historic hotel.
Sources
Per US Ghost Adventures' Casa Marina entry, the Casa Marina's hotel-history page, and JaxPsychoGeo, the Casa Marina is one of the most-cited haunted hotels on Florida's First Coast. The reports cluster around three patterns:
First, apparitions of 1920s-era figures — guests in period clothing seen briefly in hallways and lobbies, consistent with the hotel's heavy celebrity and reputed-mobster guest history of the 1920s and 1930s. Second, a man in striped pajamas reported in certain guest rooms, an apparition repeated across multiple guest accounts over many years. Third, ghostly children in the second-floor hallways — sometimes heard running, sometimes briefly seen.
More specific incidents repeated in coverage include a hotel-room phone that continued to ring after being unplugged from the wall and unexplained scratch marks appearing overnight on a hardwood floor in a guest room. Passersby on the beachfront have reported faces appearing in upper-floor windows when no one was registered to those rooms.
Reports remain anecdotal. The hotel acknowledges the haunted reputation in its own marketing and ghost-tour partnerships. The named-entity case is thinner than at the Ellis Hotel in Atlanta (where a documented mass-casualty fire anchors the lore), but the Casa Marina's century of high-profile guest history, military requisitioning, and continuous operation give the reports unusual narrative depth for a haunted hotel.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Book an overnight stay at the 1925 Spanish-Mediterranean Revival oceanfront hotel — a National Trust for Historic Preservation Historic Hotels of America member and former host of Capone, Chaplin, FDR, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
The Casa Marina is featured as a stop on Jacksonville-area ghost tours offered by US Ghost Adventures and other operators.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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