The former 1925 Bay Haven Hotel on the Ringling College campus in Sarasota, where a ghost named Mary — a woman who died in the stairwell — has reportedly haunted students and staff for decades.
2700 N Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL 34234
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Active private college campus; no public ghost-tour programming. Ringling's campus grounds are generally accessible; Keating Hall is a residential building.
Access
Limited Access
Campus building with stairwells central to the legend; limited accessibility
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1925 · Original 1925 Bay Haven Hotel in Spanish Mission Revival style · Incorporated into Ringling School of Art and Design c. 1931 by John Ringling · One of the earliest buildings on the Ringling College campus
The building now known as Keating Hall on the Ringling College of Art and Design campus was originally constructed in 1925 as the Bay Haven Hotel, built in a Spanish Mission Revival style by the Echols Construction Company. During the Florida land boom of the 1920s, the hotel catered to a wealthy clientele, but the bust that followed the boom left the building in disrepair. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, before John Ringling's intervention, the Bay Haven had reportedly fallen into use for gambling and prostitution.
John Ringling, the circus impresario who had established a large winter estate and art collection in Sarasota, purchased the Bay Haven around 1931 and converted it into facilities for the art school he was founding. The building became a women's dormitory and classroom space. Ringling College of Art and Design (then the Ringling School of Art and Design) grew around this original structure.
The building was later renamed Keating Hall in honor of a benefactor. As of the period of research, it continues to function as a residential building on the active private college campus. Ringling College's communications office has been noted in press accounts as unable to find any historical record confirming the death of a person named Mary within the building.
Sources
The ghost tradition at Ringling College's Keating Hall centers on a young woman universally called 'Mary,' whose death in the building's stairwell is said to have occurred during the late 1920s or early 1930s, when the Bay Haven Hotel was being used for gambling and prostitution. Most accounts describe Mary as a young woman of about 18 or 19 who worked in the hotel and died by suicide in the third-floor stairwell, hanging herself with a drapery cord after becoming romantically fixated on a client who did not return her feelings. Some accounts suggest she was murdered.
According to Sarasota Magazine's 2021 survey of the city's most haunted locations, students who have lived in the building's upper floors since the 1930s have reported anguished sobs emanating from the stairwell and the persistent scent of stale perfume or violet perfume. Some have reported weeping or a crushing sense of sadness when passing through the stairwell. Art students have found their paintbrushes slowly spinning in water rinse cups as though someone had just set them turning and let go. Mary is also reported to have rearranged rooms and placed phantom phone calls.
A 2004 press account noted that Ringling College's spokeswoman Christine Meeker Lange and some students had searched for a documentary record of the death without success. Travel Channel coverage in 2004 included the location. The legend is also documented in Greg Jenkins's published book *Florida's Ghostly Legends and Haunted Folklore: The Gulf Coast and Pensacola* (2007).
NOTE: Mary has not been identified as a specific real person in any source reviewed. Her name may be a folk attribution. No real-person defamation concern applies, but the suicide framing should be handled with sensitivity.
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Ringling College of Art and Design campus is largely open. The Keating Hall building (former Bay Haven Hotel, 1925) can be viewed from campus grounds. No ghost-tour programming is offered.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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