A restored 1897 mountain hotel in Frostburg with a basement jail cell, a Prohibition speakeasy, and guest reports of cold spots and shadowy figures.
11 West Main Street, Frostburg, MD 21532
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Operating hotel with eleven guest rooms; see the hotel's booking page for current rates.
Access
Limited Access
Multi-story historic hotel on a hill in downtown Frostburg; the basement jail and speakeasy are reached by stairs.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1897 · Opened in 1897 as one of Frostburg's landmark mountain hotels · Basement jail cell used to hold prisoners in transit on the National Road · Prohibition-era underground bar preserved as a historical display · Restored in the 1980s and again after a 2019 purchase
The hotel at the top of West Main Street in Frostburg opened on New Year's Day 1897. It was built by William R. Percy, who died only a few months later; under his son-in-law's management it became the Hotel Gladstone. Early amenities ran to a cafe, a barbershop, and, by the building's own account, a petting zoo with a tame deer.
Around 1900 William R. Gunter purchased the property for about thirty-five thousand dollars and gave it the name it still carries. Over the next two decades the Gunters modernized the building, installing electric lighting and adding a 175-seat dining room, a pressed-tin ceiling, and a mahogany bar.
The basement holds the hotel's most unusual history. A jail cell there was used to house prisoners being moved along Route 40, the National Road, while the federal marshals escorting them stayed in rooms upstairs. During Prohibition the same lower level operated as an underground bar, and the hotel's history records cockfighting events held there as well.
By the middle of the twentieth century the building had badly deteriorated. Jake Failinger renovated it in the 1980s and preserved the jail cell and the speakeasy as historical displays rather than removing them. Donny and Kristan Carter bought the hotel in 2019. It operates today with eleven guest rooms alongside a winery, shops, apartments, and two ballrooms.
Sources
Hotel Gunter's reputation as a haunted stop in western Maryland is tied closely to the basement jail that once held prisoners being moved along the National Road. Allegany County travel and folklore coverage places it among the region's haunted sites, alongside places like Rose Hill Cemetery and the Paw Paw Tunnel.
The reported phenomena are the familiar register of a long-lived hotel: guests and staff describe cold spots, voices with no clear speaker, and shadowy figures seen moving through hallways and rooms. No single named spirit anchors the stories, and the accounts are not attributed to any documented death at the hotel; they circulate as guest and staff reports collected by regional sources rather than through a formal paranormal investigation.
Because the hotel preserved its jail cell and speakeasy as displays rather than erasing them, the building leans into its own history, and the lore is part of how it is presented to visitors. The accounts are unverified, and the most concrete thing a guest will actually encounter is the preserved cell and bar room downstairs.
Book one of the hotel's eleven restored rooms. Guests can see the preserved basement jail cell that once held prisoners in transit and the underground bar room that operated during Prohibition.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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