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Reported phenomena, as catalogued
+ 1 further entry on record
The country's oldest seaside resort, rebuilt in brick after the Great Fire of 1878 — and rumored to have never fully emptied out.
200 Congress Pl, Cape May, NJ 08204
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$$
Hotel overnight rates vary by season; check website for current pricing.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic hotel with multiple floors; elevator available
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1816 · America's Oldest Seaside Resort · Presidential Summer White House · National Historic Landmark District · Great Fire of 1878 Survivor
Thomas H. Hughes opened a wooden boarding house on the Cape May beachfront in 1816. Locals called it 'Tommy's Folly,' skeptical that such an ambitious structure would survive. When Hughes won election to the House of Representatives in 1828, he renamed the property Congress Hall, and the hotel's identity as a destination for the politically connected was set early.
By the mid-nineteenth century, Congress Hall was among the most prominent summer resorts on the Eastern Seaboard. Presidents Pierce, Buchanan, and Grant all stayed here during their administrations. Benjamin Harrison made it more than a vacation stop — in 1890 and 1891, with the White House undergoing renovation, Harrison conducted official business from Congress Hall, making it a functioning extension of the executive branch for two summers.
In 1882, John Philip Sousa visited with the U.S. Marine Band and debuted a composition on the hotel's lawn specifically written for the venue — the Congress Hall March. It was a measure of the hotel's cultural standing that a sitting bandmaster would write original music for its grounds.
The Great Fire of November 1878 destroyed the original wooden structure along with more than 40 acres of Cape May. The owners rebuilt in brick, explicitly marketing the new construction as fireproof to reassure guests still wary of fire. The 1879 brick building that stands today is the version that earned National Historic Landmark status as a contributing structure in the Cape May Historic District.
The hotel passed through several owners over the twentieth century, including a period under Rev. Carl McIntire's Bible Conference starting in 1968. It closed in 1992. Curtis Bashaw undertook a $22 million restoration beginning in 1995 that returned it to full operation by 2002 under the Cape Resorts banner.
Sources
The most concentrated reports at Congress Hall cluster on the third floor, where cleaning staff over the years have described entering rooms to find televisions and radios already on, hearing voices on the other side of locked doors, and finding no one inside when they obtained access. Guests report being woken by knocking and finding the hallway empty, and the sound of children at play in corridors where no children are present.
A second recurring figure — a man in Victorian-era dress — has been seen walking the third-floor hallway. Witnesses describe him moving with purpose before stepping through or into a wall. Local historians have connected the child-related phenomena to an 1876 drowning: a ten-year-old boy died in the ocean directly in front of the hotel that summer.
Cape May's ghost tour operators include Congress Hall in their walking routes, citing it as one of the city's most consistently reported locations. The hotel does not advertise or schedule paranormal programming, but the reputation circulates independently through guest reviews, local press, and the Cape May ghost tour community.
Notable Entities
Stay in one of the hotel's rooms or suites in the 1879 brick building, which replaced the wooden original lost in the Great Fire of 1878. The third floor draws the most reported paranormal activity — staff describe electronics activating without input and guests hearing knocking and children in empty hallways.
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Cape May, NJ
William Weightman Sr., managing partner of Powers & Weightman and the man who introduced quinine to the American market as an anti-malarial, built a summer cottage at the corner of Franklin and Washington Streets in Cape May around 1850. In 1881 he had it moved to an ocean-view lot, but the farmers he hired discovered the structure was too large to move intact. They cut it in half, moved the sections separately, and found they could not reconnect them. The two buildings were enclosed separately, creating the two adjoining structures that now house the B&B.
Cape May, NJ
Charles Page built the home at 308 Stockton Avenue in 1883 as a family vacation property while also maintaining a Philadelphia business. He was shot and killed in Philadelphia that same summer while his family vacationed in Cape May without him. The house was eventually converted to the B&B now operating as the Bedford Inn.
Cape May, NJ
The Chalfonte Hotel was built in 1875–1876 by Henry Sawyer, a Union Army colonel who was a prisoner of war at Libby Prison during the Civil War. Sawyer operated it as a boarding house before it became a hotel; it is now described by the National Park Service as 'the oldest and most ornate large hotel in Cape May.' The hotel is a contributing property to the Cape May Historic District (NRHP 1970) and has been operated since 2008 by Robert and Linda Mullock.