HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
An 1880 Wild West hotel and saloon in Buffalo that helped inspire Owen Wister's 'The Virginian,' where guests report a child spirit called Emily.
10 N Main St, Buffalo, WY 82834
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Operating historic hotel; room rates roughly $90-$285/night depending on season. The saloon and restaurant are open to the public.
Access
Limited Access
Restored 19th-century hotel with stairs to upper floors; downtown paved sidewalks
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1880 · One of Wyoming's oldest operating hotels (1880) · Bozeman Trail and Johnson County frontier landmark · Associated with Owen Wister's 1902 novel 'The Virginian' · Hosted Calamity Jane, Butch Cassidy, Tom Horn, Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover
The Occidental Hotel began in 1880 as a log building serving travelers on the Bozeman Trail, ten years before Wyoming became a state. As Buffalo grew into a ranching and Army town near Fort McKinney, the Occidental expanded into a substantial brick hotel and became the social center of Johnson County. Its saloon, with an original cherry-wood back bar, still carries bullet holes from the rougher decades of the frontier.
The hotel's guest register reflects the era. Documented and traditionally cited visitors include Calamity Jane, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, outlaw-turned-detective Tom Horn, President Theodore Roosevelt, and Herbert Hoover. Author Owen Wister stayed in Buffalo in the 1890s, and the hotel and town have long held that he drew on the cowboys and characters he encountered around the Occidental's bar when he wrote 'The Virginian' in 1902, often called the first true Western novel. The hotel's restaurant, The Virginian, takes its name from the book.
After the railroad and highways shifted travel away from Buffalo, the hotel declined for much of the 20th century. It was restored beginning in the late 1990s and reopened as a working historic hotel, saloon, and restaurant, with rooms furnished to its turn-of-the-century period. It operates today at 10 N Main Street in downtown Buffalo.
Sources
The most repeated story at the Occidental concerns Emily, described in local accounts as a child who died of cholera at the hotel in the early 1900s. Guests and staff report the small signs associated with a young presence: a light tap or tug on a sleeve or shirt hem with no one there, a child's laughter, and the figure of a girl in a white dress seen at the foot of a bed, most often in the Bordello Suite. The hotel keeps stuffed animals in a room near where the child is said to have died.
Emily is treated by the hotel and by local tourism writers as a gentle presence rather than a frightening one, and her story is told with care for the child at its center. Beyond Emily, the hotel's library is the setting for a recurring account of a Theodore Roosevelt apparition, said to appear as though preparing for a fishing trip, a nod to the former president's documented visits to the region.
These reports come from guest and staff anecdotes collected by the Buffalo visitor bureau and regional newspapers rather than from formal investigation, and they are recorded here as the hotel's living folklore. The central figure is a child whose death is described only through tradition.
Notable Entities
Book a room or suite, including the Bordello Suite where the 'Emily' lore centers. The hotel markets its Wild West history; the hauntings are guest folklore, not a ticketed attraction.
Walk into the restored 1880 saloon with its original back bar and bullet holes, or dine at the on-site Virginian Restaurant named for the Owen Wister novel. Live music runs several nights a week.
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