Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
1898. A woman named Florence Montague checks into a room on the third floor of the Oxford Hotel. She shoots and kills the man she is with. Then she turns the gun on herself.
That is the legend anyway. And that room, Room 320, is the one you can actually book right now in downtown Denver.
The Oxford calls the deal "Stay With the Spirits." It runs this October all the way through Oct. 31, 2026. Book the room and you get a vinyl record waiting for you, a $65 credit at the hotel's Cruise Room bar, and a late checkout so you are not rushed out the door at 11 a.m. after whatever happens to you in there overnight. There is also a Wine and Dine version with a $50 credit at Urban Farmer, the steakhouse on-site, if you want to make a full night of it.
The hotel sits at 1600 17th St. in LoDo. If you have walked from Union Station toward Larimer, you have passed it.
Here is the part people forget about the Oxford. It is old. Like, first-in-Denver old.
It opened in 1891, right at the peak of the silver mining era, when this city had money falling out of its pockets and everybody wanted a piece. The Oxford is billed as the oldest hotel in downtown Denver. So when you are standing in that lobby, you are standing in a building that watched Denver go from a mining boomtown to, well, this. More than 130 years of guests. That is a lot of nights, and a lot of stories.
And one of those stories has a room number attached to it.
So the legend goes like this. In 1898, seven years after the Oxford opened, Florence Montague is in Room 320 with a man. Some accounts say she shot her lover. Some accounts list the guy in the hotel register as H. Rockwell, her "husband." The details get fuzzy depending on who is telling it, which honestly is how these things always go. What stays consistent is the ending. She kills him, and then she kills herself.
Florence, the story says, never left.
Guests in Room 320 have reported flickering lights. Unexplained sounds. Sheets getting pulled right off the bed while they are lying in it. And here is the detail that makes this one stand out, if you ask me. The activity seems to zero in on single male guests. Men have described scratches. Bruises. Being pulled by something they could not see.
I mean, read that back. You are booking a room where the ghost reportedly has a type.
Now that $65 Cruise Room credit is not just a nice bar tab. The Cruise Room has its own ghost, and this one is a lot friendlier than Florence.
The Cruise Room is the Oxford's Art Deco bar, a gorgeous little spot modeled after a lounge on an ocean liner. The legend here is a phantom postman. Story says he walks in, orders a beer, and mutters something about getting gifts to "the children." Then he vanishes. Just gone. And he leaves behind a full, untouched bottle.
So one ghost is pulling sheets off men upstairs, and one ghost is buying a round and ditching it downstairs. The Oxford contains multitudes.
(Side note. The Cruise Room is worth a stop even if you do not believe a word of this. It is one of the better-looking bars in the city.)
Room 320 is already a regular stop on LoDo ghost tours and bar crawls, the kind that string together Union Station, Market Street, and Larimer Square and tell you every dark thing that ever happened on these blocks. What is different now is that you do not have to just peek at the door from a tour group. You can get the key.
And the real estate angle here is simpler than you would think. LoDo is some of the most expensive dirt in Denver. These historic brick buildings off 17th and 16th do not come cheap, and the ones that still have their original bones, like the Oxford, are the reason this neighborhood feels like Denver instead of Anywhere, USA. A 127-year-old murder-suicide legend is not a liability for this building. It is part of the brand. Try selling that as a feature anywhere else.
So here is the real story on this one. Whether or not you buy that Florence is up there pulling sheets, you are paying to sleep in the oldest hotel downtown, drink in one of the prettiest bars in the city, and wake up in a piece of Denver that has been standing since the silver days. The ghost is a bonus.
If you are a single guy, though, maybe bring a friend. Just saying.
The package runs through Oct. 31. Buckle up.