The 2026 World Series isn’t just sending the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers into a championship battle - it’s also dropping them into a pair of hotels with reputations that could raise the hair on the back of your neck.
Before Games 1 and 2 in Milwaukee, the Rays are set to stay at the Pfister Hotel, the historic four-star property famous for its Victorian style, its art collection and, for years, the stories that swirl around it. Then the Brewers head to Tampa for Games 3 and 4, where they’re reportedly staying at The Vinoy Renaissance St. Petersburg Resort & Golf Club, another luxury hotel with its own long-running ghost lore.
The Pfister, which opened in 1893, was once billed as the "Grand Hotel of the West" and cost nearly $1 million to build. Its website says it also houses the largest Victorian art collection in the world. But the hotel’s legend in baseball circles has as much to do with what players say they’ve experienced inside its walls.
According to an article on MLB.com, multiple players have described paranormal encounters there over the years, including skeleton apparitions, loud footsteps and clothes scattered around their rooms. FOX News reached out to the hotel for comment on the ghostly rumors, but did not receive a response.
Those stories have circulated for more than a decade among players and managers, according to media interviews collected by ESPN and MLB.com. In some of those accounts, the reactions were intense.
One major league player allegedly saw a skeletal apparition, then went to the team chaplain and missed a radio interview. Another said he heard disturbances, then bought a bible for protection, the report said.
Former NL MVP Bryce Harper also reportedly told ESPN the Magazine that during a 2012 stay, he placed his clothes on a table beside his bed, only to wake up and find them on the floor with the table moved across the room against the opposite wall. He said he checked that the door was locked and that teammates hadn’t played a prank before asking for a new room.
The Brewers’ temporary home in Tampa carries its own spooky reputation. The Vinoy, which opened in 1926, has been a fixture in St.
Petersburg history for a century and is known by some locals as "The Pink Lady." It once stood as a luxury hotel, then had a rough stretch in the 1970s, when it became a boarding house before closing in 1978.
That same year, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. After sitting empty through the rest of the 1970s and 1980s, it was renovated in the early 1990s and reopened in 1992, according to its website.
The New York Times reported that ghost stories at The Vinoy go back to Babe Ruth, who they say was known to have lived and socialized there. More recently, Rays team members have reportedly described flickering lights, moving lampshades, displaced items and voices coming from elevators.
And if the series drags all the way to Game 7, the final showdown in Milwaukee will land on Halloween night, Oct. 31.
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