The Roosevelt Inn

The Roosevelt Inn began as the Roosevelt School, a Queen Anne and Romanesque brick elementary school designed by George Williams and built in 1905 a few blocks from Lake Coeur d’Alene. It first taught grades one to six; fifth and sixth grade moved elsewhere in 1945, and the building kept teaching younger children until 1971, when a newer school opened. A windstorm destroyed the bell tower in 1958, and the tower was not fully rebuilt until 1994. The school was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

After it closed, the Board of Education used the building for storage and as a book depository until 1979, when it was sold, given a third storey and refitted with lower ceilings. It served as offices from 1982 to 1992, and in 1994 it reopened as a bed and breakfast with a bell-tower suite. Tina and John Hough bought it in 1999 and ran it as innkeepers for twenty-five years; John had attended the school as a boy. In 2012 the inn featured in an episode of the television show Hotel Hell. In 2025 the Houghs sold, and a local newspaper reported that the new owners planned to preserve it and let rooms on a short-term basis, so its present use is worth checking before any visit.

The ghost story is modest and domestic. Tina Hough told a Spokane television station in 2020 that the corners of bedspreads were found pulled up and light bulbs unscrewed in lamps, which she first blamed on her children until they denied it, and that a kitchen cabinet door once opened and shut by itself while she baked. Some guests, she said, have sensed or seen a little boy; one reported a child standing at the end of the bed, watching him. The family named him “Dennis” after a ghost in a television show her daughter liked. She added that no one had felt the presence of an adult.

A teacher is also part of the tale. Local historian and author Deborah Cuyle, whose book Ghosts of Coeur d’Alene and the Silver Valley says a boy and a teacher wander the inn’s halls, told the station that a childless teacher at the school died tragically at the close of her career, though not inside the building but in a cabin the school provided across the street. A recent index by the HauntBound website placed the inn seventh among Idaho’s most haunted locations, based on the number of published accounts. As with many converted schools, the claims come mainly from owners and guests, and none has been independently investigated.

Bedspread corners pulled up, light bulbs found unscrewed, a cabinet door that opened and closed, and a small boy sensed or seen at the foot of a guest’s bed. A teacher is also said to wander the halls. The accounts come from the former owner, guests and a local author.

The guest rooms, kitchen and upper halls of the former classrooms, according to the former owners’ accounts.

The inn’s school history, its Hotel Hell appearance and Deborah Cuyle’s book have made it a fixture of north Idaho ghost writing, and it appears in online rankings of Idaho’s most haunted places.