Leland Tower Hotel

Built in 1928 on Stolp Island, the 22-story Leland Tower was once the tallest building in Illinois outside Chicago and operated for decades as a hotel — known at various points as the Aurora-Leland Hotel, the Illinois Hotel, and the Leland Hotel — home to the SkyClub nightclub, where celebrities like Gene Autry once mingled with the state's elite. The hotel stopped operating in the 1960s. Several guests are said to have taken their own lives by jumping from the tower into the Fox River below, and the building's haunted reputation is tied to those deaths: visitors report foul odors and moaning sounds coming from the elevator banks, along with unexplained cold spots.