St. Francis Inn

Built in 1791 during St. Augustine's Spanish colonial period, St. Francis Inn is one of the city's oldest lodgings and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its best-known ghost story involves a young enslaved woman remembered as Lily, whose secret relationship with the nephew of the inn's mid-19th-century owner, Major William Hardee, was discovered and forbidden; the young man is said to have taken his own life afterward, by hanging, in what's now called Lily's Room. Staff and guests describe humming and soft crying from the kitchen and servant areas, ingredients that seem to move on their own, bedcovers tugged off in the night, flickering lights, and a woman in white seen wandering the halls.