Hotel El Salto, Colombia

High on a sheer cliff outside Bogotá, where the Bogotá River drops hundreds of feet into a narrow canyon, stands Hotel El Salto, a building that has become the center of countless ghost stories.

Tequendama Falls had a grim reputation long before the hotel was built. Legend says that, fleeing enslavement and cruelty at the hands of the conquistadors, local Indigenous people leapt from the falls in large numbers. Folklore claims they turned into eagles and flew away to freedom— a comforting tale told to children. The truth is far darker: the waterfall claimed innumerable lives, and its blood-soaked banks gave birth to rumors of a cursed spot.

Time passed and the tragedy faded. During a period of economic boom, a gorgeous French-Gothic mansion rose on the site, and by 1928 it had been converted into an exclusive hotel. Several new roads funneled the Bogotá elite there to dine, dance, and gamble above the mist. Yet even in those carefree days the first incidents began: drunk guests occasionally toppled from the balconies straight into the gorge.

Eventually the boom ended. Rapid industrialization fouled the river until, on some days, the stench was overpowering. Visitors stopped coming, and within a few years the building was completely abandoned. In that era of decline the old myth of leaping for freedom took a monstrous turn, and the hotel earned its unofficial nickname: “The Suicide Palace.”

Adding to the horror, the shape of the canyon and the “Lake of Death” at its base made recovering bodies—and giving them a proper burial—nearly impossible. New stories spread that the souls of the suicides were trapped there forever. Travelers passing the ruins still report strange lights, eerie sounds, and ghostly figures rising from the spray—no two accounts are the same.

From 100 Cursed Places · Fern Flower Press