Walk into the lobby of the Tarpon Inn in Port Aransas and the walls stare back. More than 7,000 tarpon scales cover them, each one signed and dated by the angler who landed the fish.

Is the Tarpon Inn haunted? Guests and staff report kids running on an empty porch and doors that open on their own. Some describe a woman at the foot of the bed in Room 40. Nobody has proven any of it.

The building those stories live in dates to 1925, not the Civil War. And the eeriest thing in the place is that wall of scales, a record of a fish that left Port A and never came back.

Is the Tarpon Inn Haunted? What Guests and Staff Report

If you came here from the ghost video going around on Facebook, here's what's actually on the record.

The inn doesn't hide from its reputation. In 2020, a manager told KRIS 6 News that guests report flickering lights, doors opening and shutting by themselves, and voices with nobody around.

The story she heard most was about children. Guests call the front desk at night asking someone to stop the kids running on the porch. She checks the cameras, and the porch is empty.

Postcards Magazine reported in 2019 that Room 40 is considered the most haunted room in the inn. Guests there have described a woman standing at the foot of the bed.

The general manager at the time told the magazine she wouldn't go in that room anymore. She said a heaviness settled on her when she did.

Room 26, the honeymoon suite, carries the darkest legend. As the story goes, a groom stepped out for cigarettes and never returned, and his bride died in the room days later. No record of it has surfaced, so it lives on as a story.

A Corpus Christi paranormal team has investigated the inn more than once. They say their gear picked up a child calling himself "Freddy." The same team says about 90 percent of investigations turn up nothing.

Plenty of people tell these stories. Nobody has proven them.

Was the Tarpon Inn Really a Civil War Barracks?

Most ghost write-ups start with Union soldiers and a Civil War barracks. The inn's own website says it was a barracks converted into a hotel in 1886.

The paper trail tells it a little different. The inn's 1979 National Register of Historic Places nomination says Frank Stephenson bought lumber from a Civil War barracks in 1886. That barracks had housed the work crew building the Mansfield jetty.

Not everyone agrees. Owner Lee Roy Hoskins has told KRIS 6 he believes the original building was the barracks itself. Either way, that first building is long gone.

The inn standing on Cotter Avenue today went up in 1925.

Tarpon Inn History: Fire, Storm, and Rebuild

1886: An Inn You Reached by Boat

When Stephenson opened the inn, the only way to get there was a 16-mile boat ride. He owned it until 1897 while serving as assistant keeper of the Aransas lighthouse.

The fishing guides kept their own flags at the inn, each a different shape and color. When a guest asked for a guide, his flag went up atop the inn. Some days three or four flew at once.

1900 to 1919: The Tower Years

The first inn burned in 1900. Two new buildings went up in 1904, and that's the inn on the old postcards, with a tall lookout tower and a "TARPON INN" sign.

One of those postcards reads "Tarpon Inn, Port Aransas, Formerly Tarpon, Tex." The town had already changed its name, but the tower inn was still standing.

1919: The Storm

The 1919 hurricane came with a 15-foot tidal wave. It wiped out the larger building. The smaller one was patched up and kept working as the hotel until 1926.

1925: The Inn You Sleep in Today

James M. Ellis bought the land in 1923 and rebuilt in 1925. He hired no architect. He built it from memory, as close as he could to the 1904 inn.

He built it to take a storm. A telephone pole runs through the core of every square pillar, anchored to the roof and sunk into 20 feet of concrete. The surviving smaller building became the dining room.

The guest list ran deep. Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson stayed there, and so did aviator Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan. Animal trainer Clyde Beatty shared his room with his pet lion.

Celia, Harvey, and Still Standing

Hurricane Celia damaged the inn in 1970, and the Ellis family sold it. Major repairs followed in 1975, and the inn made the National Register in 1979.

Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017. Insurance adjusters called the inn totaled. It reopened eight months later.

When Port Aransas Was Tarpon, Texas

The settlement took its name from the inn. The National Register nomination says it was called Tarpon until 1912. Other sources, including the inn, put the change closer to 1910.

The fish built the town. Port Aransas called itself the tarpon capital of the world, and its popularity peaked between 1920 and 1940. The scales on the lobby wall carry names from every state and 21 foreign countries.

In 1932, Port A's Barney Farley organized the first Tarpon Rodeo. It still runs today as the Deep Sea Roundup.

In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt fished here from the presidential yacht, anchored at Harbor Island. He probably never stayed a night at the inn. A scale from one of his tarpon hangs framed on the wall anyway.

The Tarpon Scale Wall: The Inn's Real Ghost Story

Go back to the lobby. Every scale on that wall is a fish somebody caught, pulled a scale from, signed, and pinned up. The only rule was that you had to catch the fish yourself.

Now look at the dates. Few of the scales are dated after the 1940s, according to Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine.

The Port Aransas tarpon fishery collapsed in the 1960s. Bonefish & Tarpon Trust says it never recovered, and that landing one here today is worth special mention.

Nobody pins it on one cause. Over harvest likely played a part, since many heyday fish were kept as trophies. Researchers also point to dammed rivers, shrimping, oil and gas work, netting, and lost nursery habitat for young tarpon.

The old catches still earn their keep. Scientists have used historic Gulf catch records, including about 2,700 Texas fish, to study what happened.

As of October 2026, Texas allows one tarpon a day with an 85-inch minimum length. Check the current TPWD tarpon limits before you go. Today the fishery is mostly catch-and-release.

Want to chase them now? Read our guide to tarpon fishing in Corpus Christi.

The ghosts in the lobby are 7,000 fish deep.

Visiting the Tarpon Inn in Port Aransas

The inn sits at 200 E. Cotter Ave. in Port Aransas. The scale wall is in the lobby, and Roosevelt's restaurant is on the property.

Want to test the stories yourself? As of early October 2026, the inn's website lists 31% off stays on October 30 and 31 with the code HAUNTED31. Ask the front desk about Room 40.

The porch kids might be real. The tarpon definitely were.

Wear the one Port A lost: the Lost Tarpon tee. Or go loud with the Tarpon Thunder Tee.