Next time you check into your hotel, ask at the desk if there’s a room that has a notorious past. Who knows? If you book it, you may find yourself sharing your room with the ghosts of Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy or General MacArthur.

Marilyn was in Suite 1200 at the Hollywood Roosevelt for two years at the beginning of her movie career. A full-length mirror originally in her suite is now in the hotel lobby. Some employees report they often see the fleeting images of Marilyn preening herself in the mirror.

Montgomery Clift lived in Room 928 while acting in the movie, “From Here to Eternity”. Visitors and employees say his ghost walks the nearby hallway on some midnights reading aloud from his script, and at other times sounding Taps on the bugle his movie character played.

The luxurious Towers at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel include the 28th through 42nd floors. The 35th-floor Presidential Suite has four bedrooms, and in one are the personal desk of General Douglas MacArthur and John F. Kennedy's rocking chair. Employees report as they approach the suite, they can often hear the sounds of a pen scratching on the desk and the squeak of the rocking chair.

The Boston Omni Parker Hotel won’t rent out Room 303. Long ago, a man mysteriously died in the room. After that, employees frequently heard loud arguments and smelled whisky from the empty room, so it was made a supply closet.

During the Prohibition in the 1920s, Al Capone ran a speakeasy out of his 13th floor Everglades Suite in the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida. Brave guests who’ve stayed in the suite have reported being awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of gun shots and moaning. Rumors are that Al had Thomas "Fats" Walsh blasted there in 1929.

Finally, these aren’t quite haunting, except in old and recent memory. We stayed at the Mayflower (now Renaissance Mayflower) in January 1942 during our high school visit to Washington just after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Our most vivid memory was that while visiting the government buildings, many were guarded by soldiers posted on rooftops while wearing World War One helmets and armed with pre-WWI rifles.

More recently, Room 871 of the Renaissance Mayflower was occupied by a Mr. George Fox in 2008. He hired expensive hooker Ashley Dupre at the rate of $1,000 an hour for the evening. George Fox actually was soon-to-resign-in-shame New York governor Eliot Spitzer.