There are some spooky places in the mid-Atlantic region. In fact, you can find a haunted hotel where you can be guaranteed a spirited stay in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
In New Hope PA, the sophisticated Logan Inn was the most unexpected — and therefore, scary! Revolutionary soldiers give this haunted hotel its haunts. Farnsworth House in Gettysburg is a bed and breakfast inn. We’d stayed there HOPING to experience a haunting. Its ghosts did not disappoint! North of Pittsburgh is the once popular Lake Conneaut resort area. The Conneaut Hotel dates back to the early 1900s, as do its many ghosts.
In Maryland, the very haunted boutique hotel in Baltimore, the Admiral Fell Inn, offers refuge to travelers and ghosts alike. Travel on over to Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the Delmarva Peninsula, where a ghostly child may pull your hair and invite you to play games at the gently haunted Whitehaven Inn.
Do you dare to stay in a haunted hotel?
New Hope’s Logan Inn
Logan Inn, in the heart of New Hope, in Bucks County, PA, is one of the most haunted — and oldest — inns in America. Its 19 spacious rooms offer a nice combination of charm and comfort. The basement, dining area and bar are the oldest parts of the inn, with newer additions and areas added onto these areas. Around the American Revolution, the inn probably only had a second floor for guests to spend the night. Sometime later on, a third story was added.
John Wells built the original inn and tavern, cleverly called Ferry Tavern, in 1727. He also ran a ferry across the river to and from New Jersey. During the Revolutionary War, the Ferry Tavern gave aid and comfort to George Washington and his troops, despite the real consequences they risked by angering our British colonial overlords. The inn provided George Washington and his troops a place to camp, eat, drink, and keep their wounded in the inn, and store the dead in the basement, until winter had passed.
We had two interesting experiences while staying at Logan Inn, in room 14. The first was the photograph of an orb, which I saw move across my phone camera screen — I was grabbing some photos of the room for MidAtlantic DayTrips before our stuff would make the room look too lived in!
The second experience occurred on our second night at the inn. In the wee dark hours after midnight but well before dawn, I awoke, and heard a weak, possibly whispered or hoarse, cry, “help, help, help.” Three “helps,” well spaced apart. After a few wide-eyed moments, I pulled the covers up, and tried to forget it.
During the Revolutionary War, the town stored dead soldiers in the inn’s basement, until the frozen ground thawed enough to bury them properly. Supposedly, the dead included one soldier who wasn’t quite dead. In the dark basement, surrounded by his dead comrades, he awoke, weakly calling out for help, until he succumbed to his injuries.
During your stay at this haunted hotel, be sure to check out the many sights in and around Bucks County — there’s everything from great shopping (Peddlers Village is right around the corner from there) to historic homes to biking and hiking along the Delaware Canal towpath.
Getting there: 10 West Ferry Street, Logan, PA
Website: Logan Inn
Gettysburg’s Haunted Hotel: Farnsworth Inn
Farnsworth Inn is a famously haunted inn. In addition to breakfast, it offers a dark history of murder and mayhem! Located in the historic, downtown district of Gettysburg — also famously known for the Civil War battle as well as a multitude of hauntings throughout the region — this bed and breakfast inn will delight you during your exploration of the region!
Multiple deaths occurred in the house over 200 years. John F. McFarlane is the first recorded owner of the home. The wooden structure in the back of the brick house dates to 1810. McFarlane later added the brick portion in 1833; he owned the home until his death in 1851.
During the battle, Confederate sharpshooters fired from the safety of its windows in the garret, killing Union soldiers; supposedly one of the sharpshooters accidentally shot Jennie Wade, who became famous for being, tragically, the only Gettysburg civilian who died during the battle. Afterward, wounded United States soldiers were brought into the house, which like many other structures in Gettysburg, served as a hospital, and of course, many of those soldiers died there.
The inn’s 16 known ghosts range from an 8-year-old boy, Jeremy, to a former mid-wife nurse and several soldiers. Guests and staff report hearing heavy breathing, being tucked into bed by unseen hands and more. Countless other guests have heard phantom footsteps on the stairs or above in the attic and other unexplained noises. They also felt unseen hands tapping their shoulder. Or have awakened to see a ghost sitting on their bed.
Getting there: 401 Baltimore Street, Gettysburg, PA
Website: Farnsworth House Inn
A Haunted Resort: Hotel Conneaut
Once a resort for the middle-class seeking fun at Lake Conneaut or the adjacent amusement park, the Hotel Conneaut offers basic amenities as well as a haunting experience.
First opened in 1902, much of the hotel remains in its vintage state – and lacks some modern conveniences. There is no elevator, but there ARE ghosts! When the hotel opened, Pittsburghers flocked to the lake. With Lake Conneaut on one side and an amusement park on the other, vacationers found plenty to do, in a lovely setting.
The hotel has seen a lot of happiness and tragedy over the years. As a result of both its age and its history, local residents, guests and its staff have experienced paranormal activity. The Ghost Bride Elizabeth died in a fire while trying to save her fiancé. A little boy died tragically while trying to ride his tricycle down a stairwell. An angry butcher in the basement kitchen stabbed someone to death right in that very kitchen. (Let’s just hope he then didn’t try to serve up his crime for someone’s dinner!) All now haunt this very haunted hotel.
Hotel guests often report hearing phantom voices, seeing partial apparitions and doors opening and closing. Like its ghosts, Hotel Conneaut is starting to blur its edges, a quaint reminder of a heyday that included colorful characters who now serve as the basis for its ghost stories.
Getting there: 12241 Lake St., Conneaut Lake, PA
Websites: Hotel Conneaut
Baltimore’s Admiral Fell Inn
Whether you want to stay at a quaint boutique inn in a quaint neighborhood in Baltimore, or you’re interested in experiencing the paranormal, a stay at the Admiral Fell Inn is for you! Even if you don’t like haunted places, consider staying — these ghosts are pretty polite.
The Admiral Fell Inn is a 80-room hotel created out of seven historic buildings, several of which date back to the 1800s. With an excellent location next to Fells Point Harbor, many of the rooms overlook the square and cobblestone streets. Looking out, it’s easy to imagine you’re in almost any old city in Europe.
Why is this historic inn so haunted?
It is the scene of a sensational murder that occurred in room 413 in 1999. Gary Mick, a homophobe and, apparently, also a murderer — a terrible combination — stalked Christopher Jones, an out-of-town guest attending a pharmaceutical convention in Baltimore, and bashed his head in with a hammer claw.
Before that, at least one of the buildings served as a boarding house, “The Anchorage,” for sailors, from the 1790s to just a few decades ago. Originally run by the Christian Port Mission, sailors just arrived from distant ports could find a clean room and safe harbor for a few nights.
Eventually, The Anchorage became the Young Men’s Christian Association in the late 1920s. As a YMCA, it still offered a clean room and a place to stay, into the 1970s. Over the almost 200 years it operated, The Anchorage and then the YMCA sheltered tens of thousands of men.
Only, some of them never left. With them, they brought their diseases acquired overseas, their hardships and heartaches, and life pain. The Sun (now the Baltimore Sun) reported that one young sailor shot himself on the premises. Others suffered from various causes and passed away, in this last safe anchorage.
Hotel guests have reported tales of floating sailors going up and down the (now removed) fire escape stairs and roaming the halls, invisible entities knocking at doors, and a ghost dog playing in the halls.
Maybe you’ll see the old lady who invites herself into your room. Then she sits on your bed staring at you until you wake up. When you do, she shushes you, and tells you to go back to sleep! (As if that would be possible!) Or perhaps a rowdy party going on in the room next to yours will awaken you. Don’t bother calling the front desk to complain, because the party room is completely empty. Still, the sounds of merry laughter, glasses clinking, and gunshots continue echoing through the halls.
Getting there: 888 S Broadway, Baltimore, MD
Website: Admiral Fell Inn
The Haunted Whitehaven Hotel
The Whitehaven Hotel, sitting serenely on the banks of the Wicomico River, offers weary travelers a place to de-stress in rural Wicomico County. Its stately exterior hides over a century of secrets: the building started out as a modest residence in 1810 adjacent to the Whitehaven Ferry, one of the oldest publicly run ferries in the U.S.
By the 1880s, steamboat travelers disembarking at the Whitehaven wharf demanded lodging. Thus, the modest two-and-a-half story residence became a hotel.
We weren’t in this lovely Victorian bed and breakfast inn 5 minutes before we learned it might be haunted. The innkeeper recounted numerous experiences, including hearing a child laugh, hand-prints on a bed she’d just made, and other ghostly high-jinks that seemed to indicate a young prankster of a ghost. Apparently, a young girl drowned in the waters nearby. The inn is almost completely surrounded by water, as a marshy creek flows behind the inn’s back parking lots.
I had my pendulum in my camera bag, from a previous ghost hunting experience, so we held a mini-ghost hunt in our room. Through a question and answer session, the pendulum indicated we were chatting with a 13-year-old girl, who was not alone. There also was another female spirit who was unfriendly to the 13-year-old spirit but liked the visitors to the inn.
The young spirit — or possibly the older female one — indicated she was waiting. She waited not for her parents or siblings, but for a young man, who had NOT gone away because of a war but possibly died in a boating or fishing boat accident.
Guests have reported feeling someone play with her hair during the night.
Getting there: 2685 Whitehaven Rd, Quantico, MD
Website: Whitehaven Hotel
Can’t get enough ghosts? Check out these spooky places MidAtlantic DayTrips has visited!