THE RICHMOND VICTORIAN INN

Like Nancy Sinatra's, my boots are made for walking. I'm constantly on the go because even in the off-season, there's plenty of paranormal stuff to do, like heading off for a ghost investigation at some haunted college, business or B&B with my friends Matt Borden and Gloria DeSousa from Vermont Spirits Detective Agency. Matt and Gloria are "Private Eyes for Those Who've Died."

My husband and I own a haunted tour business called Queen City Ghostwalk. Toward the end of our busy 2013 season, I got a call from Matt asking if I'd like to join him and Gloria, along with a family they've done some other investigations with, for a visit to the Richmond Victorian Inn in Richmond, Vermont.

Richmond is a quaint little town, a former railroad stop south of Burlington that boasts one of the area's most iconic images, a popular prop for any visitor's New England photo op: the much-loved Old Round Church.

I'd been by the Richmond Victorian Inn and marveled at its old-fashioned charm. If it could speak, it would say, "Welcome! Do come in and have some tea and scones."

There's a reason for that. The innkeepers of the sweet Queen Anne Victorian, Frank and Joyce Stewart, make some of the best cream scones this side of the Atlantic. And there's a reason for that, as well. Frank Stewart, the culinary wizard who rules the stove at the Richmond Victorian Inn, is from Glasgow, Scotland. The Scottish make fantastic scones. It's an undisputed fact.

Talking with Matt about the visit, I took a look at my calendar. The proposed investigation was in November, when I'd be due for a much-deserved break. My husband, Roger, was also invited. What a terrific little breather it would be for us, ghost tours put to bed until the following March, when we would start up again with our Black Shamrock Haunted Pub Tours.

I did some research on the inn. It was first built for A.B. Maynard, a prominent lawyer, and his wife, Julia. Later, it was known as the George Edwards Homestead, after a Vermont state senator. In 1945, the home was purchased by Luke and Mary Harrington, whose family, famous for their company's smoked meats since 1873, moved in and built a smokehouse right across the street. (Harrington's is still located across from the inn today.) In 1968, the widowed Mary Harrington sold the home to Stuart and Jeneva Burroughs, and after a few more go-rounds as a private residence, the inn passed into the hands of Vicki Williamson, the location's first B&B owner.

The date of our stay at the inn coincided with an unplanned surgery for our aging Rottweiler, Zeus. Roger, possibly the most wonderful spouse on the planet, insisted I go, while he stayed home to keep Zeus company post-op.

When I got to the inn, dinner was in full swing, with Matt; Gloria; the Stewarts' daughter, Hilary; and the family I'll call the Tanagers gathered around the table in the dining room.

Frank and Joyce were in and out, bringing all manner of foods, pizzas, breads, crackers, pâtés and pickles. There was an assortment of beverages, including some nice wines.

Right here, let me tell you that alcohol is not the norm on your average ghost investigation. As a matter of fact, on most, it's a no-no. There's nothing worse than trying to contact the spirits over the noise of someone hollering, "Y'all, I'm sooo drunk!" like some frisky southern belle. It has happened to me on at least one investigation. (And no, I was not the one doing the hollering.)

But anyway, this was social imbibing in its most polite form. After all, there were teenage children present.

Joyce and Frank soon sat down to relax, and we all got acquainted. It was then I learned why the inn is run with such meticulous ease. Frank has been a chef in some of the finest kitchens (he's even got a photo of himself and former president Nixon having a fireside chat), and Joyce, who served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, was once a member of the Royal Air Force Gliding and Soaring Association. When fate brought them together years ago, it was a match made in B&B heaven. We exchanged personal information and then got down to haunts at the inn. I was fascinated by one story Joyce told me of a local antique merchant who came to show her some china for the inn. The woman was intuitive and sensed the presence of a woman, possibly a former owner of the inn. She also picked up on the fact that Joyce and Frank's Cairn terriers, Lucy and Nessie, who had passed some time before, were paying frequent visits to the inn, which accounted for the behavior of one of the Stewart's current dogs, Winston, who seems to sense the presence of an entity they and their other dog, Harry, do not.

Finally, stuffed to the gills, we made our way to the parlor to turn out the lights and begin our period of communication with the spirits. The downstairs vibe was companionable, but, slowly, we sensed any ghostly interest begin to flag. Finally, with only one of Matt and Gloria's Gauss-meters (a ghost gizmo that measures magnetic fields) doing much of anything, we decided to move upstairs to the location we'd all been talking about earlier in the evening. We wanted to set up shop in the Pansy Room, a restful nook with a rocking chair that likes to rock without benefit of human locomotion.

Most of the Tanagers and Stewarts had decided to hit the hay, and Gloria had turned in as well; haunted locations are the only places where she doesn't suffer from insomnia, so she was looking forward to a full night's sleep. There were just a few of us now, and those who remained were looking for a place to sit in the cozy room. (It might come as no surprise that nobody wanted to sit in the rocker, both in the interest of science and because it would have felt like walking over to sit on the lap of someone's invisible great-grandma.)

I recall I stepped around the bed but felt suddenly uncertain about sitting down. It was a combination of thinking I shouldn't grab what was clearly the comfiest seat in the room and feeling like an interloper in someone else's space. It was a feeling I'd never had on an investigation.

We settled in and spent some time beckoning to whatever or whoever might be available to "talk." As I remember it, someone made a noise and acknowledged it — it's a good idea during a quiet investigation to admit when a low-register sound is your work, rather than a message from the spirit world. "That's me — my stomach just growled" or "That's me — I just accidentally hit the window casement." Someone else commented about how the weather had turned so cold, and that reminded me of a Proctor, Vermont haunt I'd visited with Vermont Spirits called Wilson Castle, probably the coldest night I've spent in my life. I began to say that and got as far as the words, "Coldest ghost investigation ..." when I was interrupted by us needing to make a change in where the recorders were placed or some such thing. We went back to listening.

We kept at this for a while, but we were all tired, so we decided to call it a night and split off into our individual rooms.

The next morning dawned overcast, but my mood was sunny. We were well rested and enjoying the scrumptious breakfast Frank had prepared. The Tanagers, Matt and Gloria were going to be staying another night, and I was invited back but was booked for the evening, since there was a performance at our son's school.

It was a little while until I thought about the investigation at the inn again. Then one day, Matt called and said he wanted to drop by our house. He'd had a chance to go through the digital evidence we'd accumulated and had found two interesting pieces of evidence — both, strangely, related to me.

He came over that evening, and we sat in the living room so he could play for me two separate files he had isolated from the recordings gathered during the evening at the inn. Both electronic voice phenomena, or EVPs, were from the Pansy Room. I leaned over to listen as Matt hit the spacebar on his laptop. I smiled self-consciously as I heard myself making chitchat while looking for a place to sit. As I listened to my voice wondering about it (this would be upon approaching the bed), a strange, rasping female voice inserted itself and said in a stage whisper, "Share my bed."

I jumped back from the coffee table the computer sat on. "Jesus!" I blasphemed. Matt grinned his impish grin. "What do you think it said?" he asked.

"I don't think. I'm pretty sure," I told him. "She said, 'Share my bed.'"

"Yeah," he nodded. "That's what Gloria and I think." He played it again a few times, turning up the volume. "SHARE MY BED. SHARE MY BED ..." At this point, Roger and our niece came into the room from wherever they were. "That is the creepiest thing I've ever heard," my niece said. But Matt was about to one-up it. He played the next clip. In it, I could be heard talking about Wilson Castle and how uncomfortable and cold I had been. The computer played me saying, "Coldest ghost investigation —" but this time, though my voice stopped, the sentence was finished by a snotty male voice that jumped in, inserting a sarcastic, "Everrrrr." I don't think I have ever been afraid to sleep in a haunted location, but if I had known how this spirit, whoever it was, felt about my ghost-hunting chatter, I might have been a lot more sleepless that night in the Corner Room just next door.

When You Visit

The Richmond Victorian Inn is located at 191 East Main Street in Richmond, Vermont. It offers five guest rooms, each with a private bath. Expect Frank to serve up Harrington's bacon and sausage for breakfast with locally grown fruits and vegetables whenever possible. See if you can talk him into making his orange blueberry pancakes or blueberry cream cheese casserole, both guest favorites. To reserve, call (802) 434-4410.

YE OLDE ENGLAND INNE

In 1983, Chris and Lynn Francis were following the British team in the America's Cup when they decided to tour New England. Finding themselves in the charming mountain village of Stowe, Vermont, their plan was to stay for two days. How could they guess they would have such a great time they would decide to make it their permanent residence? The transplants from the United Kingdom purchased a property at 433 Mountain Road called San Souci. They turned it into Ye Olde England Inne, a place VTLiving.com called "a genuine English Country Inn experience nestled in the pristine setting of Stowe, Vermont."

Ye Olde England Inne was billed as a destination where you could find "Romance for All Seasons," a comfy hideaway filled with fireplaces, Jacuzzis and luxurious four-poster beds. People raved about the authentic atmosphere, the service and the friendliness of the inn's hosts. With the advent of the Internet, Ye Olde England Inne began to amass what would eventually amount to hundreds of online reviews, largely positive, on Yelp and Tripadvisor. Reading them, I was thoroughly entertained by the compliments listed. They fairly bubbled over, with folks describing in detail the many reasons why they visited the place again and again. They loved the clean, quaint rooms and waxed poetic over the savory fare and superb hospitality they found at the attached Mr. Pickwick's Gastropub, a restaurant known for its fantastic variety of beers and its carnivore-captivating game dinners. But buried inside years of comments extolling the virtues of the place, there was one in all caps that caught my attention: "HAUNTED. NOT A JOKE. SERIOUSLY."

The visitor, who left her review on Tripadvisor back in October 2006, had a less than stellar time at the inn, thanks to the supernatural happenings she experienced.

Went for a hike with our dog and came back and took a jacuzzi, played some scrabble [sic] and went to bed. Until ... whispers and banging noise coming from the upper part of the chalet. I literaly [sic] thought someone had broken in ... I thought maybe it was because we were right up against the other "chalet" and maybe they were partying. So went back to bed and then my dog started crying and crying really bad, so I walked her, tried to feed her, etc ... I heard the voices all night, and so did she. My husband said he felt like the air was heavy ... he felt drugged or sluggish ... we decided it was too much for us to stay there and be miserable.

Though they had booked for a handful of days, the couple decided things were weirder at Ye Olde England Inne than they could handle. The reviewer goes on to say while packing up to go, she felt she was being watched. She continued nervously, when suddenly the television in the room turned itself on full blast.

Checking out later at the inn's front desk, the couple revealed what had happened to them and sheepishly asked for a refund for the remainder of their reservation. The amused clerk told them the place was a well-known haunt and cheerfully refunded their unused nights.

Owner Chris Francis acknowledged in an October 2013 article about haunted restaurants in Vermont's independent weekly paper, Seven Days, that the staff had experienced plenty of ghostly activity, citing in particular the time a bartender had run from the cellar scared out of his wits by goings-on down there.

Here's a more recent review of the inn from a guest who stayed in October 2013:

We had a motion sensor light, this in the bathroom. The light would come up when we entered, and after we'd leave it'd go out on its own. But then it would come on again when we weren't in the bathroom, sometimes in the middle of the night. And it went off while I was taking a shower, disconcerting too since the light was IN the shower. Either this part of the Inn was built over an old burial ground or else we were on some "Punked" hidden camera show.

Any future reviews of the location citing its creepiness, cleanliness or culinary appeal will have to be logged under the name of a different establishment. Just as this book was being prepared for publication, both the British-themed inn and its restaurant closed their doors. A Stowe Reporter article indicated the property had fallen into foreclosure. A public auction is planned.

It's sad to say goodbye to ghosts, no matter how problematic they might be. We'll have to wait and hope that Ye Olde England Inne falls into good, spook-worthy hands.

THE OLD STAGECOACH INN

Years ago, after moving from a haunted house whose spirits (two ghosts, an old man and a young boy) were quite active, I bought a new home that, when I first got there, barely showed any paranormal activity at all. Reading this, you might be thinking, "Why does it matter? Isn't it hard enough to live in a house with humans coming and going?" and I see your point. But some people think a house just isn't complete unless there's a ghost roaming around.

Generation after generation of characters of varying temperaments and all their successes, celebrations, dramas and traumas can leave an imprint on a building that really rounds out the feel of the place. They add to a home's personality. And if you happen to get a character like the one that resides at the Old Stagecoach Inn in Waterbury, Vermont, your home will have a personality that just won't quit.

The Old Stagecoach Inn was built in 1826, and there's since been some confusion about its origins. Previously thought to have been built by Waterbury's first lawyer, Daniel Carpenter, Esq., and his brother, who had been active in construction of the town's Congregational Church, the story of the inn's real beginnings were unearthed from inside a wall during the its restoration. Papers found in the old structure indicated the first builder was actually a Mr. Allen, with Horace and Henry Atkins as carpenters and joiners. The original owner is listed as a Mr. Parmalee. The inn and tavern served as a rest stop for travelers but was also the site of one of the first local meetinghouses. At the height of the anti-Masonic movement, the King David Lodge, Waterbury's local Masonic order, met at the tavern and stagecoach stop, in a hall in the ell at the rear of the building.

Owners and employees of the inn and tavern, travelers cut from different cloth and Masons (a colorful and secretive lot) all left an imprint on the location, I have no doubt.

But the personality of the inn was kicked up a notch with the arrival of a woman named Margaret Annette Henry, whose farming family owned the inn by the mid-1800s. Margaret Henry, or "Nettie," as she was known to the citizenry of Waterbury, was born in 1848. A petite woman with sharp features, she had a strong profile, with a prominent nose and high cheekbones that were accentuated by the mass of hair she wore pulled up in a bun on top of her head. Nettie smoked at a time when women didn't and even took a dip of snuff when she liked. In later years, people grew accustomed to seeing her face with the unmistakable wad between her cheek and gum and stains at the corners of her mouth.

When Nettie married, she chose a man named Albert H. Spencer, of Connecticut. Spencer had made a fortune in rubber in Ohio and had ended up in Vermont because of some real estate investments in the Burlington area.