The Haunted Story Inn, Nashville, Indiana: The Blue Lady and Her Room

The Story Inn is not so much a hotel as a village. Story, Indiana, sits in the hills of Brown County, about 30 minutes south of Nashville, and the inn fills its old general store, its houses and cottages. The main building is the 1915 general store, its weathered pressed-tin front and long porch barely changed, with a restaurant downstairs and guest rooms above. There are no televisions, radios or clocks in the rooms, and that is the point.

It is also one of the most haunted places to stay in Indiana. The Blue Lady has been reported by staff and guests since at least the 1970s, mostly on the second floor of the old store, and one of the rooms there is named for her. Guests have kept a record of their experiences for years in diaries left in the rooms. This guide covers the story, the village’s history and how to book her room.

The ghosts of the Story Inn

The Blue Lady

The Blue Lady is the Story Inn’s resident ghost, and she has been reported by employees and guests since the 1970s. She is said to haunt the second floor of the old general store, where there are now four guest rooms. Descriptions vary: some guests describe a woman in pale robes, others a woman with striking blue eyes, and some only the scent of cherry pipe tobacco drifting through a room where nobody is smoking.

Many people believe she was the wife of Dr. George P. Story, the founder whose name the village carries, though nobody can say for certain who she is. What everyone agrees on is that she seems gentle. Guests report seeing her at the foot of the bed or by the window, and some say small blue objects turn up in the room after she has been seen.

The blue lamp

The most famous Story Inn tradition belongs to the Blue Lady Room, which used to be called the Garden Room before it was renamed for its most frequent visitor. A lamp with a blue bulb sits in the room, and the legend says that if you leave it switched on, the Blue Lady will come. Plenty of guests have tried. Some report nothing at all, others say she appeared on her own without the lamp being lit.

The ghost diaries

The inn has long kept a diary in each room for guests to write in. When the current owners took over, the story goes, they found that the diaries were full of ghost stories, with the room above the restaurant collecting the most. When a diary fills up it is stored away and a fresh one put out, so the record of encounters has built up over many years. Reading the diary in your room before bed is part of the experience.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The Blue Lady Room: The former Garden Room upstairs in the old general store, named for its ghost, with the famous blue lamp. Book it by name.
• The other rooms above the store: The second floor holds four guest rooms, all close to where the Blue Lady is reported. The room above the restaurant is said to have the fullest ghost diaries.
• The village houses and cottages: Rooms in the Story-Griffitt House (about 1858) and the Wheeler-Hedrick House have their own long histories, if not the same ghost reputation.

History of The Story Inn

Story sits on the old Ten O’Clock Treaty Line, a boundary from the 1809 treaty that opened the area to settlers, marked today by a monument on the village green. In 1851 Dr. George P. Story, who had come from Ohio, received a 173-acre land patent signed by President Millard Fillmore, and locals began calling the area Storyville. The original patent is displayed at the inn. The village took formal shape in 1882, when Dr. Arnold S. Griffitt opened a dry goods store that also housed the first post office.

The village grew around the store, with a church, homes and mills, and the Story-Griffitt House, built about 1858, and the Queen Anne-style Wheeler-Hedrick House survive today. The Wheeler-Hedrick General Store burned in 1915 and was rebuilt as the two-story building that is now the heart of the inn. It operated as a store into the 1970s. The Wheeler family owned it from 1900 and the Hedricks from 1924.

In 1978 Benjamin and Cynthia Schultz bought the property and turned it into a bed and breakfast with a restaurant, and the ghost stories began to spread. They sold in 1992, and the village went through bankruptcy and receivership before it was sold at a sheriff’s sale on February 14, 1999, to an entity owned by Rick Hofstetter and Frank Mueller, who worked to preserve its buildings.

The village of Story was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2019. Today the inn offers rooms in the old store and in cottages and houses around the village, a restaurant, the Story Still tavern and a busy wedding trade, all in a setting that looks much as it did a century ago.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book the Blue Lady Room directly with the inn, as early as you can. It is the room everyone asks for.
• Read the room diary before you go to sleep and add your own entry in the morning.
• Bring a book or a deck of cards: there are no TVs, radios or clocks in the rooms.
• The restaurant keeps seasonal hours and is closed some weekdays, so check the inn’s website before you plan dinner.
• Brown County is busiest in October, when the fall color peaks, so book well ahead for autumn weekends.

More haunted hotels nearby

• French Lick Springs Hotel: Historic spa resort with Thomas Taggart’s ghost, about 90 minutes south
• Seelbach Hilton, Louisville: Kentucky’s famous haunted grand hotel
• Old Talbott Tavern, Bardstown: A historic Kentucky inn with a long ghost reputation
• Haunted hotels in Indiana

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• Story Inn (official site)
• Wikipedia: Story, Indiana

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