The Haunted Three Chimneys Inn: Hannah Hill's Ghost in Durham

Three Chimneys Inn stands on a rise above the Oyster River in Durham, a short walk from the University of New Hampshire. Its oldest part was built in 1649 by Valentine Hill, who held the rights to the river’s falls for his sawmill, and the inn describes the tavern building as the oldest house in Durham. It has survived a 17th-century raid, a typhoid epidemic, a Colonial Revival makeover and decades of neglect, and since a restoration finished in 1997 it has been a 23-room inn with the ffrost Sawyer Tavern.

The ghost most often named here is Hannah Hill, Valentine’s daughter. The records say she married at 20 and then say nothing more; local tradition says she drowned in the river below the house. Staff have told the university newspaper about muddy bare footprints, opened drawers and a wine glass that floated off a table in the tavern. This guide covers the stories, what the records actually show and how to plan a stay.

The ghosts of Three Chimneys Inn

Hannah Hill

Valentine Hill was one of the leading men of the Oyster River settlement, with a sawmill, a gristmill and hundreds of acres around the falls. His daughter Hannah grew up in the house. According to New Hampshire Magazine, the records show she married at the age of 20, and after that the documents fall silent. Tradition fills the gap: she is said to have drowned in the Oyster River, just below the house.

That silence in the records is worth keeping in mind. Nothing confirms how or where Hannah died, and the drowning is a story rather than a documented event. It is still the story that staff and guests reach for when something happens in the old house, and it is the one most often told about the inn. Older guides, including our own earlier entry, said she drowned in a creek; the river is the version local sources give.

What the staff report

In 2016 The New Hampshire, the University of New Hampshire’s student newspaper, collected stories from people who work at the inn. Staff described creaking floorboards early one morning that led them to the dining room, where muddy bare footprints, apparently a woman’s, ran across the floor and under the rugs. An employee in the parlor heard footsteps, then found every drawer and cabinet in the room pulled open about an inch. Another woke in the dark to feel someone playing with her hair.

In the tavern, a visiting insurance group is said to have watched a wine glass float off a table and shatter. Staff also listed deadbolts that lock themselves, calculators showing numbers backwards and a printer that kept printing for 20 minutes after it was switched off and unplugged. Hannah, the paper noted, is said to dislike modern electronics. The inn’s own history page goes no further than inviting guests to “walk about in history with the spirits” of its former owners.

Footsteps in the halls

The quieter reports are the most common: footsteps echoing through empty hallways, objects found moved, and a young woman glimpsed in the older rooms and then gone. None of it is dramatic, which makes it more believable to many visitors, and all of it is credited to Hannah.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The original house: Valentine Hill’s homestead, now the tavern building, and the center of most sightings.
• The ffrost Sawyer Tavern: Where a wine glass is said to have floated off a table and shattered.
• The dining room: Where staff found muddy bare footprints running under the rugs.
• The parlor: Where every drawer and cabinet was found opened an inch after footsteps were heard.

History of Three Chimneys Inn

In 1649 Valentine Hill received the rights to the falls of the Oyster River for a sawmill and built a single-story homestead on the rise above them. The inn says the house was brought up the river by gundalow, a local flat-bottomed boat. The 1649 date comes from the inn and local tradition; no architectural study confirming it has been published. Two years later the town granted him 500 acres for a farm beside his mills, which grew to include a gristmill and water rights. The inn’s history notes that he employed “seven Scots” at the mills.

An attack on the Oyster River settlement in 1694 destroyed many nearby homes. Hill’s house survived. His son and heir Nathaniel added a two-story section with heavy shutters for protection; the inn dates it to 1699, while other accounts say around 1680. Local lore says the house later hid munitions taken from the British in Portsmouth during the Revolution, a story the inn repeats but that has not been confirmed.

The property passed to the Woodman family, descendants of the Hills by marriage, and then to George ffrost, who hired the joiner Jacob Odel to remodel the house with Federal trim and a lower roof. A barn with a brick cistern followed in 1795. A typhoid epidemic in 1830 led to the wells being covered over, and Durham’s shipbuilding era faded as the railroad arrived in the 1840s.

In the early 1900s the ffrost sisters tended the gardens, and James and Margaret ffrost Sawyer turned the place into a Colonial Revival summer estate, adding tennis courts and a swimming pool, now a reflecting pond, in 1912. The ffrost family held the house until the 1980s, by which time it had fallen into disrepair. Sagamore Hill, Inc. bought it in 1987 and finished a restoration in 1997. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of Durham’s historic district.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book a drink or dinner in the ffrost Sawyer Tavern, the oldest part of the house, and ask the staff whether they have their own stories.
• Ask for a room in or close to the original house when you book; the inn cannot promise ghosts, but it can tell you which rooms are oldest.
• UNH graduation, parents’ weekends and home football games fill the inn quickly, so check the university calendar first.
• Walk down to the Oyster River falls, the reason the house was built here, at dusk.
• Portsmouth is about 20 minutes away: pair this stay with a night at the Hotel Portsmouth and its Suite 204, both covered in our guide to haunted hotels in New Hampshire.

More haunted hotels nearby

• All haunted hotels in New Hampshire: Six places to stay, from Portsmouth to the White Mountains
• Captain Fairfield Inn, Kennebunkport, Maine: A sea captain’s mansion on the Maine coast
• Colonial Inn, Concord, Massachusetts: Room 24 and its 1966 honeymoon ghost story
• Hawthorne Hotel, Salem, Massachusetts: Room 612 and the crying child in Room 325
• Haunted hotels in New Hampshire

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.

• Three Chimneys Inn: History
• Three Chimneys Inn: official site
• Wikipedia: Hill-Woodman-Ffrost House
• The New Hampshire: A spooky stay at the Three Chimneys Inn (2016)
• New Hampshire Magazine: The most haunted places in New Hampshire
• New Hampshire Magazine: Where to find ghosts, ghouls and scares in the Granite State

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