The Haunted Hotel Portsmouth: Suite 204 at the Former Sise Inn

The Hotel Portsmouth is a boutique hotel in a Victorian mansion on Court Street, a few minutes’ walk from Market Square, the waterfront and Strawbery Banke. John and Lucy Sise built it as their family home in 1881, and for nearly 30 years it was the Sise Inn, a name many New Englanders still use. It reopened as the Hotel Portsmouth after a renovation in 2014 and was refreshed again in 2024 as part of the Lark Hotels group.

It is often called the most haunted hotel in New Hampshire, and the stories are unusually specific. Most of them center on Suite 204, where guests and staff describe ice from the nearby machine laid out in trails and heaps, and a door that locks and unlocks on its own. Older accounts add an elevator with a mind of its own, a rocking chair that rocks by itself and a cheeky male presence. This guide sets out the stories, the real history of the house and how to request the room.

The ghosts of the Hotel Portsmouth

The ice outside Suite 204

The story most people know about this hotel involves ice. According to New Hampshire Magazine, the spirits around Suite 204 play with ice from the nearby ice machine. Only In Your State says they make piles of ice in the hall or even throw it at guests, and one account tells of a desk clerk finding ice strewn along the hall and stacks of cubes melting on the floors of guest rooms.

It is an odd, almost comic detail, which is part of why it has stuck. Staff have no tidy explanation for it, and over the years it has become the hotel’s calling card among ghost hunters.

The door that locks itself

The second classic report from 204 is the door. New Hampshire Magazine lists the locking and unlocking of Room 204 alongside the ice as the main activity at the hotel. One story often retold describes a couple who came back late at night to find their key would not open the suite, and who were finally let in by a locksmith at 4 a.m.

The cheeky man

Not every story is gentle. Accounts of the Sise Inn describe a male presence that grabs at women from behind, and Only In Your State says reports of him increased after the 2014 renovation. Guests have also said they felt someone climb into bed beside them. Nobody has put a name to him, and there is no record of who he might have been. With a house that has been a family home, offices, a beauty salon and a halfway house, there are plenty of candidates in the stories people tell.

The elevator and the rocking chair

Other reports collected over the years include an elevator that goes up and down and opens its doors with nobody inside, a rocking chair near the front desk that rocks on its own, and chairs and objects moved or thrown in empty rooms. These come from older accounts rather than recent press, and furnishings have changed through two renovations, so treat them as part of the building’s ghost lore rather than things you are guaranteed to see.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Suite 204: The center of almost every story: ice trails, a self-locking door and the cheeky presence. New Hampshire Magazine places it on the third floor.
• The ice machine near 204: The source of the ice that turns up in neat trails and heaps.
• The elevator: Said to move between floors with nobody calling it.
• Lucy and John's: The guest-only bar in the basement, named for the couple who built the house; a good place to trade stories.

History of The Hotel Portsmouth

Portsmouth has been a working port on the Piscataqua River since the 1600s, and its downtown was rebuilt in brick after a run of fires, including the great fire of 1813 that destroyed 244 buildings. Court Street runs through the old heart of the city, a short walk from Market Square and the restored houses of Strawbery Banke.

The house at 40 Court Street began with Lucy March’s family, who owned an earlier house on the lot. In 1881 Lucy and her husband, John E. Sise, a successful Portsmouth businessman, bought the property, tore down the old house and built a new mansion as their home. Lark Hotels says it went up in the Stick Style and is now preserved as a classic example of Queen Anne Victorian architecture, with its decorated gable and entry porch.

The house passed to the Sises’ daughter Mabel and her husband, Alfred Gooding, an antiquarian and minister of Portsmouth’s South Church, who roughly doubled its size. Over the 20th century the building was put to many uses; according to local ghost writers it held business and doctor’s offices in the 1930s, then a beauty salon, and by the 1950s a halfway house. In 1985 it was expanded again and opened as the Sise Inn, and reports of hauntings go back at least to the mid-1980s.

After a historically sensitive renovation the inn reopened in April 2014 as the Hotel Portsmouth, and in 2024 Lark Hotels refreshed it again with reused antiques and new art. The guest rooms are now sold by type, from historic kings to a penthouse suite, rather than by number, which is why it helps to call if you want the room the ghost stories are about.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Call the hotel directly and ask for the room that was Suite 204; online bookings choose a room type, not a room number.
• Leave the ice bucket where you can see it, and take a photo of the hallway floor before bed.
• Dogs are allowed only in the Garden One Bedroom Suite, for a nightly fee per dog, so plan ahead if you travel with one.
• Check-in is at 4 pm; everything in downtown Portsmouth, including Market Square, is within walking distance.
• Combine your stay with a night at the Captain Fairfield Inn in Kennebunkport, Maine, about 40 minutes up the coast.

More haunted hotels nearby

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

• Lark Hotels: About The Hotel Portsmouth
• Lark Hotels: The Hotel Portsmouth
• New Hampshire Magazine: Where to find ghosts, ghouls and scares in the Granite State
• Only In Your State: The Hotel Portsmouth is one of New Hampshire's most haunted
• Granite Post News: Rooms with a boo, New Hampshire's 9 most haunted hotels
• Seeks Ghosts: Sise Inn

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