Haunted hotel guide · Woodbury, Connecticut

Haunted 1754 House, Woodbury: Betty in Room 16 and the Old Curtis House Ghosts

Regarded as Connecticut’s oldest inn, the former Curtis House is called the most haunted place in the state by Connecticut’s own tourism office, and its staff told Gordon Ramsay about a spirit named Betty.

By The Haunted Rooms Team · Updated November 2026 · How we rate hotels

3.5/5Haunted Rooms Score

1754Earliest record as an inn

Room 16Betty's room

Visit hotel websiteMeet the ghosts

The 1754 House stands on Main Street in Woodbury, in the Litchfield Hills. For most of its life it was the Curtis House Inn, run as a roadside inn by the Curtiss family by 1754 and widely regarded as the oldest inn in Connecticut. It drew national attention in 2014 when Gordon Ramsay brought Hotel Hell to Woodbury, and in 2020 the Bates-Walsh family reopened it, restored and renamed, as the 1754 House.

Connecticut’s tourism office calls it the most haunted place in the state. The stories are many: Betty in Room 16, a man who stomps into Room 1 and pulls off his boots, plates flying in the dining room, beds rumpled minutes after they were made, and an attic where people say their hair was tugged. The new owners keep the focus on food, music and rooms, so read these as the house’s long-told stories. For the rest of the state, see our guide to haunted hotels in Connecticut.

The ghosts of 1754 House

Betty in Room 16

The name everyone knows is Betty. When Hotel Hell filmed here in 2014, a front desk clerk told Gordon Ramsay that a spirit named Betty was raising havoc with guests in Room 16.

Older stories collected by HauntedHouses.com describe a young female spirit, called Sally there rather than Betty, who likes Room 16 and the second floor. She is said to give male guests special attention, tucking them in and fussing with their covers, while women find their blankets moved or pulled off. Betty and Sally may be two names for the same story.

The booted man in Room 1

Room 1 has a male spirit. In the stories he comes in after guests have settled, stomps about, pulls off his boots, says he has had a rough ride and climbs into bed. Tellers link him to Lucius Foot, said to have owned the inn from 1852 to 1857, who, the legend goes, died in suspicious circumstances after a big poker win and was found frozen in a church work barn without his winnings. Others pin the boots on a Confederate gentleman also said to haunt the inn. We have not found a record that confirms Foot’s death story.

Plates and beds

Employees have described plates flying off restaurant tables and bedspreads looking rumpled, as if slept in, minutes after rooms were cleaned. These accounts come from staff interviews reported in the Connecticut press.

The attic and the upstairs bedrooms

Lorraine Warren, the well-known paranormal investigator, is said to have stayed at the inn many times and to have named the attic and the second floor as the most active areas. The attic has its own stories of investigators’ hair being tugged and of a recorded voice, and other rooms have theirs: footsteps and voices in Room 5, and in Room 23 a presence that seems to stand watch over sleeping guests.

The helpful lady in the dining room

Not every story is unsettling. Staff have spoken of a matronly female presence who seems to supervise dinners in the dining room and once comforted a young employee who felt overwhelmed. Connecticut’s tourism office adds disembodied voices, phantom footsteps and the spirits of past guests and employees, and AAA’s Northeast magazine says the best-known sighting is of Captain Joseph Curtis, an early owner, in the hallways.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The old Room 16: Betty’s room. Rooms were renumbered and restored in 2020, so ask the inn which room it is now.
• Room 1: The room of the booted man, according to the older stories. Ask about it by its old number too.
• Main house rooms: The upper-floor rooms of the 18th-century house are the ones tied to the Warren story. Each has a king or queen bed and a private bathroom.
• Carriage House suites: More modern suites in the adjoining Carriage House, with fewer stories attached.

History of 1754 House

The house was first a home. Historic Hotels of America records that Anthony Stoddard lived here around 1736. About two decades later the Curtiss family bought it and opened it to travelers as the Curtiss House, and the earliest known records show them running the inn in 1754. Some local historians think it opened earlier.

As the Curtis House it stayed on Main Street for well over two centuries, an inn with a dining room and rooms upstairs. Historic Hotels of America notes that it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 2014 the inn appeared on Gordon Ramsay’s Hotel Hell, which put its ghost stories in front of a national audience. Under new ownership the Bates-Walsh family carried out a thorough renovation and relaunched it as the 1754 House in 2020, and it joined Historic Hotels of America in 2021.

Today chef and owner Michael Bates-Walsh runs the 1754 Dining Room and the Flat Five Blues Tavern with live music. The inn’s own site lists ten rooms, and Historic Hotels of America describes seven in the main house and four suites in the Carriage House.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book a main-house room rather than a Carriage House suite if you want the old building.
• Call to book and ask which room was Room 16; it is not sold as a haunted room.
• Have dinner in the 1754 Dining Room and stay for music in the tavern.
• Woodbury is antiques country; Main Street is lined with 18th-century houses worth a walk at dusk.
• Halloween events book up, so plan ahead for late October.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Captain Grant's, 1754, Preston: Connecticut’s best-known haunted inn and a Haunted Rooms venue
• Griswold Inn, Essex: a 1776 tavern inn with a sea captain by the fireplace
• Blackberry River Inn, Norfolk: a 1763 house with a calm lady in white
• The Haunting in Connecticut house: the Southington house behind the film
• Haunted hotels in Connecticut

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.

• Historic Hotels of America: 1754 House history
• 1754 House (official site)
• CTvisit: Haunted hotels
• New Haven Register (via PressReader), Oct 2022
• HauntedHouses.com: Curtis House, Woodbury
• AAA Northeast: Haunted nights and bites

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