The Kendall (Ye Kendall Inn), Boerne: An 1859 Hill Country Inn With a Quiet Ghost Story

The Kendall is one of the few 19th-century resort inns left in Texas. Built in 1859 as the Reed House, it was known for most of the 20th century as Ye Kendall Inn, and it still faces the main plaza in Boerne, the old German town in the Hill Country about 30 miles northwest of San Antonio. A renovation in 2018 and 2019 gave it 34 rooms and a modern Hill Country look inside the old stone walls.

The inn does not advertise any ghosts, and its haunted reputation is a local one. Guests, staff and Boerne residents describe flickering lights, cold drafts and footsteps in the hallways, and a former bartender says he saw the fireplace light itself. Some tellings name the original owners, Erastus and Sarah Reed, as the presence that lingers. Treat this as a quiet historic stay with a ghost story attached, and one of the gentler entries in our guide to haunted hotels in and around San Antonio.

The ghosts of The Kendall

Footsteps and figures in the halls

Most stories about The Kendall come from its hallways. In its 2026 roundup of eight haunted places in Boerne, The Boerne Life reported that guests and staff have described flickering lights, cold drafts and mysterious footsteps, and that some people say they have seen ghostly figures in the hallways.

None of this has been investigated in the press, and the inn itself is silent on the subject. The stories have circulated locally long enough that the inn appears in regional haunted travel guides, including a book on haunted restaurants, taverns and inns in Texas.

The fireplace that lit itself

The most specific account comes from a former bartender, who told The Boerne Life he watched the fireplace light itself. A local also described feeling a cold hand placed on their shoulder, then turning around to find nobody there.

Both are single, second-hand accounts. They are typical of the gentle, domestic stories old inns collect, rather than anything dramatic.

Are the Reeds still here?

Erastus and Sarah Reed bought the land for $200 in April 1859 after running hotels in Georgia, and the user-submitted listing on HauntedPlaces.org says that, according to local lore, their spirits still reside here. Nobody has offered evidence for that idea, and the inn has had many owners since, so take it as a fond local guess rather than a known haunting. The hotel has kept their names on two of its rooms, the Erastus Reed and Sarah Reed Grand Suites.

Older versions of this story sometimes name a later owner as well. Records show the inn was bought in 1869 by Colonel Henry C. King, after whom it was briefly called the King Place.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The hallways of the original building: Where footsteps, cold drafts and figures are reported. Ask for a room in the 1859 stone building.
• The Erastus Reed and Sarah Reed Grand Suites: Named for the couple who built the inn and whom local lore says never left. The obvious choice for a ghost-minded stay.
• The fireplace: The setting for the bartender’s story. A good place to sit with a drink in the evening.
• The front porch facing the plaza: The classic view of the inn, which was a stagecoach stop in the late 1800s.
• The Heavenly Suite: A former Lutheran chapel, St. John’s of Jourdontown, moved to the grounds in the 1990s. Historic, but not part of the ghost stories.

History of The Kendall

Erastus and Sarah Reed, who had run hotels in Georgia before moving to Texas, bought the land on the Boerne plaza for $200 on April 23, 1859, and built the two-story limestone center section. The Reed House offered just four rooms to travelers heading into the Hill Country, and under a lessee, Henry W. Chipman, it began taking stagecoach passengers.

In 1869 Colonel Henry C. King bought it, and it became the King Place. In 1878 Rountree and Wadsworth bought it back, added two wings and renamed it the Boerne Hotel. James T. Clarke owned it from about 1884 and ran it as a true stagecoach inn. In 1909 Dr. J. H. Barnitz of San Antonio bought the hotel, installed electric wiring and shared bathrooms and gave it the name that stuck for most of a century: Ye Kendall Inn, after Kendall County.

Robert L. and Maude Hickman owned it from 1922 to 1943 and added private baths, Mrs. W. F. Grinnan bought the inn in 1960, and Ed and Vicki Schleyer restored it after buying it in 1982. The name honors the journalist George Wilkins Kendall, for whom the county is named. The inn has long claimed Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Dwight D. Eisenhower among its guests, though those visits are hard to document.

The building is a two-story vernacular Greek Revival structure on about two acres. It is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 29, 1976. After a renovation in late 2018 and early 2019 it reopened as The Kendall, with 34 rooms, suites and log-cabin cottages; Texas Highways reports that B&G Partners bought and renovated it in 2020. Locals also talk of sealed tunnels under the property that they link to Prohibition.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for a room in the original 1859 building rather than a later wing if you want the most atmosphere.
• Spend an evening by the fireplace, the setting for the inn’s best-known story.
• Walk Boerne’s Main Street and the plaza after dinner; the town has its own ghost stories and plenty of 19th-century buildings.
• Boerne is about 30 miles from downtown San Antonio, so it works well as a base for a weekend that takes in the Menger and the Alamo.
• Leave the dog at home: the inn does not allow pets, though service animals are welcome.

More haunted hotels nearby

• The Menger Hotel, San Antonio: Texas’s most famous haunted hotel, built the same year
• The Faust Hotel, New Braunfels: a 1929 hotel with a gentleman in the elevator
• The Haunted Magnolia Hotel, Seguin: a frontier inn that embraces its ghosts
• Haunted places in Texas: more of the state’s ghost stories
• Haunted hotels in Texas
• Haunted hotels in San Antonio

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.

• The Kendall Inn (official site)
• Wikipedia: Kendall Inn
• TXGenWeb Kendall County: Ye Kendall Inn history
• Texas Highways: Stay in a former Lutheran chapel at The Kendall
• The Boerne Life: 8 haunted places in Boerne (2026)
• HauntedPlaces.org: Haunted places in Kendall County (user-submitted)
• Hotels.com: The Kendall, Boerne

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