King's Tavern, Natchez: The Oldest Building in Town and the Ghost of Madeline

King’s Tavern stands on Jefferson Street a few blocks from the bluff, a two-and-a-half-story building of rough timber and brick that looks older than everything around it. For much of two centuries it was an inn, a mail stop, a family home and a restaurant, and it is a contributing building in the Natchez On-Top-of-the-Hill Historic District, on the National Register since 1971.

It is also the setting for one of Mississippi’s best-known ghost stories. Staff and diners over the years told of a baby crying in empty rooms, faces in old mirrors and a ghost named Madeline. This guide sets out what is known about the building, where the legend comes from and what you can and cannot see today.

History of King's Tavern

The building was put together from whatever a frontier river town had: beams salvaged from sailing ships, boards from the flatboats that floated goods down the Mississippi and were broken up at Natchez, and sun-dried brick. Tradition says it began as a blockhouse for the British at Fort Panmure in the 1760s, and the historical marker out front gives 1769. Local historians believe it more likely dates to the late 1790s and have said the marker is wrong.

In 1789 Richard King, a New Yorker, bought the property and opened a tavern and inn. It became the town’s mail drop and a stop for travelers, and it stood at the southern end of the Natchez Trace, the overland route that boatmen walked home to Kentucky and Tennessee after selling their cargo and their boats. The Trace was dangerous, and outlaws such as the Harpe brothers became notorious for robbing and killing travelers on it.

Steamboats ended the walk home, and with it much of the tavern trade. King sold the building around 1817, and from 1823 it was one family’s home for about 150 years. In the 1970s it was bought and restored (the National Trust credits the Natchez Pilgrimage Garden Club), and it later reopened as a restaurant and bar.

The restaurant closed in February 2012. In 2013 chef Regina Charboneau and her family bought it, added a wood-fired oven and reopened it as a tavern serving flatbreads and craft drinks, with a daily tour for visitors curious about the ghosts. By 2022 it was closed again and for sale. A commercial listing describes a three-level building of about 3,744 square feet, plus a masonry building on the lot thought to have been a grocery around 1900.

The ghosts of King's Tavern

The bodies in the wall

The story everything else hangs on is a discovery in the 1930s. During work on the building, the skeletal remains of three people, two men and a woman, were reportedly found sealed in the wall behind a fireplace, along with a jeweled dagger. Some retellings say mummified bodies were found in the cellar. Accounts differ on the details, and we have not found a contemporary newspaper report or record naming who they were.

Madeline

The woman in the wall is said to be Madeline, a young serving girl and the mistress of Richard King, murdered by his wife when she discovered the affair. The National Trust for Historic Preservation retold the story in 2017 with a careful “the story goes”. No one knows who Madeline was or whether she existed; the name and the romance came later, attached to the remains.

Over the years, staff and customers said they felt Madeline around them. The reported signs are the classic ones: lights and objects moving, people feeling pushed or having their hair pulled, and a warm bed in an empty room upstairs as if someone had just been sleeping in it.

The crying baby and the mirrors

The most repeated reports are of a baby crying upstairs when there was no baby in the building, and of faces or shadowy figures in the old mirrors. One diner wrote online that a bottle cap flew about three feet across the table; when they joked about it at the register, a staff member told them the tavern really was haunted.

An outlaw's shadow

Some Natchez ghost lore adds a darker figure, a shadowy man some tellers link to the Trace outlaw Wiley Harpe. It is the weakest part of the legend, with nothing to tie Harpe to the building, but it shows how the tavern’s place at the end of the Trace has fed its stories.

Where to look

• The upstairs rooms: where staff reported a crying baby and a warm, unoccupied bed.
• The old fireplace wall: where the three skeletons and the dagger are said to have been found.
• The mirrors: where diners reported faces and reflections that should not have been there.
• The Jefferson Street front: the timber and brick front you can still see from the sidewalk.

Visiting King's Tavern today

King’s Tavern is closed and for sale, so you cannot go inside. You can see the building from Jefferson Street, close to the downtown historic district, and it is easy to include on a walk past the town’s old houses.

For ghost stories you can actually experience in Natchez, book Longwood’s lantern-lit Echoes of Longwood tour in the fall, The Towers’ evening paranormal tour in spring or fall, or the Angels on the Bluff tours of the Natchez City Cemetery in November. To spend the night somewhere with its own ghost, try Monmouth, Dunleith or Linden.

• Visiting Closed and for sale; exterior only from the street
• Ghost hunting Closed building: no visits or ghost hunts

Tips for your visit

• View it from the sidewalk only; the building is private property and closed.
• Read the historical marker out front, but remember local historians think its 1769 date is too early.
• Combine it with a walk to the bluff and down to the Under-the-Hill Saloon, the last of the old river landing’s bars.
• Visit the Natchez City Cemetery and the Turning Angel the same afternoon.
• Watch for news of a sale: a new owner could reopen it.

More haunted places nearby

• Natchez City Cemetery and the Turning Angel: the town’s most visited haunted place
• Haunted places in Natchez: Longwood, The Towers, Magnolia Hall and more
• Monmouth Historic Inn: stay with General Quitman’s ghost
• Haunted hotels in Mississippi: more places to stay
• Haunted places in Mississippi
• Haunted places in Natchez

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• Wikipedia (Kiwix mirror): King's Tavern
• National Trust for Historic Preservation: King's Tavern in Natchez (2017)
• Natchez Democrat: Natchez couple to return tavern to restaurant royalty (2013)
• Century 21 Commercial: 613 Jefferson Street, Natchez
• StyleBlueprint: Haunted Mississippi
• OnlyInYourState: Natchez ghost stories
• OnlyInYourState: Haunted places in Mississippi