Longfellow's Wayside Inn, Sudbury: Jerusha Howe and the Haunted Rooms 9 and 10

Longfellow’s Wayside Inn began as a two-room Howe family home beside the Old Boston Post Road, and in 1716 David Howe was licensed to run it as Howe’s Tavern. It is one of the oldest inns in the country still taking overnight guests, and the inn calls itself America’s oldest inn. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow set his Tales of a Wayside Inn here in 1863, Henry Ford bought and restored it in 1923, and today it is a preserved historic site with a restaurant, a working grist mill and just ten guest rooms.

Two of those rooms carry the inn’s ghost story. Rooms 9 and 10 belonged to Jerusha Howe, the innkeeper’s sister, a musician who never married and died in 1842. Guests describe a citrus perfume, a touch in the night and a woman at the foot of the bed, and for decades they have left notes about it hidden in the cracks and drawers of Room 9. The inn itself does not advertise any of this, so treat it as guest lore rather than house policy. For other haunted stays across the state, see our guide to haunted hotels in Massachusetts.

The ghosts of Longfellow's Wayside Inn

Jerusha Howe, the belle of Sudbury

Jerusha Howe was the sister of Lyman Howe, the last of the Howe family to keep the inn. She was known as the belle of Sudbury and owned the town’s first piano. The story goes that she was engaged to an Englishman who sailed home to prepare for the wedding and never came back. Some say he drowned, some that he abandoned her, and Yankee Magazine points out that he may never have existed at all.

She never married and died in 1842 at the age of 45, of a broken heart according to the legend. Legend says she can still be heard playing late at night.

Rooms 9 and 10

Room 9 was Jerusha’s bedroom, and Room 10 is the other room linked to her. Both date from the late 18th century, with low ceilings, exposed posts and beams and wide painted floorboards.

Guests in both rooms describe the smell of citrus perfume, a presence brushing past on the stairs and a figure standing at the foot of the bed, as Yankee Magazine reported. Readers’ comments under that article add a bed that shook, feet being touched in the night and a husband whose leg was grabbed during a night in Room 9.

The men who sleep alone

The older versions of the story, including the one told on this site for years, say Jerusha pays most attention to men staying in her rooms alone: warm breath on the face, a woman’s eyes looking back when they wake, a beautiful woman lying down beside them. It fits the legend of the lost fiance, which is probably why it is told so often. We have not found a named, first-hand account behind it, so take it as part of the story rather than a report.

The secret drawer notes

The inn’s most charming tradition is the Secret Drawer Society. For decades, guests in Room 9 have written notes about their stay, ghostly or otherwise, and tucked them into cracks in the woodwork and into drawers for the next guest to find. Some go back many years, and guests say they spend hours reading them. Many say nothing happened at all, which is worth remembering.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 9: Jerusha Howe’s own bedroom, from the late 18th century, and the room where guests leave notes in the secret drawers. The most requested room in the inn.
• Room 10: The other late 18th-century room linked to Jerusha, with the same low ceilings and painted floors.
• Other guest rooms: Eight more rooms overlooking the wooded grounds, with king, queen or full beds, many of them four-poster canopy beds, and a private bath in each.

History of Longfellow's Wayside Inn

The Howe family’s house beside the Boston Post Road started out as a two-room home, and the inn’s archive holds the license granted to David Howe in 1716 to run it as a tavern. His son Ezekiel followed him, and the family kept the inn for five generations, enlarging it as traffic between Boston and Worcester grew.

The last Howe innkeeper, Lyman Howe, died unmarried and without children in 1861, and the inn stopped taking guests for the next 36 years. By the time Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited in 1862 with his publisher James T. Fields, it was known as the Red Horse Tavern, and he described it as a rambling, tumble-down building, two hundred years old. He made it the setting for Tales of a Wayside Inn, published in 1863, a collection of stories told by guests around the fire, including Paul Revere’s Ride as The Landlord’s Tale. The poem’s fame turned the old tavern into a place of literary pilgrimage, and in 1897 Edward R. Lemon bought it and reopened it as an inn.

Henry Ford, an admirer of Longfellow, bought the inn from Cora Lemon in 1923, added about 300 acres around it in 1924, and set out to make it a living history museum. He moved the Redstone School from Sterling, believing it was the schoolhouse in Mary Had a Little Lamb, built a working grist mill and the Martha-Mary Chapel, named for his mother and mother-in-law, and built a stone dam that never held water, nicknamed Ford’s Folly. He set up the nonprofit that still runs the inn.

Fire gutted the inn on the night of December 22 and 23, 1955. A $500,000 grant from the Ford Foundation paid for a restoration that reused many original beams and furnishings, and the inn reopened on June 7, 1958. The Wayside Inn Historic District, with nine historic buildings, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 23, 1973, and the trustees took the name The Wayside Inn Foundation in 2019.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Call the front desk (978-443-1776, extension 1) rather than relying on the online inquiry form if you want Room 9 or 10 specifically; cancellations need 72 hours’ notice.
• Breakfast in the Old Tap Room is included, but through November 2026 the kitchens are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, and Sunday and Monday night rates are $20 lower to reflect that.
• Leave time to walk to the grist mill, the Martha-Mary Chapel and the Redstone School; they are a short walk across the grounds.
• Read the notes in the Room 9 drawers before bed, and leave one of your own.
• Concord, Lexington and the Colonial Inn are about 25 minutes away, so you can combine two historic haunted stays in one trip.
• Pets are not allowed; the inn can refer you to nearby boarders.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Concord's Colonial Inn: Room 24 and the Revolution, about 25 minutes north
• Omni Parker House, Boston: Harvey Parker and Room 303, about 45 minutes east
• Hawthorne Hotel, Salem: Rooms 612 and 325 in the witch city
• Haunted hotels in Massachusetts

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.

• Longfellow's Wayside Inn: Stay
• Longfellow's Wayside Inn (official site)
• Yankee Magazine: The Wayside Inn ghost, real or imagined?
• Wikipedia: The Wayside Inn (Sudbury)
• Wikipedia: Wayside Inn Historic District

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