Haunted hotel guide · Stockbridge, Massachusetts

The Haunted Red Lion Inn, Stockbridge: Room 301 and the Fourth Floor

On Stockbridge’s Main Street, the Red Lion Inn has taken travelers since stagecoach days, and guests say a gentleman in a top hat still tugs at the bedsheets in Room 301.

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

4.2/5Haunted Rooms Score

1773Tavern founded, by tradition

Room 301Most requested room

Check availabilityMeet the ghosts

The Red Lion Inn is the big white inn with the long front porch in the middle of Stockbridge, the small Berkshires town Norman Rockwell made famous. By tradition it began in 1773 as a tavern on the stagecoach road between Boston and Albany. It burned in 1896, was rebuilt the next year, and has taken guests ever since, filled with the antique furniture, china and teapots collected by a 19th-century owner. It is one of the few inns in America that has operated continuously since before 1800.

Its ghost stories are newer than its history. They grew out of guest accounts from the mid-2000s about Room 301, where people describe sheets pulled from the foot of the bed and a man in a top hat, and out of years of housekeeping talk about the fourth floor. Vogue put the inn on its 2025 list of America’s most haunted hotels. The inn itself is careful: it says it has no official confirmation of hauntings, while its general manager describes the reports as friendly. For more haunted stays across the state, see our guide to haunted hotels in Massachusetts.

The ghosts of The Red Lion Inn

The gentleman in the top hat

Room 301 is the room people ask about. In 2013 the Berkshires news site iBerkshires collected three guest reviews from the mid-2000s that started the stories. In August 2004 a guest felt something touch his head and tug at the bedsheet. About a year later another guest described toes being pulled, footsteps and the comforter being fluffed by nobody.

The best-known account came a month or so after that. A guest was woken again and again by someone pulling the covers from the foot of the bed. When he finally turned over, he said, he saw a man in a top hat and old-fashioned clothes who faded away in a white mist. Guests have described the same figure on the fourth floor since.

The fourth floor and the girl with flowers

A former housekeeper told iBerkshires that cleaning staff had said for at least a decade that the whole fourth floor is haunted. The figure most often mentioned there is a young girl carrying flowers. Nobody has put a name or a date to her, and there is no record of a death that would explain her, so she belongs firmly in the category of inn lore.

Today the fourth floor also holds the inn’s small spa, so you may walk past the haunted hallway on the way to a massage.

Plates, pictures and a game of hide-and-seek

In 2023 general manager Simon Dewar talked to Spectrum News about what guests had reported in Room 301: sheets being pulled, the feeling of someone there, plates and a picture that moved and a door that creaked. He was careful to add that in 99 percent of the rooms you are likely to hear and experience nothing, and that old heating systems and autumn winds make plenty of noise on their own.

He also described a paranormal enthusiast staying that fall who said she had connected with a boy of about seven and his nanny, playing hide-and-seek in the inn. In Dewar’s words, everything that has happened has been on the friendly side.

The medium who asked to move

Staff tell a story about a guest who asked to change rooms because he kept meeting too many spirited guests. He turned out, they say, to be the television medium James Van Praagh. It is a staff anecdote rather than anything he has published, so treat it as one of the inn’s tales.

What the inn says

The Red Lion Inn’s own FAQ takes a middle line. It says there is no official confirmation of hauntings, and that some guests and staff have reported unexplained sounds, flickering lights and a sense of company in certain areas. Several paranormal groups have investigated over the years, and iBerkshires noted they came away with mixed opinions.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 301: The third-floor Main Inn room behind most of the stories: sheets tugged, toes pulled and the man in the top hat. Call to request it.
• The fourth floor: Housekeeping lore says the whole floor is haunted, and it is where the girl with flowers is said to appear. Ask for a fourth-floor Main Inn room if 301 is taken.
• The birdcage elevator and front hall: The 1897 elevator, still run by front desk staff, and the lobby full of Mrs. Plumb’s antiques are the oldest things you can see in the rebuilt inn.
• The front porch: The long porch with its rocking chairs looks onto Main Street, the view in Rockwell’s 1967 Christmas painting. Best after dark, when the street is quiet.

History of The Red Lion Inn

By the inn’s own account, Silas Pepoon opened a small tavern under the sign of the red lion in 1773, as a stop for stagecoaches on the road between Albany and Boston. Historic Hotels of America notes that one hotel historian, Stanley Turkel, credits Anna and Silas Bingham instead. In July 1774 citizens from several towns met at the tavern to protest Britain’s punishing acts against Massachusetts and pledged to boycott British goods, which is why the inn is often linked to the start of the Revolution.

After a series of owners, Charles H. Plumb and his wife bought the inn in the 1860s or 1870s (sources give 1862 and 1873). Mrs. Plumb collected colonial furniture, china and teapots, and much of that collection is still in the inn. By 1884 it was known as the Stockbridge House, enlarged to hold 100 guests and run as a summer hotel from May to October, with more additions in 1892 and 1894.

On August 31, 1896, fire destroyed the building. Townspeople carried out the teapots and other treasures, and the rebuilt hotel opened in May 1897; the birdcage elevator dates from that year. Descendants of the Plumbs, including their nephew, Congressman Allen T. Treadway, owned the inn for more than ninety years. Guests in that era included Presidents Cleveland, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Coolidge and Franklin Roosevelt, and writers Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Thornton Wilder.

By 1968 the inn was in danger of being torn down for a gas station. Jack and Jane Fitzpatrick, founders of the Country Curtains company, bought it, restored it and opened it year-round from 1969. Norman Rockwell, who lived and worked in Stockbridge, included the inn in his 1967 painting Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas. The Red Lion Inn became a charter member of Historic Hotels of America in 1989, and the Fitzpatrick family, now including Sarah Eustis and Timothy Eustis, still runs it.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book by phone if you want Room 301 or a fourth-floor room; online booking may not let you choose a room number.
• Stay in the Main Inn for the stories. The Village Houses, Maple Glen and the Firehouse are charming but outside the ghost lore.
• Fall foliage weekends sell out early. November and winter are quieter, darker and better for a ghost-story stay.
• Walk to the Norman Rockwell Museum, just outside town, and see the Main Street painting, then compare it with the view from the porch.
• Bring the dog if you like: pet rooms are limited, so call ahead, and expect a $75 per pet per night fee.
• Parking is free behind the inn. From mid-November to mid-March Stockbridge bans street parking overnight, so use the lot.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Blackberry River Inn, Norfolk, CT: under an hour south; the Lady in White
• Longfellow's Wayside Inn, Sudbury: another Historic Hotels inn, with Jerusha Howe’s rooms
• Concord's Colonial Inn: Room 24 and the ghosts of 1775
• 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.

• The Red Lion Inn: History
• The Red Lion Inn: FAQs
• iBerkshires: Haunted Travel, Where to Sleep With Ghosts in the Berkshires (2013)
• Spectrum News 1: Massachusetts haunted hotel ahead of Halloween (2023)
• WNYT: Berkshire County hotel named as one of America's most haunted (2025)
• Western Mass News: Stockbridge inn still welcomes guests today (2025)
• Historic Hotels of America: The Red Lion Inn history
• Wikipedia: Red Lion Inn (Stockbridge, Massachusetts)

Booking links on this page are affiliate links. If you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.