The Haunted Grand Victorian, Bellaire: Henry Richardi and the Bride Who Never Came

The Grand Victorian Bed and Breakfast Inn stands on North Bridge Street in Bellaire, a small town in northern Michigan close to Torch Lake. It is a Queen Anne house crowned by a cupola, built in 1895 by a local businessman named Henry Richardi. Today it has four guest rooms in the main house and two suites in a carriage house behind it, and new innkeepers, Jake and Leann Chamberlain.

Its ghost story is a quiet, sad one. Richardi is said to have built the house for a young German woman who wanted to see it finished before she would marry him. She married someone else, his business burned, and he never spent a night in it. The story goes that Richardi’s spirit came home after his death, and that it shows itself as strange lights in the cupola. Here is the history, the legend and what to know before you stay. See all our haunted hotels in Michigan.

The ghosts of The Grand Victorian Bed and Breakfast Inn

Henry Richardi

The inn’s ghost is the man who built it. As 99.1 WFMK tells the story, some believe that after Richardi died, his spirit returned to the house he had never been able to call home. He is said to keep unseen company with guests and to look after the place, a caretaker rather than a menace.

Nobody describes a full apparition, slammed doors or anything frightening. This is a gentle haunting, and it suits the house.

Lights in the cupola

The best-known part of the legend is the light. In WFMK’s telling, Richardi’s return shows itself as strange, unexplained lights in the cupola, the square tower with a curved, pointed roof that crowns the house. It is the detail most people mention, and the tower is still the first thing you notice from Bridge Street.

The woman who said no

The young German woman at the heart of the story is never named. WFMK half-jokingly wonders whether she might have joined Richardi in the afterlife, but there are no reports of a second ghost. The romance itself is part of local lore, so treat the details as the story Bellaire tells rather than documented fact.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Main house rooms (Blossom, Queen Anne, Balcony, Victoriana): The four rooms in the 1895 house, each with a private bath, fireplace and queen bed. This is where to stay if you want to sleep under the cupola.
• The Richardi Room: Named for the builder, but it is a king suite with a two-person Jacuzzi in the carriage house built in 2005, not the old house.
• The cupola: Not a guest space, but the focus of the legend. Look up at it from the street after dark.

History of The Grand Victorian Bed and Breakfast Inn

Henry Richardi was born in 1863 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to Robert and Louisa Richardi. The family moved to Louisiana, Missouri, and then in 1881 to the Bellaire area, where Robert and Frederick Bechtold founded the wooden utensil maker Richardi and Bechtold, later known as the Woodenware Company, one of the town’s main employers.

Henry took over the business in 1895 and built the house on North Bridge Street the same year. It was built by his own employees to show off their craftsmanship, in the Queen Anne style, and WFMK says he had it wired for electricity, which was almost unheard of in a small northern Michigan town at the time. According to the story, it was meant to persuade the woman he hoped to marry to settle in Bellaire.

It did not work out. She married another man, and a series of fires at the woodenware plant ended in 1905 with one that destroyed the company for good. It was never rebuilt. Richardi went on to set up an electric plant, never lived in the house, and moved to California in 1925.

The house passed through several owners and long empty spells. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 18, 1978, opened as the Richardi House Bed and Breakfast in 1989 and was renamed the Grand Victorian Bed and Breakfast in 1991. A carriage house with two king suites was added behind it in 2005, and Jake and Leann Chamberlain are the current innkeepers.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Walk out to Bridge Street after dark and look up at the cupola, the heart of the legend.
• Book a main-house room if you want to sleep in the 1895 building; the Richardi Room is in the newer carriage house.
• Breakfast is a plated gourmet meal in the dining room at 8:30 a.m., a good time to ask the innkeepers about the house’s history.
• Pets are not allowed, and children under 12 stay only by prior arrangement.
• Summer and fall color weekends fill fast; Torch Lake sunset cruises and Short’s Brewing are both close by.
• Combine the trip with the Terrace Inn in Petoskey, about an hour north.

More haunted hotels nearby

• The Terrace Inn, Petoskey: Room 211 and a 1911 summer inn, about an hour north
• Traverse City State Hospital: a vast former asylum about 45 minutes away
• Mackinac Island: Michigan’s most haunted island
• Haunted hotels in Michigan

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.

• 99.1 WFMK: Jilted lover haunts this bed and breakfast (2018)
• Wikipedia: Henry Richardi House
• The Grand Victorian: About the inn
• The Grand Victorian: Rooms
• The Grand Victorian: Policies

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