Haunted hotel guide · Asheville, North Carolina

The Haunted Reynolds Mansion, Asheville: Annie Lee on the Stairs and the Maggie Room

A red-brick antebellum house on a knoll of Reynolds Mountain, the Reynolds Mansion has been a family home, a boarding house, a sanatorium and a bed and breakfast. Guests have long said two members of the family never left.

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

3.2/5Haunted Rooms Score

1855Land bought and house begun

MaggieRoom called the most haunted

Check availabilityMeet the ghosts

The Reynolds Mansion sits on four wooded acres at the foot of Reynolds Mountain, a few minutes north of downtown Asheville near the town line with Woodfin. Daniel Reynolds built it before the Civil War, and it is one of fewer than ten pre-Civil War brick homes still standing in western North Carolina. It stayed in the Reynolds family for more than a century, served as the Asheville Osteopathic Sanatorium in the early 1920s and has been an inn for decades. Today it has eight rooms in the main house and three suites in a carriage house.

It is also one of the best-known haunted bed and breakfasts in the Asheville area. A former owner told the local paper Mountain Xpress that guests often report the same two spirits: Annie Lee Reynolds, seen on the main staircase, and a Reynolds daughter who died of typhoid at the age of six. The current innkeepers do not promote the ghosts, but they have kept the room long linked to Annie Lee, Maggie, on the third floor, and you can book it by name. This guide covers the stories, the rooms to ask for and the family history behind them.

The ghosts of The Reynolds Mansion

Annie Lee Reynolds on the staircase

The mansion’s best-known ghost is Annie Lee Reynolds, a member of the family who never married and who, depending on who tells the story, suffered from depression or tuberculosis. Billy Sanders, who bought the house with his partner in 2009 and restored it as a bed and breakfast, told Mountain Xpress in 2016 that guests usually see her on the main staircase.

Sanders said he never mentioned the ghost to guests in advance, but that many reported similar experiences anyway. “That’s just part of living here,” he said; “you learn to deal with it.” The local guide Asheville Terrors repeats the story and adds that Annie Lee is said to have died of complications of tuberculosis, which we could not confirm in any record.

The Reynolds child

The second spirit is a little girl, said to be a Reynolds daughter who died of typhoid fever when she was six. Guests describe her not as a figure but as orbs of light and the sound of a child’s voice or laughter in empty rooms.

Daniel and Susan Reynolds raised ten children in the house, and childhood deaths from typhoid were common in the 1800s, so the story is plausible, but no one has published the child’s name or a date. One reader who identified herself as a descendant of the family wrote in response to the Mountain Xpress article that Annie Lee lived to adulthood and raised her own grandmother, which fits the stories that keep Annie Lee and the child as two separate ghosts.

The Maggie room

“Guestroom Maggie was Annie Lee’s room; it’s probably the most haunted,” Sanders told Mountain Xpress. He said he would try to move guests who chose Maggie, but that most would tell him it was exactly the room they wanted. The Asheville Bed and Breakfast Association’s ghost guide also points visitors to Maggie’s Room, and describes doors that open and close with no one around and lights that flicker on and off.

The inn has changed hands since then and its rooms have been redecorated, but Maggie is still on the third floor under the same name, now a queen room with a shower and a writing desk. You do not have to ask for it as a favor; you can pick it when you book.

The photo on the stairs

Sanders also said guests had sent him dozens of photographs of orbs and apparitions taken inside the house. One, said to date from the early 1970s, was described as showing Adeline Reynolds climbing the staircase toward the upper floors. He joked that he hoped to make a coffee table book of them one day.

Orbs in photographs are usually dust or moisture lit by a flash, and a single old photo is not evidence of anything. But the staircase keeps coming up in every version of the story, and it is the first place most guests look.

The undertaker and the sanatorium

Two parts of the house’s history feed its reputation. Around 1920 the family leased the house to Dr. Elizabeth Smith, believed to have been Asheville’s first woman physician, who ran it as the Asheville Osteopathic Sanatorium. And according to Sanders, Nathaniel Reynolds, who also owned a funeral home in Asheville, was known to embalm clients at the house from time to time.

The sanatorium is documented in the inn’s own history. The embalming story comes from a former owner and has not been confirmed, so treat it as part of the house’s lore. Neither is linked to a particular ghost.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Maggie (third floor): The room linked to Annie Lee Reynolds and called the most haunted by a former owner. A queen room with a shower and writing desk; bookable by name.
• The main staircase: Where Annie Lee is most often reported, and where the 1970s photograph was said to have been taken. It runs through the heart of the house, so every guest passes it.
• Vera and Inez (third floor): The other two rooms on Maggie’s floor, if you want to stay close to the story without the room itself. Vera has a four-poster and a claw-foot tub.
• The second-floor rooms: Linda, Katie, Glenda and Claudette have gas fireplaces and 12-foot ceilings, and are the most comfortable rooms in the original house.

History of The Reynolds Mansion

Daniel Reynolds came from one of the pioneer families of Buncombe County and married Susan Adelia Baird, the daughter of another. In 1854 he ran unsuccessfully for the North Carolina House of Commons against Zebulon Baird Vance. According to the inn’s history, Reynolds bought the land at a public auction in 1855 and began building a brick house on a knoll of Reynolds Mountain; some accounts, including one given by a former owner to Mountain Xpress, date the house to 1847. That former owner also said the house was built by a team of 15 enslaved people.

The Reynoldses raised ten children in the house. Daniel died in 1878 and his son William Taswell Reynolds, a tobacco warehouseman, hotel owner, opera house manager and city alderman, inherited it. Around 1905 a younger son, Nathaniel Augustus Reynolds, known as Uncle Gus, added a third floor, bathrooms and Colonial Revival woodwork, enlarged the dining room and soon after wrapped the house in porches. Before World War I it was run as a boarding house.

From 1919 to 1924 Dr. Elizabeth Smith, believed to be Asheville’s first woman physician, leased the property and ran it as the Asheville Osteopathic Sanatorium, one of many health retreats in a city that drew patients for its mountain air. Around 1930 Nathaniel and Mamie Reynolds moved in for good. The family’s best-known member, Robert Rice Reynolds, was born in Asheville in 1884 and served in the U.S. Senate from 1932 to 1945; in 1941 he married the Washington heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean.

The house left the Reynolds family in the early 1970s. Frederick and Helen Faber restored it and had it listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Reynolds House in September 1984. Billy Sanders and his partner bought it in 2009 and renovated it, telling Mountain Xpress it had looked like a haunted house from a scary movie when they arrived. Paul and Mirlin Manshon became its innkeepers in October 2019.

Today the Reynolds Mansion has eight rooms in the main house, each named rather than numbered, and three suites in the Carriage House, with a chef-cooked breakfast served in the dining room. It is about ten minutes from downtown Asheville and close to UNC Asheville.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book Maggie directly on the inn’s website if you want the haunted room; it is a smaller third-floor room, so pick a second-floor room if you would rather have a fireplace and a big bathroom.
• Do not expect a ghost tour. The current innkeepers focus on history and breakfast, so ask about the house’s past rather than its ghosts.
• Bring your dog only if you book a Carriage House suite; dogs up to 35 pounds are allowed there for a daily fee.
• Check in between 3 and 6 p.m. and spend the evening on the porches, then take the staircase up to bed after dark.
• Pair your stay with an evening at the Omni Grove Park Inn, home of the Pink Lady, about ten minutes away.
• October and leaf season are the busiest times in Asheville; book early for autumn weekends.

More haunted hotels nearby

• The Omni Grove Park Inn, Asheville: the Pink Lady and Room 545, ten minutes away
• Blind Tiger Asheville: the former 1889 WhiteGate Inn and its nurse ghost
• Balsam Mountain Inn: Rooms 205 and 207, about 45 minutes west
• Haunted places in Asheville: more ghost stories around the city
• Haunted hotels in North Carolina
• Haunted hotels in Asheville

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 Reynolds Mansion: history
• The Reynolds Mansion: Reynolds Residence rooms
• The Reynolds Mansion: FAQ
• Mountain Xpress: Horror in the highlands, Asheville's ghostly legends
• Asheville Bed and Breakfast Association: Haunted, spooky and mysterious places in Asheville
• Asheville Terrors: The most haunted hotels in Asheville
• Clio: The Reynolds Mansion
• National Park Service NPGallery: Reynolds House

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