This article which involves three interviews with proprietors of three allegedly haunted Cape Cod inns, was developed as a three-part column for CapeCodToday.com (it was originally published in The Cape Paper). These inns are intriguing places for visitors to learn chilling Cape history, enjoy good conversation with proprietors, and maybe meet a ghost or two.

Charmingly Haunting Places to Stay!

“A Haunting View of Cape Cod”

It all started when I was at Armchair Bookstore, in Dennis, and noticed a new title, Haunted Inns of New England, by Mark Jasper, which features no fewer than 18 stories about haunted inns on Cape Cod.

I decided to visit three of them.

First stop: Hyannis Port, the home of a 7-year-old girl who drowned in the pond out back in 1833.

A man named Bill Putman purchased the residence in 1988 and changed it into a bed and breakfast.

Not long after, he learned something about his house from a guest, something that would distinguish the Simmons Homestead, but would rattle many a mere mortal’s soul.

A woman who stayed in the young girl’s room had enough of a discussion with the ghost to learn her name. The morning after, the woman asked Bill if he knew he had a ghost. Yes, he did know that. The woman said she was up all night talking to her, and had learned from the discussion that the ghost’s name was Susan.

When I went there myself for a visit with Susan, Bill took me upstairs to what is now called The Owl Room, a sunny little space with painted wooden floorboards, antique curtains, and pictures of owls all over the walls.

Bill told me he saw the little girl 10 years ago when he was first moving in.

He was in the hallway just outside of her old room, doing some renovating. He looked up and saw a little girl with long light-brown hair, a long white gown, and a featureless face. “I hadn’t seen anything like it before, he said. The gown she was wearing was probably what she was buried in,” he said. “I think she was checking out who was moving in. I guess we got her approval.”

Bill hasn’t seen her since, but that didn’t stop him from inviting me for a look-see. He said I should get to know her, that he’d be around the grounds, and to shut the door behind me when I was through.

He had warned me on the phone earlier that Susan usually only comes out once a year, and then only for psychic people. He also said one of his past female tenants renting out the attic apartment above Susan’s room would sit on the bed reading children’s books to her.

The imprint of a sitting child would appear on the bed next to the tenant each time.

“May I go upstairs and talk to Susan as well?”

“Sure,” Bill said, then went to see that the room was clear.

“Hi, Susan,” I half-whispered. “You have a nice room. I brought you some flowers and a lilac candle. I had to leave the candle downstairs on the kitchen table since there are people staying in your room.”

Then I told her my eyesight wasn’t very good (true !) and asked her to make some obvious sign of where she was standing. Nothing.

So I went upstairs. The first tenant poked her head out but said she didn’t want to talk about Susan. When I said that’s okay, the tenant said she hadn’t seen her and didn’t like talking about her. She said this was because in a previous house, frightening things had happened. Violent bed shaking was one of them, and that happened even when she was sitting on the couch. She had been pregnant to boot, and she had her unborn child to protect.

No one in her life had believed the woman. She asked me if I knew of any ghost experts she could talk to. She wanted to find some reason for what had happened to her. I told her of Jasper’s book, and mentioned that some of the innkeepers in it had hired psychics to help violent ghosts go away.

The woman in the apartment next to her had another experience with Susan. One Sunday afternoon when she was reading the paper and watching football when suddenly “the lamp in the corner of my room, which is four feet tall, moved back and forth, like someone was holding it. Then a few minutes later the bed was gently shaken. Not violently at all. It was very gentle,” she said. “Like a little girl was doing it. I think it was Susan’s way of saying ‘hi.’”

When she told Bill the next morning, he said, “Oh, that’d be Susan the ghost.”

“I thought there was something strange here,” the woman replied.

That sealed it for me. I wanted to stay overnight, and I wanted my friend Jennifer to keep me company. Bill said that would be fine.

My dad, the alien-seeker, is an old shoe at the unexplained. He called me at work today to advise that I bring a tape recorder, and I already planned to bring my camera.

We stayed over on a Monday night. By Tuesday, I was remembering Bill’s line about Susan only appearing once a year.

Our night in Susan’s room was uneventful. We took plenty of pictures, though, and Bill took some of us, too, saying, “Maybe Susan will make an appearance in this shot.”

As you can see, she didn’t.

But, of course, Susan isn’t the only ghost on Cape Cod, either.

Next stop: The Old Yarmouth Inn in Yarmouth Port.

Established in 1696, it is the oldest inn on Cape Cod.

Still accompanied by my friend Jennifer, we went straight to the cocktail lounge. Our bartender Laney was extremely friendly to the needs of the curious. Many stories of ghostly behavior have found their way to Laney, including one about an ashtray leaving a stack and flying by itself across the restaurant one night.

Jasper mentions another about a guest at this inn coming down to the kitchen early one morning for coffee, and not knowing how to get the kitchen doors to open. Suddenly a voice came out of nowhere – “Push,” as if the long stay had turned the ghost into another member of the staff.

The lights wavered in the bar and Laney, who had left for a couple of minutes, came back. “All right, I have some stories for you,” she said. “There was the time that everyone was downstairs, but a drum set upstairs was heard to be drumming by itself.” And another time some windowpanes in the lounge flew off the hinges by themselves.

The stories were enjoyable, but it didn’t look like any ghosts were coming into the bar that night, and so we left with just our imaginations enhanced.

Next, it was over to the Orleans Inn, a place that if it didn’t have ghost stories, someone would have to make them up.

The most famous of the “true ” stories concerns a bartender named Fred, who hanged himself in the inn’s cupola 40-odd years ago.

Allegedly, late one night a lone waitress who was just about to leave quipped, “Goodnight, Fred,” and a voice called back, “Goooodniii-ight.”

Innkeeper Ed Maas, who has been renovating the Town Cove landmark for the past couple of years, said he subscribes to the notion that much ghostly activity takes place during renovations to places that house these ancient spirits.

According to legend, two prostitutes were killed many years ago in the front yard of the inn. Over the years it has come to be understood that at least one of them haunts the place, particularly by unlocking doors. Ed also confided with obvious delight, “Sometimes we hear heavy footsteps upstairs even though no one is up there!”

Built in 1875 by Aaron Snow as a house for his wife, Mary, and their seven children, the Orleans Inn has found a fitting owner in Ed Maas, if believing the unbelievable matters.

“Guests will hear people walking around, or, on occasion, a door will slam shut without explanation,” Ed said, as a squiggling mounted bass sang “Drop Me in the Water” just over his shoulder. “They will come down and say the place is haunted.”

I asked where most of the ghostly activity took place. “Usually in room 4,” he said, adding that during renovations in 1997 “the workmen kept saying they heard cats in the closet.”

Other, less-savory bits of feline ghost information came forth, and legend has it that 100 years ago the inn was owned by cat-lovers.

In search of Fred’s cupola, I was ushered up a winding set of stairs to a tiny room furnished with only a single chandelier. Above is the cupola where Fred hanged himself. When I was alone, I tried to make contact with the ghost.

“Hi Fred. Fred? Can you please come out and say hello?”

Nothing.

I looked up at those wooden beams.

“So that’s where you did it; things were that bad for you.”

Outside from here is the beautiful cove below, and the pleasing horizon of East Orleans beyond.

If Fred was lonely, he sure must have attracted attention when they found him up here dangling from the highest peak of the building. What an awful ascent his would-be rescuers must have suffered.

In any case, the waitress of ghost-lore had identified the voice as being that of a young man, which Fred was; Ed said she ran all the way to her car and never looked back. I wish I’d seen him.

Oh, well. Once my field research was done I called Mark Jasper, the author, with only one question, “How did you become interested in ghosts?”

He said: “Four years ago, my wife and I moved from Worcestor to Cape Cod. We moved during the blizzard of ’96. We had no cable for months. I opened a ghost book that my mother had bought for me years ago, and that was the start of my interest.”

Turns out the author hasn’t had any ghost sightings himself.

I mentioned something I had read, that if you go looking for ghosts, eventually they come looking for you.

“I’m really hoping so,” he said. “I would love to see a ghost.”

When I related my own sighting at the Hall family graveyard [I saw a strange woman dressed in pilgrim clothing], Mark said he would like to discuss it for a new book he is working on, “Haunted Cape Cod.”

(originally published in issue 15 of The Cape Paper)