During the first interview with Bill, he'd told me he saw the little spirit of Susan Simmons when first moving in, while renovating in the hall outside of Susan's old room (now the Owl Room). He looked up and saw a little girl with long light-brown hair, a white gown, and a featureless face. At the time, he "hadn't seen anything like it before" and felt "she was checking out who was moving in." Also, a woman who once stayed in the young girl's room had enough of a discussion with Susan to learn her name. The next morning, the woman asked Bill if he knew he had a ghost (yes, he did), since she'd been up all night talking to her and had learned her name was Susan ...

Bill, now 70, admits 19 years after his purchase of the inn that he and his wife -- who passed away prior -- always wanted to run a B & B like this.

"My wife died in '87. Running a B & B is something we'd always wanted to do. I came to the Cape, and this was basically an empty house."

Bill's unofficial title is Inkeeper of Sorts, so people understand he wants them "to come to relax and have fun, as opposed to doing something formal ..."
 

"It's a nice, historical, house -- over two hundred years old. The Simmons family owned it from 1800 to 1892. Then, Captain Henry Hunt owned it till 1917. Then, from 1917 to 1985, the Lombard family owned it. So there have only been three owners before myself."