A HAUNTED ROAD TRIP ALONG HISTORIC HIGHWAYS

As autumn nights darken early and shadows of leaf-bare trees stretch long like bony fingers, ghost stories can start to feel pretty real. Vermont is home to many spooky sites and reportedly haunted places.

Travelers hoping to catch a glimpse of one of these elusive figures can follow Vermont’s byways and back roads, which connect one haunted and historic location to the next. In The Shires region, brave the “Bennington Triangle,” where a number of hikers mysteriously went missing between 1920 and 1950. Nearby, a drive north on Route 7 leads to The Equinox in historic Manchester, where the spirit of Mary Todd Lincoln is rumored to haunt the third and fourth floors of the resort’s south wing.



Continue north to West Castleton, where slate workers enjoyed crossing Lake Bomoseen to visit a tavern on the opposite shore. One particularly gloomy evening, three men did not return, and, despite a painstaking search, were never found. Residents today claim that during a full moon, a dark, vacant and ghostly rowboat can be seen drifting silently across the lake.

At the Old Stagecoach Inn in Waterbury, the innkeeper was baffled when an unfamiliar couple came downstairs saying they had been checked in by an older woman. No such employee existed, but it did sound exactly like the hotel’s former owner – the long-dead Nettie Spencer.

Further north, Stowe is home to numerous ghosts, including Boots Berry. Born in 1840 in the servant’s quarters of The Green Mountain Inn, he was a local hero before he was dismissed for excessive drinking. He eventually drifted back and saved a little girl stuck on the Inn’s roof during a snowstorm before slipping and falling to his death. Some say during severe winter storms, Boots can still be heard tap dancing on the third floor of the hotel.



Stowe’s Gold Brook Covered Bridge is also known as “Emily’s Bridge,” as it is haunted by the ghost of a lovelorn Emily who died on the bridge after being stood up on her wedding day. Visitors to the bridge have reported scratch marks appearing on their cars and strange noises such as footsteps, ropes tightening, and screams.



In the Northeast Kingdom, on the shores of Lake Memphremagog on Vermont’s northern border with Canada, the ghost of General “Mad” Anthony Wayne has been spotted.

Vermont’s poet laureate, the famed Robert Frost, was inspired by the state’s ghostly history in his 1906 poem “Ghost House,” where he describes the spirits that share his home as “as sweet companions as might be had.”
 

"I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me— Those stones out under the low-limbed tree Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad," the poet wrote.