October 2, 2025 • 11 mins
A centuries-old Massachusetts inn that once hosted Benedict Arnold now sits empty with toys on its stairs and dolls in its rooms, available for just $160,000 cash.
Read the article: https://weirddarkness.com/haunted-charlemont-inn/
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.
#HauntedInn #AbandonedPlaces #ParanormalInvestigation #WeirdRealEstate #TrueGhostStories
Read the article: https://weirddarkness.com/haunted-charlemont-inn/
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.
#HauntedInn #AbandonedPlaces #ParanormalInvestigation #WeirdRealEstate #TrueGhostStories
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
I'm Darren Marler, and this is a weird darkness bonus byte.
There is something deeply unsettling about a building that refuses
to die. The Charlemont Inn has been standing at one
oh seven Main Street in Massachusetts since seventeen eighty seven,
watching travelers pass through its doors for over two centuries.
Now it sits vacant, condemned, filled with abandoned toys on
(00:29):
darkened staircases and messages scrolled on walls that seem more
like warnings than welcomes. The inn sits where an early
tavern stood and Bettedict Arnold allegedly stayed there in the
early days of the American Revolutionary War. The building received
its liquor license in seventeen eighty seven, making it one
of the oldest continuously licensed establishments in Massachusetts history. At
(00:52):
least until everything went wrong in twenty eleven. The Inn
served as a stagecoach stop, hotel, tavern, and meeting space
for travelers and locals alike. The location wasn't chosen randomly.
The village center served as the principal nexus of early
settlement in Charlemont, taking advantage of the fertile floodplain of
(01:12):
the Deerfield River. The area that became Charlemont was surveyed
by colonists in seventeen thirty six, with settlement following in
the early seventeen forties, though it was abandoned during King
George's War in the late seventeen forties and resettled soon after.
The town's position on the frontier made it dangerous. Moses Rice,
(01:33):
who purchased twenty two acres in seventeen forty three, was
shot and wounded by Indians while plowing his fields. They
scalped him and left him for dead, while his eight
year old grandson Asa was carried off to Canada. Over
its centuries of operation, the Charlemont Inn collected both notable
guests and permanent residents who never checked out. Historical figures
(01:54):
and celebrities who stayed at the inn include Mark Twain,
Calvin Coolidge, Benedicte, and, according to Charlotte Dewey's fundraising page,
General John Burgoyne and Ethan Allen. The preanormal activity started
accumulating alongside the guest registry. A Civil War soldier's spirit
has been seen in the hall upstairs, and a former
(02:15):
innkeeper has been spotted in the tavern. A ghost named
Elizabeth slams doors, throws things, and stomps around in the halls.
She shows herself to and has conversations with young children.
Former housekeepers tell even stranger stories. One housekeeper from the
early two thousands reported feeling a presence in certain rooms,
(02:36):
particularly one at the top of the stairs that felt welcoming,
while rooms at the other end felt cold and shadowy
despite being bright. She wore headphones while cleaning because she
constantly thought she heard doors opening and closing, and furniture moving.
Another housekeeper who worked there before it closed, claimed to
have spoken with Elizabeth in Room twenty five. Every time
(02:58):
she cleaned the room, she would talk to the ghost
and would see a sunken spot on the edge of
the double bed like someone was sitting down to listen.
A male ghost would play pranks, including mysteriously unhooking a
small loop on top of a backpack style vacuum cleaner
while the housekeeper stood in the middle of an empty hallway.
Mediums and psychics visiting over the years have sensed the
(03:19):
spirits of a little boy and a girl with a
cat near the bottom of the main staircase by the
front desk. Staff members have fell presences on the stairs
and hurt a cat in the vicinity, though no one
has seen these particular spirits. One psychic identified the teenage
ghost as a fourteen year old girl who died of tuberculosis,
giving the name Fidelia with the middle name Elvira. Research
(03:42):
revealed the Charlemont Inn was used during that era as
a place for local patients to meet with the regional physician,
suggesting Fidelia may have died at the Inn while waiting
for medical care. The teenage ghost particularly enjoys removing personal
items from both guests and staff, with eyeglasses and hair
dryers disappearing with unusual frequency. An apparition of a Colonial
(04:04):
soldier has been seen on the second floor in a
room now used for storage and seldom opened. Paranormal investigators
from the Massachusetts Area Paranormal Society report experiencing battery, drainage,
and personal feelings of anxiety, with one investigator's EVP recorder
mysteriously shutting itself off after recording for only fifteen minutes.
(04:26):
They noticed a heavy, closed in feeling at the top
of the stairs and in the hallway in front of
Room fourteen. One team member staying in Room twenty three
had drawn the lace curtains before leaving, only to notice
from the parking lot that one curtain had been pulled
aside as if someone were gazing out the upstairs window.
Charlotte Dewey took over the inn in nineteen eighty three,
(04:49):
living on the third floor and overseeing everything from food
service to bedsheets. During that time, she also served as
town moderator and would sometimes opened the tavern as a
meeting space free of charge for town residents to discuss issues.
The connection ran deeper than business. Dewey's mother and sister
lived there in the nineteen seventies when there was an
(05:09):
artist's studio in the barn loft. Jean Dewey, Charlotte's mother,
was a decorative artist well known in the area, who
hand painted floral designs on some of the inn's bedroom walls.
The Charlemont Inn as a history of financial insecurity, evidenced
by numerous times the business fell behind on tax payments
in the nineteen sixties. The inexperienced a boom through the
(05:31):
nineteen eighties and nineties as Charlemont grew as a mecca
for outdoor recreation, but fell off after nine to eleven.
The twenty two room inn operated from the late seventeen
seventies to twenty eleven, when it was closed to the
public over an inability to pay sewer bills after Hurricane Irene.
The town briefly took possession of the building in twenty
(05:52):
eleven because of fees owed to the sewer district. Since
the inn closed in twenty eleven, Dewey claims she has
paid more than one hundred thousand dollars in taxes to
the town. In twenty seventeen, Dewey redid part of the
building and the kitchen was no longer condemned. She used
the kitchen for her catering business, Carriage Catering, until twenty nineteen. However,
(06:14):
the Board of Health condemned that section again in the
fall of twenty twenty three. The financial spiral accelerated rapidly.
Charlotte Dewey lost control of the property in July twenty nineteen,
when the Franklin County Housing Court appointed a receiver, Buyron
Gilcrest of Charlemont, to have purview over the long vacant building.
(06:34):
Gilcrest tried to acquire the property, but encountered a problem
they could not get the title insured because Dewey had
borrowed a large sum of money but never paid off
the debt. The woman from whom Dewey had borrowed the
money had died, requiring contact with heirs who were not cooperative.
Two weeks later, Dewey filed for bankruptcy and foreseeing legal
(06:54):
hurdles and expenses, Gilcrest pulled out of the receivership. A
judge informed the own on September fourteenth, twenty twenty three,
that they had until November seventeenth to find a buyer
before the court would decide about foreclosure. The owners, Charlotte
Dewey and Linda Shamandel, owned more than eighty five thousand
dollars in tax payments, interest, court costs, and legal fees
(07:17):
to the town. The day before the November seventeenth, twenty
twenty three deadline to pay taxes owed, Dewey filed for
Chapter thirteen bankruptcy for a second time, stalling the foreclosure process.
In September twenty twenty three, the select Board, Board of Health,
and Historical Commission all wrote letters urging the court to
speed up the foreclosure process. The select Board stressed the
(07:40):
financial benefit of having the property back in business, saying,
if operational, the town could receive twenty thousand dollars in
annual property taxes and seventy two thousand dollars in room
and meal tax, or two percent of the annual operating revenue.
The Historical Commission asked for the court to help save
the building from falling into disrepair to the point of
needing demolition, calling it a precious resource that once was
(08:03):
and we hope could once again be a focal point
of our town now. In October twenty twenty five, the
Charlemont Inn sits on the market for one hundred and
sixty thousand dollars, a price that reflects its dire condition.
The listing comes with stark warnings and strange details that
read more like a disclaimer than a sales pitch. The
property includes the inn along with a single family house
(08:27):
and a seventeen hundreds barn. Much of the original trim
work and architectural details remain on the first floor, though
some second floor guest rooms have been gutted. The property
is subject to notice with bankruptcy court. The listing explicitly
states cash or rehab loans only. No certificate of occupancy
will convey and the property is sold in as is conditioned,
(08:48):
with the seller refusing to fix anything. The Zillo Gone
Wild listing that brought renewed attention to the property showcased
disturbing details toys positioned on dark staircase, is an old
piano and bar in what they call a ghost's version
of an entertainment space, a vintage payphone for when cell
service fails, and dolls left in certain rooms. Messages throughout
(09:12):
the inn were described as very friendly and welcoming, though
the sarcasm was evident. Dewey said in twenty sixteen the
expected price for reconstruction would cost about one point five
million to two million dollars, but she believed by twenty
twenty four that price had likely risen to about two
point five million. The building is at vacant since twenty
(09:34):
eleven and is currently condemned. Most of Charlemont's town center
is on the National Register of Historic Places, with the
district added in nineteen eighty eight. The Inn stands as
part of this historic district, yet it continues deteriorating while
legal battles rage on. John Schaeffer, owner of the Berkshire
East Mountain resort, stated bluntly, Charlemont will never be the
(09:57):
town it can be. If that place doesn't look good.
There's really no social central location for a Charlemont resident.
The story of the Charlemont Inn reads like a warning
about what happens when history becomes too expensive to maintain.
A building that survived the Revolutionary War, hosted presidents and
literary giants, and accumulated centuries of ghost stories now sits empty,
(10:20):
its rooms, gutted, its kitchen, condemned, its future uncertain. The
toys on the stairs and dolls in the rooms aren't
props for effect. They are remnants of a business that
simply stopped one day in twenty eleven and never started again.
Anyone with one hundred and sixty thousand dollars cash and
a tolerance for bankruptcy court structural concerns. Any occasional conversation
(10:44):
with a ghost named Elizabeth can own a piece of
American history. The original liquor license from seventeen eighty seven
is presumably still valid, though you'll need to bring your
own certificate of occupancy. The seller won't fix anything. The
town wants an operational or demolished and somewhere in Room
twenty five, a sunken spot on a bed might still
(11:05):
appear when no one living is sitting there. The Charlet
Montenne waits at one oh seven Main Street, neither fully
dead nor truly alive, a two hundred and thirty eight
year old monument to the idea that some buildings are
too historic to demolish but too broken to save. If
you'd like to read this story for yourself, you can
(11:25):
read it on the Weird Darkness website. I've placed a
link to it in the episode description, and you can
find more stories of the paranormal, true crime, strange, and more,
including numerous stories that never make it to the podcast,
at Weirddarkness dot com slash news
I'm Darren Marler, and this is a weird darkness bonus byte.
There is something deeply unsettling about a building that refuses
to die. The Charlemont Inn has been standing at one
oh seven Main Street in Massachusetts since seventeen eighty seven,
watching travelers pass through its doors for over two centuries.
Now it sits vacant, condemned, filled with abandoned toys on
(00:29):
darkened staircases and messages scrolled on walls that seem more
like warnings than welcomes. The inn sits where an early
tavern stood and Bettedict Arnold allegedly stayed there in the
early days of the American Revolutionary War. The building received
its liquor license in seventeen eighty seven, making it one
of the oldest continuously licensed establishments in Massachusetts history. At
(00:52):
least until everything went wrong in twenty eleven. The Inn
served as a stagecoach stop, hotel, tavern, and meeting space
for travelers and locals alike. The location wasn't chosen randomly.
The village center served as the principal nexus of early
settlement in Charlemont, taking advantage of the fertile floodplain of
(01:12):
the Deerfield River. The area that became Charlemont was surveyed
by colonists in seventeen thirty six, with settlement following in
the early seventeen forties, though it was abandoned during King
George's War in the late seventeen forties and resettled soon after.
The town's position on the frontier made it dangerous. Moses Rice,
(01:33):
who purchased twenty two acres in seventeen forty three, was
shot and wounded by Indians while plowing his fields. They
scalped him and left him for dead, while his eight
year old grandson Asa was carried off to Canada. Over
its centuries of operation, the Charlemont Inn collected both notable
guests and permanent residents who never checked out. Historical figures
(01:54):
and celebrities who stayed at the inn include Mark Twain,
Calvin Coolidge, Benedicte, and, according to Charlotte Dewey's fundraising page,
General John Burgoyne and Ethan Allen. The preanormal activity started
accumulating alongside the guest registry. A Civil War soldier's spirit
has been seen in the hall upstairs, and a former
(02:15):
innkeeper has been spotted in the tavern. A ghost named
Elizabeth slams doors, throws things, and stomps around in the halls.
She shows herself to and has conversations with young children.
Former housekeepers tell even stranger stories. One housekeeper from the
early two thousands reported feeling a presence in certain rooms,
(02:36):
particularly one at the top of the stairs that felt welcoming,
while rooms at the other end felt cold and shadowy
despite being bright. She wore headphones while cleaning because she
constantly thought she heard doors opening and closing, and furniture moving.
Another housekeeper who worked there before it closed, claimed to
have spoken with Elizabeth in Room twenty five. Every time
(02:58):
she cleaned the room, she would talk to the ghost
and would see a sunken spot on the edge of
the double bed like someone was sitting down to listen.
A male ghost would play pranks, including mysteriously unhooking a
small loop on top of a backpack style vacuum cleaner
while the housekeeper stood in the middle of an empty hallway.
Mediums and psychics visiting over the years have sensed the
(03:19):
spirits of a little boy and a girl with a
cat near the bottom of the main staircase by the
front desk. Staff members have fell presences on the stairs
and hurt a cat in the vicinity, though no one
has seen these particular spirits. One psychic identified the teenage
ghost as a fourteen year old girl who died of tuberculosis,
giving the name Fidelia with the middle name Elvira. Research
(03:42):
revealed the Charlemont Inn was used during that era as
a place for local patients to meet with the regional physician,
suggesting Fidelia may have died at the Inn while waiting
for medical care. The teenage ghost particularly enjoys removing personal
items from both guests and staff, with eyeglasses and hair
dryers disappearing with unusual frequency. An apparition of a Colonial
(04:04):
soldier has been seen on the second floor in a
room now used for storage and seldom opened. Paranormal investigators
from the Massachusetts Area Paranormal Society report experiencing battery, drainage,
and personal feelings of anxiety, with one investigator's EVP recorder
mysteriously shutting itself off after recording for only fifteen minutes.
(04:26):
They noticed a heavy, closed in feeling at the top
of the stairs and in the hallway in front of
Room fourteen. One team member staying in Room twenty three
had drawn the lace curtains before leaving, only to notice
from the parking lot that one curtain had been pulled
aside as if someone were gazing out the upstairs window.
Charlotte Dewey took over the inn in nineteen eighty three,
(04:49):
living on the third floor and overseeing everything from food
service to bedsheets. During that time, she also served as
town moderator and would sometimes opened the tavern as a
meeting space free of charge for town residents to discuss issues.
The connection ran deeper than business. Dewey's mother and sister
lived there in the nineteen seventies when there was an
(05:09):
artist's studio in the barn loft. Jean Dewey, Charlotte's mother,
was a decorative artist well known in the area, who
hand painted floral designs on some of the inn's bedroom walls.
The Charlemont Inn as a history of financial insecurity, evidenced
by numerous times the business fell behind on tax payments
in the nineteen sixties. The inexperienced a boom through the
(05:31):
nineteen eighties and nineties as Charlemont grew as a mecca
for outdoor recreation, but fell off after nine to eleven.
The twenty two room inn operated from the late seventeen
seventies to twenty eleven, when it was closed to the
public over an inability to pay sewer bills after Hurricane Irene.
The town briefly took possession of the building in twenty
(05:52):
eleven because of fees owed to the sewer district. Since
the inn closed in twenty eleven, Dewey claims she has
paid more than one hundred thousand dollars in taxes to
the town. In twenty seventeen, Dewey redid part of the
building and the kitchen was no longer condemned. She used
the kitchen for her catering business, Carriage Catering, until twenty nineteen. However,
(06:14):
the Board of Health condemned that section again in the
fall of twenty twenty three. The financial spiral accelerated rapidly.
Charlotte Dewey lost control of the property in July twenty nineteen,
when the Franklin County Housing Court appointed a receiver, Buyron
Gilcrest of Charlemont, to have purview over the long vacant building.
(06:34):
Gilcrest tried to acquire the property, but encountered a problem
they could not get the title insured because Dewey had
borrowed a large sum of money but never paid off
the debt. The woman from whom Dewey had borrowed the
money had died, requiring contact with heirs who were not cooperative.
Two weeks later, Dewey filed for bankruptcy and foreseeing legal
(06:54):
hurdles and expenses, Gilcrest pulled out of the receivership. A
judge informed the own on September fourteenth, twenty twenty three,
that they had until November seventeenth to find a buyer
before the court would decide about foreclosure. The owners, Charlotte
Dewey and Linda Shamandel, owned more than eighty five thousand
dollars in tax payments, interest, court costs, and legal fees
(07:17):
to the town. The day before the November seventeenth, twenty
twenty three deadline to pay taxes owed, Dewey filed for
Chapter thirteen bankruptcy for a second time, stalling the foreclosure process.
In September twenty twenty three, the select Board, Board of Health,
and Historical Commission all wrote letters urging the court to
speed up the foreclosure process. The select Board stressed the
(07:40):
financial benefit of having the property back in business, saying,
if operational, the town could receive twenty thousand dollars in
annual property taxes and seventy two thousand dollars in room
and meal tax, or two percent of the annual operating revenue.
The Historical Commission asked for the court to help save
the building from falling into disrepair to the point of
needing demolition, calling it a precious resource that once was
(08:03):
and we hope could once again be a focal point
of our town now. In October twenty twenty five, the
Charlemont Inn sits on the market for one hundred and
sixty thousand dollars, a price that reflects its dire condition.
The listing comes with stark warnings and strange details that
read more like a disclaimer than a sales pitch. The
property includes the inn along with a single family house
(08:27):
and a seventeen hundreds barn. Much of the original trim
work and architectural details remain on the first floor, though
some second floor guest rooms have been gutted. The property
is subject to notice with bankruptcy court. The listing explicitly
states cash or rehab loans only. No certificate of occupancy
will convey and the property is sold in as is conditioned,
(08:48):
with the seller refusing to fix anything. The Zillo Gone
Wild listing that brought renewed attention to the property showcased
disturbing details toys positioned on dark staircase, is an old
piano and bar in what they call a ghost's version
of an entertainment space, a vintage payphone for when cell
service fails, and dolls left in certain rooms. Messages throughout
(09:12):
the inn were described as very friendly and welcoming, though
the sarcasm was evident. Dewey said in twenty sixteen the
expected price for reconstruction would cost about one point five
million to two million dollars, but she believed by twenty
twenty four that price had likely risen to about two
point five million. The building is at vacant since twenty
(09:34):
eleven and is currently condemned. Most of Charlemont's town center
is on the National Register of Historic Places, with the
district added in nineteen eighty eight. The Inn stands as
part of this historic district, yet it continues deteriorating while
legal battles rage on. John Schaeffer, owner of the Berkshire
East Mountain resort, stated bluntly, Charlemont will never be the
(09:57):
town it can be. If that place doesn't look good.
There's really no social central location for a Charlemont resident.
The story of the Charlemont Inn reads like a warning
about what happens when history becomes too expensive to maintain.
A building that survived the Revolutionary War, hosted presidents and
literary giants, and accumulated centuries of ghost stories now sits empty,
(10:20):
its rooms, gutted, its kitchen, condemned, its future uncertain. The
toys on the stairs and dolls in the rooms aren't
props for effect. They are remnants of a business that
simply stopped one day in twenty eleven and never started again.
Anyone with one hundred and sixty thousand dollars cash and
a tolerance for bankruptcy court structural concerns. Any occasional conversation
(10:44):
with a ghost named Elizabeth can own a piece of
American history. The original liquor license from seventeen eighty seven
is presumably still valid, though you'll need to bring your
own certificate of occupancy. The seller won't fix anything. The
town wants an operational or demolished and somewhere in Room
twenty five, a sunken spot on a bed might still
(11:05):
appear when no one living is sitting there. The Charlet
Montenne waits at one oh seven Main Street, neither fully
dead nor truly alive, a two hundred and thirty eight
year old monument to the idea that some buildings are
too historic to demolish but too broken to save. If
you'd like to read this story for yourself, you can
(11:25):
read it on the Weird Darkness website. I've placed a
link to it in the episode description, and you can
find more stories of the paranormal, true crime, strange, and more,
including numerous stories that never make it to the podcast,
at Weirddarkness dot com slash news
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