Numerous guests and employees of the Mount Washington Hotel have shared chilling ghost stories. Here are three tales that prove the hotel is haunted.
New Hampshire’s Mount Washington Hotel (it’s technically the Omni Mount Washington Resort & Spa now, but the original name has stuck over the years) is a hotbed for paranormal activity. Most of the ghost sightings are reported in one particular room—314, AKA The Princess’s Room—but supernatural events have occurred in other areas of the hotel as well.
There’s a common belief that the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods served as the inspiration for the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King’s 1977 novel “The Shining.” While the physical appearance of the New Hampshire accommodations does bear resemblance to the Overlook in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie of the same name, the New England native actually drew his inspiration from a different hotel out in Colorado. King based the fictional Outlook Hotel on The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, which has its own haunted history. You can read more about that here.
All “The Shining” lore aside, I know plenty of people are skeptical when it comes to this kind of topic. Everyone is entitled to believe, or not believe, whatever feels right to them. Using the words “proving” and “prove” both in the headline and within this story are accurate to the experiences of the people who have stayed and worked at the Mount Washington Hotel, and to those of us who believe in the supernatural.
We are, by no means, saying that the stories contained within this piece are as factual as something that happened in a history book. We’re just reporting on what people have said they’ve seen, and then letting you sort through how you feel about it from there.
Now, let’s begin, shall we?
314: The Princess’s Room
Room 314 at the Mount Washington Hotel is considered its “most haunted room,” as a majority of the reported ghost sightings have happened here. It’s typically referred to as “The Princess’s Room” by visitors and staff alike, as it was occupied by Carolyn Foster Stickney when the hotel originally opened. Carolyn was married to Joseph Stickney, who built the elaborate lodgings in 1902. Joseph included several specifications for his wife, including a private dining room and an indoor swimming pool.
Joseph died shortly after the hotel completed its construction, and Carolyn went on to remarry Jean Baptiste Marie de Faucigny Lucinge, who was a French royal. Thus, she became Princess Carolyn, and the suite she always occupied while staying in the Bretton Woods hotel was officially dubbed “The Princess’s Room.” Fun fact: Room 314 still houses Carolyn’s original bedframe, which is one reason why people believe her spirit is tied to the hotel.
Carolyn is Mount Washington’s most active ghost. Numerous guests and several members of the staff have reported seeing “visions of an elegant woman in Victorian dress” in the hallways. People who have stayed in Room 314 have said that the lights in the room repeatedly flicker, and that they’ve heard a knocking on the door, only to discover that no one was there. Objects will disappear and then reappear in a different location in the room, and some people have reported randomly catching the scent of floral perfume in the middle of the night.
Most often, though, people have said that Carolyn appears as an apparition sitting on the edge of the bed. One guest on TripAdvisor, gracieann5555, said they saw what appeared to be a woman sitting on the edge of the bed in Room 314 brushing her hair. (To find the story on TripAdvisor, click this link, then scroll down to the review section. Type “brushing hair” into the search bar, and it should be the first review to pop up!) Another guest noted that they saw Carolyn’s ghost standing in the main lobby, gazing over the mezzanine before she disappeared.
Unlike some spirits that can cause feelings of unease and distress, Carolyn’s ghost seems to be peaceful and non-threatening. During my research, I only found one reported sighting that felt, well, creepy. A housekeeper spoke with Two Sisters Abroad about how they encountered someone (or something) in Room 314 back in 1997. They said that when they entered the room to clean, “there was a little girl sleeping on the bed.” They immediately left and informed their supervisor, who told the housekeeper that the room was only registered to a pair of newlyweds who didn’t have any children with them. The housekeeper was told to leave a note for the couple saying that they’d be back in an hour to clean the room, and this is where things start to feel unsettling.
As the housekeeper told Two Sisters Abroad, “I went back in the room to leave the note by the table. I walked in the room quietly [so as] to not wake the little girl up. When I looked at the bed, instead of a little girl, there was a woman staring right at me with the most scary smile on her face. She had black hair and was wearing a white dress. I got chills down my spine and I just stood there frozen. She sat on the bed and kept staring at me. I ran out of the room and told my friend who was also a housekeeper. We both went back in the room and there was no one there.”
Pretty spooky stuff! The housekeeper said that they had taken a picture of themselves with a friend on the Princess’s bed the day before, and were told that this probably upset Carolyn’s spirit, which led to the eerie interaction.
So, note to anyone who wants to stay in Room 314: Maybe don’t take any photos of the room until you’re ready to leave!
Ghost Hunters discovered paranormal activity in 2008
In 2008, “Ghost Hunters” went to investigate the Mount Washington Hotel. The resulting episode, (Season 4, Episode 7), is titled “The Princess and the EVP.” The team investigated Room 314, as well as the hotel’s South Tower, which is another primary spot for reported supernatural activity, as that’s where the staff used to sleep.
Two members of the “Ghost Hunters” team said that they heard thumping and creaking noises in the tower, and “asked for any entities to reveal themselves, to make sounds, and to come towards them,” while they recorded on special equipment. This is known as the “electronic voice phenomenon,” or EVP. They primarily caught footsteps on these recordings—not necessarily concrete evidence of the area being haunted, but it showed that there was a possibility of a paranormal presence.
However, Room 314 proved once again to be the “most haunted room” in the hotel for a reason. The EVP equipment picked up on a female voice responding to the questions being asked by the “Ghost Hunters” team. At one point, someone asked, “Princess, are you there?” The EVP equipment then registered a female voice replying, “Hello? Is there someone there?” Then, the team asked, “Princess, can you at least let us know you’re in here?” After a moment, the EVP registered another response, this time saying, “Of course I’m in here. Where are you?”
The sound of music
Aside from Princess Carolyn closely guarding her old bedroom, and the South Tower playing host to potential specters, another recurring paranormal experience seems to haunt the halls of the Mount Washington Hotel. People have reported hearing an orchestra playing—typically at night—and gravitating toward the sound of the music … only to realize that there isn’t any music playing in the hotel.
Someone even told Two Sisters Abroad that they heard an orchestra playing one time and went to check it out. When they entered the room where they heard the music, the lights turned on and off in the room as the music got louder. They decided to leave and grab a security guard to come take a look, but the security guard was unable to find the source of the disturbance.
So, what do you think? Is the Mount Washington Hotel really haunted? And would you be willing to spend the night in Room 314 to find out? 
