The passing of years at the Equinox saw it filled with a
more genteel class of guests. In the mid 1800s, Mary Todd
Lincoln summered at the Equinox with her sons in tow,
and some believe she’s still there. Is her spirit the one
responsible for chairs that playfully rock themselves, and
belongings that vanish into thin air, only to reappear in the
strangest places? Could be. But, I’m not willing to blame
her for what occurred one evening in room 329, when an
entire family was terrified by a bed that lurched, one leg at
a time, across the floor all by itself. During the incident,
Robert Cullinan, a security guard who’d been called to the
scene, was pushed so hard by an invisible entity that he
nearly fell to the floor. My tour guide’s intuition tells me
this couldn’t have been the work of our one-time FLOTUS.
Mary Todd Lincoln was a lady, and a lady has limits, after
all.
I just told you a lady has limits, except, that is, when it
comes to personal grooming, Then, we pull out all the
stops.
When I was a girl, popular wisdom dictated that
brushing one’s hair a hundred strokes each night was the
right thing to do. So, apparently, believes the female ap-
parition seen to be constantly brushing her hair at The
Golden Stage Inn Bed and Breakfast in Proctorsville.
Built in 1788, the Inn was originally a stagecoach stop.
It had two guest rooms, one for gentlemen and one for
ladies, (that unfortunately shared one humble, common
chamber pot situated behind a privacy screen).
In the mid-eighteen hundreds, the place was pur-
chased as a private residence by the Reverend War-
ren Skinner, a Unitarian, and offered into service
Dine in the Chop House, located in the “club quarters” of as a stop on the Underground Railroad. It wasn’t
the Marsh Tavern to experience the Orvis stone hearth, the
until the 1980s that the inn reverted back to
same fireplace the Green Mountain Boys used as a meeting
lodging, and became the subject of
spot long ago.
ghostly tales. If you’re very lucky, your
stay at the Golden Stage might make you
The Inns At The Equinox
feel you’ve had a brush with celebrity.
3567 Main Street,
Manchester
In the inn’s new wing, a ghost
sporting an old fashioned traveling
cloak has been spotted.
From the “Cowardly Cook”
Pen, Ink, Watercolor
61 VTMAG.com