AH: There was one murder in the hotel?
JH: We have a newspaper account of a murder that took place in the Inn. A Mr. Knapp was stabbed in the heart and died in one of the rooms. He was trying to get into a bed that was already occupied. (He had been visiting the tavern and was confused as to which room was his.) The man in the bed thought he was being robbed, took a saber out of his walking stick, and stabbed Mr. Knapp in the heart.
Several guests have told us that something violent happened in Room 7 and they get a bad feeling in that room. This room is directly above the kitchen and I often hear footsteps up there when no one else is in the house. I will go up to see if a visitor has come in off the street and is taking a "look around." There will be no one up there, but the bed looks like someone had been laying on it. I think Mr. Knapp is still trying to get into bed. My daughter was in that room making the bed one day and as she bent over to tuck in the sheet, she got patted on her fanny. Thinking it was me trying to play a joke on her, she turned around but no one was there. She left the room fast and would not go back up there with out me.
AH: What about the owners that have died in the hotel?JH: Fannie Mason Kurtz died in the dining room, by the fireplace, in 1951. She was the last Mason to own the building. We had a guest eating lunch in the dining room who kept looking at the fireplace and then around the room, and back at the fireplace. Finally she said to me "Some one died in this room, here by the fireplace. She is still here. She is walking around the room and greeting the guests. She is happy. She likes it here and does not want to leave." The lady could not see the spirit, but could feel her as she passed by. My daughter and I have both seen "shooting orbs" in the dining room. They look like a shooting star zooming across the TV or the lamp and catching the light for a fraction of a second.
Mr. McDermet, [a retired Congregationalist Minister who bought the inn in 1989], told us he had seen the ghost of Mary Mason Clark on the third floor. He had his office in that south bedroom and he would often look up from his desk to see her sitting in a chair by the window. She told him she was not happy with the renovations they were doing on the house. The McDermets turned ten bedrooms into five two-room suites with private baths in all the rooms. This meant taking out some walls and putting in others.
When they were re-wallpapering in Room 5, they would find all the paper stripped off and they would put it back up, only to find it stripped again the next morning. On the third morning they found the wallpaper sample book on the floor, laying open to a certain page. They bought that wallpaper and put it up. The paper stayed in place and is still there. (Mr. McDermet said Mary chose the paper for her parent's bedroom.)
Lewis Mason, [who purchased the hotel in 1857], died here in 1867 during a cholera epidemic. Mr. Knapp died here in 1860. Lewis's daughter, Mary Mason Clark, died here in 1911, up on the third floor in the south bedroom. She was 83 years old. Lewis Mason's granddaughter, Mary Frances "Fannie" Mason Kurtz, died here in 1951 at 84 years old. She died in the dining room, in a rocking chair by the fireplace. She was dead three days before anyone checked on her and found her.
AH: Anyone else?JH: We figure we have two ladies (Mary Mason Clark on the third floor and Fannie Mason Kurtz on the first floor), one old man, a boy, and Mr. Knapp in Room 7. There may be more. We know a doctor died in Room 5 in 1940 of diphtheria. He was renting that room when it was a boarding house from the 1920s to 1951.
We also know the building was used as a holding hospital during the Civil War. Wounded soldiers were brought here to wait for the train to take them to the hospital in Keokuk. We can only assume some of them died here also. We also know the house and barn were used as a station on the Underground Railroad. I don't know if this is significant to the spirits or not, but it is interesting.
Next: The man in the mirror, and unexplained footsteps
