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General Sutter Inn - Lititz, PA

The General Sutter Inn went into business in 1764 as the "Zum Anker Inn" (The Sign of the Anker) and is one of the oldest continuously operating inns in the Unites States. The name was later changed to "The Lititz Springs Hotel", then in 1930 was changed to "The General Sutter Inn" to honor John Augustus Sutter, a California Gold Rush pioneer who lived out his remaining days in the small town of Lititz.

The inn continues to operate today offering lodging, dining and a banquet facility. One step through the front door and history is staring back at you.



With so much history in one place, there is no doubt something has to be going on here. Though there is no definitive ghost stories about this particular inn several folks including myself have had some type of encounter or other type of experience.

Over our first anniversary, the wife and I decided to spend a couple of nights checking this place out, we were not really there to ghost hunt, but more to take in the ambiance and enjoy our weekend. During our stay, we heard several members of the staff talking about some of the strange happenings such a ceiling fan falling to the floor for no apperent reason and the possible siting of General Sutter roaming about the grounds.



Unfortunately we were not there to invstigation so we did not delve any further into the claims. John and Kelly Weaver have had experiences in several of the rooms on the second floor including an incident where their canine companion Teddy Bear was poked, prodded and laughed at while Kelly and John were not in the room. John caught the incident on audio tape, the laugh heard from the recorder is quite sinister and definitely not ambient noise from the surrounding rooms. Another incident included the singing of the wall paper in their room after a paper bowl was ignited by a candle under abnormal circumstances. John outlines these incdendt on the SSP webpage if you are interested in reading more.



Just playing around!

Back in the late 90s I attended a wedding reception and caught something that I am still to this day analyzing and trying to either debunk or claim evidence. I was new to the paranormal scene and had just bought a new digital camera (Olympus D-340R 1.4MP) about a month before. I was sitting on the right side of the ballroom as circled in the picture, being bored I was taking random shots without the flash in about 2 second increments to see the results. I caught what looks to be a partial torso of a women in a black dress (picture below). The left side shows the image 2 seconds before the image on the right. Without any other evidence to back up my claim, its difficult to claim this to be a partial apparition.





Even without the possible haunting of General Sutter or the lady in the black dress, the General Sutter Inn is an excellent place to vacation and is definitely a place I would love to do a formal investigation.