Description of Place: The Stratford Inn is a beautiful, idyllic two-story white Colonial with black shutters on a small parcel of land outside town. Over two hundred years old, the structure provides a quaint New England charm in scenic surroundings. There are twelve rooms and numerous returning guests often book the place in advance. Indeed, with its wonderful dinners, comfortable guest rooms and guest hospitality, there is much to encourage its patrons to continue returning.

Ghostly Manifestations: On September 8, 1990, Doctor Robert Hartley, a prominent Chicago psychiatrist, had a weird dream that he was an innkeeper in a tiny little town full of odd and eccentric characters. From a psychology point of view, he was sure that his unconscious mind was creating weird and unusual people in need of his services, but as the dreams continued, the inn and its layout started to become much more vivid. He was also starting to find himself accompanied in the dream by two beautiful young ladies much to the consternation of his real life brunette wife, Emily Hartley. She interpreted her husband’s dreams as an unconscious desire for a much overdue vacation. Her family even recommended a favorable little inn in the middle of Vermont. As Dr. Hartley arrived, he recognized the inn. It was the same one from his dream!

While the eccentricity in the population of the town didn’t exist, Dr. Hartley realized he had a very uncanny knowledge of the inn’s history and path. A well-educated man, he was not one who had given psychic phenomenon or the paranormal much attention, but for the first time in his life, he was striving for a logical explanation even as he asked about the body buried in the basement. Morbidity aside, he learned that the body of Sara Newton had been accused as a witch in the early Eighteenth Century and buried under the inn when she was refused a Christian burial.

In an area so full of legends and tall tales, Norwich’s donation to the list is the old and atmospheric Stratford Inn, which as one guest put it, “if ever a place deserved to be haunted, it deserved to be so.” Standing empty for over ten or twelve years, Richard and Joanna Loudon purchased the inn in 1982 as a investment with plans on restoring it into a home but they were thrust into the inn-keeping business as a lark. They never experienced anything they could not explain, but George Utley, whose family has been caretakers for the inn for over 200 years, has always believed that there was something uniquely special about the place.

“I’d be working on the furnace or a light fixture and I’d feel someone hovering over me.” Now retired, Utley still enjoys spilling yarns on the historic old house. “I’d walk through turning off lights and they come back on behind me. Sometimes, footsteps like someone rushing up behind me to get my attention would get me to turn around, but no one would ever be there. It was simple stuff like that, but I never mentioned these things to the Loudons because I didn’t want them to think I was crazy.”

A large figure of a man, George Utley is basically a rural John Wayne. He’s a simple-minded yet earnest and hard-working person with a good amount of education. His main joy in life is the joy he receives from a well-done job. He’s a hard man to scare because he is so level-headed which is possibly why he gets a kick out of the the things that have occurred in the Stratford. He recalls more than a few guests who checked out in the middle of the night. One man asked for a cup of coffee after midnight to sooth his frazzled nerves because he thought someone had jumped in bed with him. One couple complained about a lady who wandered into their room in the night. More than a few have commented that someone has been tapping at their door or that the taps have been turning on by themselves.

“I think just about every faucet in this place has been replaced because of a defect that causes them to turn themselves on between one and five o’clock in the morning.” Utley jokes. “I know it’s impossible, but Dick sure believed it was possible.”

Leslie Vanderkellan was the first maid to work for the Loudons. She shared cooking duties and did most of the maid duties as she went to college nearby. She once told George about a phantom lady who once crossed the top landing. Often thinking it was one of the guests, she’d carry on her work, but then she noticed that this blonde in a long white dress was appearing everywhere. She was being seen in the attic, the basement and even crossing the backyard near the brook that borders the property. When she asked George about how long this guest had been staying, he told her it was just the ghost.

“She quit that same week.” Utley adds with a laugh.

“Dick and Joanna never had much to do with the ghost.” George continues. “Oh, I’m sure they noticed and saw things, but they probably just ignored them or had me fix things, which was quite often.” George clears his throat as he recalls stories. “I recall Dick once told me that he went down in the middle of the night to get a piece of pie or something for bed and as he crossed the dining room, he saw a lovely young lady sitting by the window. He offered her a cup of coffee and a piece of whatever he was having, gave it to her and had a nice conversation with her on the history of the inn. They broke it up after, oh, I guess an hour or so the way he puts it, and left the dishes in the sink. As he crosses his way back out, the young lady is gone, but he’s enchanted by her, I guess, because in the morning, he tries to introduce her to Joanna and there’s no such guest in the inn matching the young lady’s description. After that, I had a bit of fun with him about how the girl must have been Sara from the basement.”

History: Built in or around 1774, the Stratford Inn was originally known as the Waybury Inn and had been constructed on the foundation of the old Newton House from 1755. Being on the old stage route, many legendary and historical personages are reputed to have stayed there from John Hancock to President James Madison. There is also a rumor that the inn was covertly used as a brothel during the Revolutionary War. Utley’s ancestors arrived in Norwich in 1799 and started their career as contractors and builders. They built much of the structures in town; George’s grandfather designed and built the bell tower of the church.

Sometime in the 1840s, the Waybury was renamed the Stratford, presumably after people who acquired it. It stayed busy until the end of the stagecoach era and then closed down. When the first paved road in town brought more motorists through town in the early Twentieth Century, the interest to reopen the inn became obvious.

Accordingly, the haunting stories first started in 1969 when Ned and Gloria Tate owned the Stratford, but they weren’t very good in managing the place and sold it to Scolari Realty who in turn sold it to the Loudons in 1982. They ran the place very successfully until Dick’s wife, Joanna, passed away. He tried managing it on his own for a while, but then sold it to Bill and Ruth Knickerbocker, who had been close friends and neighbors.

George retired in 1995; his nephew Thomas took over his full time duties.

Identity of Ghosts: “Supposedly, the ghost is Sara Newton who was hung as a witch in 1755.” George replies. “Denied a Christian burial, she was buried in the basement of her house and after it was knocked down, the inn was constructed on the pre-existing foundation. You can still see her marker down there today, however, if you read the historical church records, you get the idea that she was really the victim of a backwards, superstitious people who accused her of crazy things, like turning a boy into a badger. She had been a loyal churchgoer and a midwife, but because she used strange new ways to take care of her children, she was called a witch and hanged for her beliefs. You get the idea that she’s a very harmless and tender spirit reaching out to her modern descendants across time and space.”

Because of a passing resemblance to Dick Loudon, Dr. Bob Hartley decided to trace his family tree back and see if there were any Loudons on it. Not only did he find that they both shared an ancestor, he also discovered that that ancestor had been a native of Norwich in 1763. The ancestor had been Sara Newton’s son, Robert Newton.

But what about the other blonde in Dr. Hartley’s dream?

“In 1999, while the Knickerbockers were having breakfast, some guests came through and were checked into a room.” Utley continues. “Their appearance in the room certainly rattled Bill and Ruthie, and they described a woman who resembled Joanna Loudon having checked them in. It sounded incredible, but there was the entry as proof in the guest book - in hand writing exactly like Joanna’s!”

Source/Comments: “Newhart” TV Series (Episodes “Miss Newton is A’Mould’Ring In Her Grave” and “The Stratford Horror Picture Show”) - Hauntings based on the Buxton Inn located in Granville, Ohio and the Hardin House in Clermont, Florida. Location and accommodations based on the Waybury Inn located in Middlebury, Vermont.

Dr. Robert Hartley from “The Bob Newhart Show.” CBS-TV (1972-1978)