General Lewis Inn

Three ghosts haunt the General Lewis Inn: the Lady in White watches guests from Room 208 (her portrait hangs in the room but nobody knows who she is), a little girl cries and laughs on the second floor, and Reuben, an enslaved man hanged on June 28, 1861, for a slave revolt that never happened, occupies the dining room.

Nobody knows who the woman in the portrait is. The painting hangs in Room 208 of the General Lewis Inn in Lewisburg, and nobody knows where it came from, either. Staff can't trace it to any previous owner or donor. But guests who sleep beneath it keep waking up to a translucent woman in white standing at the foot of the bed, watching them. Her expression isn't angry. It's sad.

She's called the Lady in White, and she's the inn's most famous resident. Room 208 is the room people request by number.

The General Lewis Inn has been operating since 1929, when Randolph K. and Mary Milton Hock purchased the old Withrow House with the idea of turning it into a hotel celebrating early Appalachian craftsmanship. The east wing, including the dining room, kitchen, and several guest rooms, is the original brick residence built by John H. Withrow in the early 1800s. The Hocks spent years collecting antiques from the Greenbrier Valley and surrounding counties, filling the inn with furniture, tools, and decorative objects from the 1800s. The place feels like a time capsule because it basically is one.

The inn was named for General Andrew Lewis, born in Ireland in 1720, who led Virginia militia at the Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774 and gave Lewisburg its name.

Three ghosts occupy the building, and they stick to their territory. The Lady in White stays in Room 208. A little girl's presence concentrates in Rooms 206 and 208. Guests and staff hear both crying and laughing, sometimes within minutes of each other in the same room. The laughter sounds playful, like a child hiding in a game. The crying carries real distress. No child connected to the building's history has been identified as the source.

Two investigators from HPIR (a paranormal research group) spent a night in Suite 202. Both woke at different times to see a figure standing by their bed. They described it independently: thin, a little taller than the back of a rocking chair, wearing brown, facing away from them. It disappeared shortly after each woman noticed it. Their descriptions matched without consultation.

The third ghost is the most troubling. His name is Reuben. He was one of John Withrow's enslaved men, and he was hanged on June 28, 1861, for allegedly conspiring a slave revolt that was scheduled for April 9, 1861. The revolt never happened. The 'rise' Reuben was supposedly planning would have included the massacre of white people in Lewisburg after Confederate soldiers departed. He was executed for a conspiracy that existed only in the fears of a slaveholding community on the brink of civil war.

Reuben's ghost occupies the dining room, the area where he was reportedly hanged. A paranormal investigator witnessed a napkin rise from a dining room table and fall to the floor with no draft or vibration to account for it. Others describe pockets of cold air and a heavy, oppressive feeling that guests consistently interpret as guilt or sorrow, emotions that seem to belong to the room rather than to anyone sitting in it.

Rooms 202, 206, and 208 are consistently identified as the most active spots. The upper floor concentrates whatever energy is present, and guests who want to encounter the inn's spirits book these rooms deliberately. The inn accommodates the requests without fanfare.

Lewisburg is one of West Virginia's most concentrated paranormal zones. The Greenbrier Ghost (the only case in American legal history where a ghost's testimony helped convict a murderer), the Old Stone Presbyterian Church, and Carnegie Hall are all within walking distance. The General Lewis Inn fits naturally into that landscape. It also has the Thistle Lounge, a cozy bar where you can process whatever happened upstairs over a glass of wine.