Glen Ferris Inn

Staff call the ghost 'the Colonel,' a tall, white-bearded figure in Confederate gray who walks through walls, sits in chairs, and plays with the birdbath outside. The inn has stood beside Kanawha Falls since 1839, when Aaron Stockton (whose grandfather signed the Declaration of Independence) opened it to stagecoach traffic.

Staff call him the Colonel. He's tall, skinny, white-bearded, and dressed in Confederate gray. Guests have watched him walk through walls. He sits in chairs and vanishes when addressed. On pleasant days, he plays with the birdbath outside. He behaves less like a haunting and more like a man who owns the place and can't be bothered to explain himself to the living.

The Glen Ferris Inn sits beside Kanawha Falls in Fayette County, where the roar of the river is constant and the building has been hosting travelers since at least 1839. Aaron Stockton, whose grandfather Richard was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, bought the property in 1817 and applied for a liquor license in 1839, formally opening the inn to stagecoach traffic along the James River and Kanawha Turnpike. Stockton ran an empire out of this spot: farming, timbering, sawmills, flatboat building, and one of West Virginia's earliest commercial coal mining operations. The inn was the headquarters.

Known first as Stockton's Tavern, then as the Hawkins Hotel, the building stayed in the Stockton family until 1920, when it was sold to a subsidiary of Union Carbide. The inn prospered until 1874, when the recently completed Chesapeake and Ohio Railway began delivering travelers to the new Kanawha Hotel on the other side of the river, pulling business away.

During the Civil War, the inn served as a U.S. Army quartermaster depot from July through December 1861. Camp Reynolds, a Union camp, was stationed across the river. The building saw soldiers from both sides pass through, and local tradition holds that wounded soldiers were treated inside, though hospital use has not been documented with the same certainty as the quartermaster function.

The Colonel appears most often in the second-story windows, a solid-looking figure gazing out over the falls. People approaching from the road look up and see a face watching them from a room that turns out to be empty. His identity has been debated for generations. He could be a Confederate officer who died during the building's military use, his spirit fixed to the place where he drew his last breath. Or he could be Aaron Stockton himself, the innkeeper who bore the nickname 'Colonel' throughout his life. The ghost's proprietary air (patrolling hallways, watching from upstairs, checking the grounds) suggests an owner, not a guest.

The Colonel isn't alone. A lady in white has been spotted around the property. Children's voices are heard playing when no children are present. Guests have reported necklaces and jewelry being tugged by unseen hands. Late at night, footsteps pace the hallways outside the kitchen, steady and deliberate. Doors that have been firmly closed swing open or slam shut without any vibration or draft. The temperature drops sharply in corridors that are otherwise well heated.

The Supernatural Research Institute (SRI) conducted an investigation at the inn on January 21, 2022, adding the Glen Ferris to the list of locations that have attracted formal paranormal inquiry.

The inn operates today as a hotel and restaurant on Route 60. The dining room overlooks Kanawha Falls, and the sunset view from the tables draws visitors who know nothing about the Colonel. But the rooms upstairs, particularly the second-floor rooms where he keeps his watch, are where the stories come from. The constant roar of the falls creates a wall of white noise that some investigators believe may stimulate or mask communication with the dead. That's a theory worth exactly what you paid for it. The falls are spectacular regardless.