The Shaker Inn

A 24-room inn housed in a building over 150 years old that once belonged to the Enfield Shaker community, decorated in faithful Shaker style.

In May of 1862, Thomas Weir, a local shoemaker described in contemporary accounts as a man of 'intemperate habits,' drove up to the Chosen Vale Shaker community in Enfield, New Hampshire, with a wagon and a gun. He had come for his two youngest daughters. Before enlisting in the Fifth New Hampshire Volunteers in 1861 to fight in the Civil War, Weir had placed the girls with the Shakers, promising never to reclaim them as long as they wished to remain. Discharged with a disability after barely a year of service, Weir returned to Enfield and demanded his children back. Elder Caleb Dyer, the community's spiritual leader, went out to meet him and refused. Weir drew his weapon and shot Dyer in the abdomen. The elder died within forty-eight hours. It was the most violent event in the history of a community devoted to peace, and some say the violence has never entirely left the grounds. The Enfield Shakers founded their ninth community on the shores of Lake Mascoma in 1793 and named it the Chosen Vale. Over the following decades, they built what would become the most architecturally ambitious structure in American Shaker history: the Great Stone Dwelling. Constructed between 1837 and 1841, it is the largest Shaker dwelling ever built, a massive granite structure that housed both men and women in strict separation, with dedicated staircases for the Brothers and the Sisters. The building's sheer size reflected the Enfield community's prosperity, but it also foreshadowed the long decline that would follow. Like all Shaker communities, Enfield depended on conversion and adoption to sustain itself, and as the 19th century wore on, fewer people were drawn to the austere, celibate life the Shakers practiced. The community gradually shrank, and in 1923, the remaining Shakers sold the property. The Enfield Shaker Museum acquired the Great Stone Dwelling in 1997, and the following year it opened to the public as The Shaker Inn and Restaurant. The haunting seems tied to the violence of Weir's act and the subsequent spiritual unease it created. Witnesses staying in the inn report hearing what sounds like a gunshot echoing from outside the building, though no source is ever found. A ghostly figure of a man has been seen stumbling through the grounds as if he has just been shot, his movements halting and pained before he fades from view. Inside the Great Stone Dwelling itself, guests describe an uneasy feeling of being watched when alone in their rooms, a sensation that someone else is present in the space even when it is visually empty. In August 2011, the Souhegan Paranormal Investigators conducted a formal investigation of the Great Stone Dwelling and other buildings at the Enfield Shaker Museum, making recordings and photographs that documented unexplained phenomena. The museum now hosts annual 'Ghost Encounters' tours that explore the site's paranormal reputation within the context of Shaker spiritualism. The Shakers themselves were deeply attuned to the spirit world; their Era of Manifestations in the 1840s was defined by direct communication with the dead. Elder Caleb Dyer was murdered trying to protect two children. The sounds of his final moments, and the restless wandering of a figure who may be Dyer himself, suggest that the most traumatic event in the Chosen Vale's history has left an imprint that two centuries have not erased.