The Shaker Inn

The Shaker Inn in Enfield was built as the largest Shaker building ever. In 1863, a father shot the elder who refused to return his daughters.

Guests at The Shaker Inn sometimes hear a gunshot outside. There is no gunshot. Then a figure, described as a man stumbling as if he's been hit, crosses the grounds near the Great Stone Dwelling before vanishing. Witnesses describe him clutching at his stomach.

The story he's reliving is specific and dated. On July 18, 1863, a Civil War veteran named Thomas Weir shot Caleb Dyer, the presiding elder of the Enfield Shaker community, at point-blank range in the stomach. Dyer lingered in agony for two days and died early on July 20. Weir's grievance was his daughters. Before enlisting in the Fifth New Hampshire Volunteers in 1861, he had placed his two girls, Ellen (nine) and Sarah (ten), with the Shakers as indentured servants. His wife was ill. He couldn't care for them alone. When he came home, he wanted them back. The Shakers refused, saying he had signed away his parental rights. Weir tried reasoning, lawyers, and at least one abduction attempt. None of it worked. On July 18, he pulled out a pistol and shot the man who had told him no. It remains the only recorded murder in the peaceable history of the Enfield community.

The inn sits inside the Great Stone Dwelling, which the Shakers built between 1837 and 1841 and which is the largest Shaker residence ever constructed anywhere. The building separated brothers and sisters onto different staircases and opposite sides of the hallways, a physical expression of the celibate life the sect required. Enfield was founded on the shores of Lake Mascoma in 1793 as the ninth Shaker community, called Chosen Vale. Like every Shaker village, it depended on conversion and the adoption of orphans to stay alive. By 1923, there weren't enough Shakers left, and the community sold the property. The Enfield Shaker Museum bought the Great Stone Dwelling in 1997 and opened it as an inn the next year.

Guests describe the murder sounds as the signature experience: the phantom shot, the stumbling figure, the feeling of a presence in their room when the room is visibly empty. The Souhegan Paranormal Investigators formally investigated the building and others on the Museum grounds in August 2011 and documented anomalies in their recordings and photographs. The Museum now runs annual Ghost Encounters tours in October.

There's a real irony here. The Shakers were deeply spiritualist themselves. Their Era of Manifestations in the 1840s was defined by direct mediumship, singing in tongues, and drawings received from the spirit world. A Shaker community wouldn't have found a lingering presence alarming. They would have expected him. Caleb Dyer, shot trying to refuse a father's demand, never made it past the threshold where it happened.