The Tilton Inn

A guest in the Sanborn Room at the Tilton Inn woke to a twelve-year-old girl jumping clean over his head on her way out. They call her Laura.

A male guest checked into the Sanborn Room at the Tilton Inn and woke up to a small figure jumping clean over his head on her way out of the room. He never saw her face. He saw her enough to know she was a girl, maybe twelve, and he didn't stay a second night.

That is one of the more theatrical stories from the Tilton Inn, but the bulk of what Laura does is gentler than that. She strokes guests' hair while they are trying to sleep. She opens and closes doors. Small objects travel from nightstands to dressers overnight. The current owner told the Laconia Daily Sun that even during COVID shutdowns, with the inn empty, housekeepers would come in the next morning and find things moved.

The inn sits in the small riverside town of Tilton, about twenty miles north of Concord, and has operated under a few names: the 1875 Inn, the Olive Branch Tavern, and now simply the Tilton Inn. The current building dates to 1875, rebuilt after a fire destroyed an earlier rooming house on the same site in the late 1800s. The fire is where Laura enters the story. A twelve-year-old named Laura Sanborn, whose family ran or lodged at the inn, was killed in the blaze. The Sanborn Room, upstairs, is named for her and remains the inn's most-requested room.

Her story is thin on documentation. The Sanborn name ties to a real local family, but specific records of Laura's death have been hard to track down outside of the inn's own material. Sources agree on the age, the fire, the room name. They disagree on the exact year, which is part of why the inn tells the story carefully and leaves some of it open.

What is better documented is the inn's turn on television. In September 2010, the TAPS team from Ghost Hunters filmed an investigation at the Tilton Inn for Season 6, Episode 13, 'Uninvited Guests,' which aired September 8, 2010. The TAPS lead told the owners at the time that paranormal activity at the inn was 'definitely' present, and the episode focused heavily on the Sanborn and Tilton rooms. The segment isn't the subtlest piece of TV the show produced, but it put the inn on every haunted-hotel list in the region and drove bookings for years afterward.

Guests who have stayed in the Sanborn Room describe a pattern. A light weight sits at the end of the bed. They wake up with the sense that someone is in the room and then feel hair being touched, not pulled. Several women have mentioned jewelry rearranged on the dresser overnight. One couple said a door they had carefully closed before bed was standing fully open at 3 a.m. with nothing between them and the empty hallway.

What makes the Tilton Inn unusual is how little Laura seems to want from the guests. She doesn't scream, doesn't scare, doesn't break anything. She plays. The male guest who got jumped over is the outlier. The inn leans into that personality in its marketing, which works because the ghost cooperates.

The Sanborn Room books out first every October. Housekeeping says Laura likes a full house.