Mount Washington Hotel, New Hampshire: History and the Princess Ghost Stories

Northeast US Haunted Hotels
The white Mount Washington Hotel with red roofs and two towers at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, seen across a golf course and autumn foliage with the slopes of Mount Washington behind it

The Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, is a white Y-shaped grand hotel with red roofs, built in the early 1900s below the mountain it is named for. It is a National Historic Landmark and the place where delegates met in 1944 to plan the postwar monetary system. It is also known for a gentle ghost story about the woman who owned it for decades, “the Princess,” and for Room 314. The documented history is strong. The ghost stories come from a handful of travel pieces and staff recollections, and this post separates the two.

What the record shows

The hotel was built from 1900 to 1902 by Joseph Stickney, who had made a fortune in coal, and was designed by architect Charles Alling Gifford, according to Wikipedia and the National Park Service’s landmark nomination form. The form describes a wooden Spanish Renaissance style building with two towers and a porch that runs around the whole structure. Wikipedia says Stickney brought in 250 Italian artisans for the masonry. The sources give two opening dates in 1902: Wikipedia says July 28, and the nomination form says the hotel opened to the public on August 1.

Joseph Stickney died suddenly in December 1903, as White Mountain History and Spookt, a haunted-places site that cites New York Times coverage, both report. His widow, Carolyn Stickney, kept the hotel and spent her summers there. Wikipedia says she added the Sun Dining Room, more guest rooms and a chapel honoring her husband, which White Mountain History says opened in 1906 as the Church of the Transfiguration. Spookt says she married a French prince in London in July 1913, lived mostly in Europe afterward, and kept returning to Bretton Woods. She died in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 2, 1936, and was buried in Concord, New Hampshire, according to Spookt. White Mountain History says her will provided for a mausoleum there for her and her husband. The sources spell her first name both Carolyn and Caroline; most use Carolyn.

After her death the hotel passed to her nephew, and it closed in 1942 during World War II, according to Wikipedia. In July 1944 it hosted the Bretton Woods Conference. The nomination form says about 730 delegates from many nations met there and produced the agreements that created the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The hotel was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986, and Omni Hotels took over its management in 2009 and bought the resort in 2015, according to Wikipedia.

The legend

The ghost story centers on Carolyn Stickney, called “the Princess.” The Boston Herald reported in 2013 that guests have described a woman in Victorian dress in the hallways, light tapping on doors with no one outside, and objects that move. The most common report, it says, is in Room 314, where guests say they see a woman sitting on the edge of the four-poster bed. The hotel’s own history says her four-poster maple bed is in that room. Paste magazine calls her the best-known of the hotel’s ghosts. A WMUR report from 2023 says staff call the ghost “the princess” and that the hotel appears on Historic Hotels of America’s list of the most haunted historic hotels.

The Boston Globe, in a 2013 account of a stay, says that staff still set a table in the main dining room in her memory every night. Its writer was given Room 314, learned that the TV series Ghost Hunters had filmed there, and was not visited by anything that night. The writer found that the ghost story “only added to the hotel’s allure.”

Paste published a longer account in 2022 by a travel writer who attended a weekend of ghost hunting run by a paranormal-travel company. The writer says the hotel’s head of housekeeping told the writer that the two televisions in Room 314 tend to turn on without a remote, and that a nightstand drawer once opened by itself four times in a row while a guest was in the room. The writer describes a late-night session with about twenty people in the room, with knocks, flickering lights and the drawer opening again. The writer also says a recording captured a woman’s voice saying “Go to sleep,” and says they are not a believer.

What the record does not support

No source documents a death at the hotel connected to the ghost story. Carolyn Stickney died in Providence, and the sources describe her as someone who loved the hotel and its parties, so the story is of a friendly host rather than a tragedy. The woman in the stories was a real person, and the stories are told with affection.

The evidence for the haunting is thin. The Paste account is one writer’s experience at an organized ghost-hunting event, with a primed audience and no independent examination of the furniture. One speaker at that event suggested that places “get haunted the more people investigate them.” In the Herald, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing called the Princess sightings “more of an attraction,” and the article says “99.9 percent” of visitors have nothing unusual happen. The Globe writer saw nothing. The 2023 list and the television episodes are publicity and entertainment, not corroboration.

Some details are disputed or uncorroborated. Paste says the hotel was built for Carolyn as a wedding gift, but no other source says so, and she married Stickney in the early 1890s (sources give 1892, 1893 and 1894), years before construction began. The Boston Herald and Spookt differ on the spelling of her name and her second husband’s name. None of these changes the history above, but the retellings are loose.

Visiting

The hotel operates as a resort and is on U.S. Route 302 at the northern end of Crawford Notch, about six miles east of Twin Mountain, according to Wikipedia. The Herald says guests can request Room 314, which holds the four-poster bed the hotel associates with Carolyn Stickney. The hotel’s own history calls it the Princess Suite and says the ground-floor Princess Room was her private dining room. A portrait of Carolyn Stickney hangs in the corridor near the front desk, according to the Herald. No rates, hours or tour schedules are given here because they change. Check with the hotel for availability, any history or ghost tours and its current policies.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Mount Washington Hotel haunted?

It is said to be. The hotel, Historic Hotels of America and several writers describe the ghost of Carolyn Stickney, known as the Princess, and guests have reported seeing her in Room 314. There is no documented evidence, and the hotel’s marketing director has called the stories “more of an attraction.”

Which room is haunted at the Mount Washington Hotel?

Room 314 is the one most often named. The hotel says her four-poster maple bed is there, and Historic Hotels of America says guests most often report seeing her sitting on its edge.

Did anyone die at the Mount Washington Hotel?

No death at the hotel is documented in the sources reviewed. Joseph Stickney died at his New York home in 1903, and Carolyn died in Providence in 1936.

When did the Mount Washington Hotel open?

In 1902. Wikipedia gives July 28 and the National Park Service form gives August 1. The sources do not say why they differ.

More haunted hotels

Other haunted New England inns on this site include Colonial Inn, Concord, MA and Kennebunk Inn, Kennebunk, ME.

Sources

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Top image: Mount Washington Hotel Bretton Woods October 2021 002, King of Hearts, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons