2015 (APPROXIMATE)

“Have you ever seen Martha at the Grafton Inn?” the beer delivery guy asked me. I told him I hadn’t, but that I was familiar with the place. Built in 1805, it was once the Hotel Kirby, and it’s hard to miss if you pass through the common in Grafton. It’s on the historic register and is the oldest standing structure there, and currently houses a restaurant called Hunter’s Tap and Grille.

The beer delivery guy chuckled, and told me “One day I brought in part of a delivery of beer through the basement bulkhead, and this woman was standing there in the basement. I said hi and turned away – then I realized that she was dressed in weirdly old fashioned clothing, and the basement there isn’t the kind of place you’d just be hanging around. When I turned around to look, she was gone!”

He further informed me that the place was haunted by a woman in 19th century garb. I had never heard of this Grafton Inn ghost before, but a quick Google search will tell you that a spectral woman wearing a hoop skirt has been seen often enough there that she was given a name – Martha – though no-one knows who she might have been in life, or what her story was. Most accounts place her in the overnight rooms of the still-operating Inn, specifically in Room 7. So perhaps the beer man wasn’t putting me on… I still haven’t met her, but perhaps someday I’ll book Room 7 and see if she can confirm his story!

Submitted  by A.P. Strange, Liminal Ambassador