General Wayne Investigation

Location: General Wayne Inn, Montgomery Ave, Merion, PA

Date:      Friday afternoon, July 19, 2002 - 2:00pm to 4:30pm

Investigators present: Hillary M., Paul M., Shonda A., Robert H. and Jonathan H. (guest investigator)

Equipment: RCA digital voice recorder, Olympus C-3000 digital camera, Sony digital video camera with Nightshot, Pentax PC-550 35mm camera, Extech EMF meter, Kodak DC280 digital camera, Tri-Field analog EMF meter and Olympus 2000 Digital Voice Recorder, Sony Digital-8 Handycam, Pentax zoom 90-WR 35mmcamera, Extech IR thermometer


History:    The original building was built in 1709.    In the late 1990s, one of the partners who had taken ownership of the General Wayne was murdered in the third floor office. After the murder, the Inn sat empty for two years. In 2000, to assure that the Inn would keep it’s “longest consecutive running inn” status, concerned neighbors ate a box lunch inside the dining room. In 2001, the inn was re-opened for business by Frank Cacciutti, owner of the noted 1738 Seven Stars Inn in Phoenixville, PA.  

I had been waiting for the inn to re-open after the murders, and stumbled across the website one day while looking for the phone number to the Seven Stars Inn in Phoenixville. As it turned out, we conducted our investigation just two days before the General Wayne Inn closed its doors again.  

Sadly, on July 21, 2002, the General Wayne Inn was closed once again. Its future is now in question.

Click here for  more details about the General Wayne's history

Haunted History:  

The building has played host to a number of people over the years, including Edgar Allen Poe, who frequented the tavern when he lived in Philadelphia.  A plaque on the wall near Poe’s favorite table commemorates the visits Poe made to the tavern.   nbsp;

The current employees of the General Wayne Inn have not had a plethora of experiences, but they have had a few. The hostess, Lauren, actually saw a door in the Ladies bathroom open by itself, and heard voices in that room. At least one young man has seen a shadowy figure in the back stairwell. There is a chandelier hanging from the ceiling at the top of the steps. Every now and then, a single crystal will swing on that chandelier. The rest of the crystals remain motionless, but that particular crystal will swing slightly, and sometimes violently. This is rumored to be a harbinger of heightened paranormal activity in the Inn. There is a light in the basement which often flickers. The receptacle has been tested, and the light bulb has been changed, yet still, it flickers quite often. The witnesses don’t hang around to see what will happen next. There’s also a light in the attic that won’t work. Once again, they have tested the socket, but no light bulb will work in it. When they first re-opened the Inn, the manager, Mike, had brought a large, heavy mirror from the Seven Stars Inn to hang in the General Wayne. He decided to hang it at the top of the stairs to the second floor dining rooms. He bought some Molly bolts, and was careful to hang it very securely, as the mirror was so large, he was afraid it would really hurt someone if it fell. When he was done, he could practically hang off of it without budging it. The next morning, when he came in, the mirror was smashed all over the floor. He figured that the ghosts just didn’t like the mirror in that spot. One night, while closing, Mike was upstairs in his third floor office working on some paperwork. He heard what sounded like someone coming up the stairs, so he rolled back his chair to see who was approaching, but he saw no one. He went back to work, but then heard the attic door slam. So he walked out of his office to se what was going on, but again, no one was there. The attic door was a hard door to close, and there were no windows open to allow the wind to blow it shut, so he went downstairs to ask the employees if someone was looking for him. When he got downstairs, he saw them all sitting at the bar, except the dishwasher, who was finishing up some dishes. He asked who came upstairs looking for him, and they stated that they hadn’t moved from the bar. When he walked into the kitchen, the dishwasher looked quite frightened. He then told Mike that he had seen a figure go up the back staircase. By that time, Mike had enough and gathered everybody up, set the alarm, and left.

Investigation:  We arrived at the inn at 2 pm. When we entered the building, a couple members of our group felt immediately drawn to the large, dark, dining room behind the bar. There was something about that room when looking into it from the bar area which made us uneasy.  The building was filled with people hustling around to ready the place for opening at 4:30 pm. There was loud music coming from the kitchen and heavy traffic outside the Inn.    The PRSNA team was extremely grateful for this unusual opportunity, although a few staff members were making light of our investigation by feigning spooky sounds, so the environment was less than ideal.      We each began to do our separate jobs of mapping, interviewing, taking background EMF and tri-field readings, and taking control pictures. I worked my way around the bar taking EMF readings, and then moved into the dining room in which the apparition of Edgar Allen Poe has been seen. As I moved through the doorway, the EMF meter shot up to 3.3.  I stopped in front of the window, just inside the doorway, and watched as the meter fluctuated between 3.3 and 4.2. I then stepped forward, turned around, and took a picture of the doorway. The picture turned out to be quite odd. Everything on my side of the doorway was quite clear … everything on the other side of the doorway was completely blurry. Immediately after taking the blurry picture, I shot off another for comparison. The second picture was completely clear, and I took note that the EMF meter had fallen back to a background reading of 1.2. From there, I moved upstairs to continue taking readings. Robert joined me on the second floor with his tri-field meter. When we came back downstairs, I told him about my strange experience in the doorway. I moved into that same doorway to reenact what happened for him. As I was standing there right inside the doorway explaining what transpired, I watched my EMF meter go back up to 4.0. Once again, I immediately stepped back and took a picture. The whole picture turned out to be blurry, and a small orb was on the ceiling, giving me the impression that it had just moved through the doorway. Robert then stood in the doorway and I took a series of several pictures. All turned out to be clear.   By that time (2:30 pm), everyone was finished taking readings and interviewing, so we decided to head into the big dining room behind the bar.   I set up my video camera to focus on the doorway in the Edgar Allen Poe room while we were in the main dining room..  Unfortunately we were unable to get any real recordings in the big dining room because of the level of noise, but we did get some orb interaction. It seemed that the area of the dining room, which led into the kitchen, was the main area of activity. We got several bright orb pictures in front of a British flag hanging on the wall there.

At 2:55, I moved my video camera into the big dining room on the first floor, and we headed up to the second floor dining room to try a recording session. This room was stifling hot at an average air temperature of 90 degrees.    One item of interest occurred in this room   At one point I was able to track an orb that moved across the room.   

At 3:04 we moved next door  into the General Washington dining room on the second floor, adjacent to the large dining room.. The average temperature here was 83 degrees, and although it was quiet, we obtained no EVPs or positive pictures.

At 3:24, I moved my video camera to the stairway leading to the second floor, Robert placed his audio recorder in the Ladies’ room, and we moved into the Edgar Alan Poe room on the first floor.  A few minutes later, Mike, the manager, came in to let Shonda know that he was available to be interviewed. We did not get any results in this room, so the rest of us moved back into the main dining room on the first floor while Shonda interviewed Mike at the bar. Once again, we got several orb shots in the area of the doorway leading to the kitchen.    The recording from the ladies room yielded some unidentified noises, which sounded like they occurred inside the ladies room, but the level of activity at the adjacent bar called the results into question; the recordings have been omitted.   We were about to leave at 4pm, when Paul asked Mike if he would mind if we went down into the basement. This is the area rumored to be the most haunted in the General Wayne Inn. Unfortunately, we did not get any pictures or video of the Hessian soldiers who are supposed to reside there.   We did get one EVP that sounds like "Nat" or "that", and a number of questionable sounds.   Due to the proximity of the basement to the kitchen area, the analysis of the recordings from the basement  was inconclusive.   

At 4:30, we thanked our host, and left the premises.


Conclusion: We did obtain one moving orb picture, several high EMF readings in the Inn and a few EVPs, so we can conclude that something paranormal is probably going on there. I am the only one in the group, however, who had any type of strange experience that day. We did not obtain a single orb on infrared video, but we were lucky enough to get a couple EVPs.  Based purely on what we obtained during the investigation, we must conclude that although the General Wayne Inn seems to be haunted, it is not a very active haunting, and we found no evidence of the 17 spirits, which reportedly reside there. We would love to have an opportunity to try again though, when the Inn is quiet and relatively empty.   Future investigations should include the third floor, which we did not investigate.

Special thanks to Mike Bolognese, manager of the General Wayne Inn, for his hospitality and for allowing us to investigate the building.

Submitted by Hillary Murdoch. This report is a compilation of all reports submitted.