Seven Stars Inn

The Seven Stars Inn as a potentially haunted site gets very confusing very quickly. There were several inns in the area that carried the name of the Seven Stars at various times. This was the common practice of years ago. The name of an inn went with the inn-keeper and they tended to move around a bit

One reason for ghosts at the Seven Stars Inn is supposedly due to a murder in 1837. Rachel Parker was the widow of tavern-keeper Benjamin Brownback. Her murder is still unsolved and could well be the background for a haunting. But any such haunting would not be at the Seven Stars Inn, because this was never her home. Her murder took place down the road a bit.

About 1736, Gerhard Brumbach opened an inn on what is now Route 23 in East Vincent township. That building, once known as the Brownback Inn, still stands at the intersection of Route 23 and Ellis Woods Road. It was an active inn until 1845.

About a mile to the east, Michael Cypher opened his own inn and store in 1754. That eventually became the modern day Seven Stars Inn. He called it Cypher’s Ancient Inn. It became the Seven Stars when innkeeper John Baker gave it that name in 1804. The name changed a few times for the next few decades. By the late 1830’s the name stabilized as the Seven Stars Inn. And the name stuck.

But the Inn is Still Haunted, Just Not by Rachel

A medium who visited the inn told of a male spirit in a back bedroom that now serves as a dining room. And a worker at the inn told of seeing a young person wearing what appeared to be riding clothes. But neither of these sound anything like an 85-year-old murder victim. We’ll have to keep looking for a cause for these, since it’s more likely that Rachel is haunting her old home about a mile to the west.