HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
A 1780s Old Mystic house that ran as a bookshop then an inn, cited in Mystic ghost-tour lore
52 Main Street, Old Mystic, CT 06372
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
The property operated as the Old Mystic Inn until it closed; reporting indicates the house is now offered as a short-term rental rather than a traditional inn. Confirm current status before planning a stay.
Access
Limited Access
Two-story 1780s house with period staircases; no elevator.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1784 · 1780s Old Mystic house · Site of the Old Mystic Book Shop (1959-1986) · Former bed-and-breakfast (opened 1987)
The house dates to the 1780s, built alongside a hatter's shop. John Denison bought the land in 1783 and sold it to his son Nathan in 1785; Nathan sold it to his brother-in-law John Baldwin in 1787, and the property changed hands several more times before Nicholas Williams acquired it in 1799. It sits on Main Street in Old Mystic, the older inland village distinct from the downtown Mystic waterfront.
In 1959, Charles Vincent bought the property and ran the Old Mystic Book Shop out of the house until 1986, at one point stocking some 20,000 old books and maps. After Vincent's tenure the building was renovated for hospitality, and on June 25, 1987 it opened as the Old Mystic Inn, a bed-and-breakfast. A Carriage House was added in 1988, doubling the guest rooms.
The inn operated for years as part of the Mystic-area lodging scene before closing. Recent listings indicate the house is now offered as a short-term vacation rental rather than a staffed inn, and the dedicated inn operation is no longer active. The building's long run as a bookshop and then a B&B, and the layered ownership going back to the 1780s, are documented in local building histories; its haunted reputation comes from ghost-tour tradition rather than the historical record.
Sources
Mystic-area ghost-tour operators and haunted-Mystic roundups have listed the Old Mystic Inn among the city's haunted lodgings, describing reported ghostly guests and the kind of unexplained noises and presences that attach to old New England houses. The lore fits the building's age and its decades as a B&B in a village full of seafaring history.
The account, however, is thin: it appears in tour-operator listings without a corroborating independent source, and it lacks the specific named-figure tradition that anchors better-documented Mystic hauntings like Whitehall Mansion's Lucy. With the inn now closed and the property operating as a short-term rental, there is also no active hospitality operation to generate or confirm new guest accounts.
For those reasons this entry is held for review. The house's documented history — 1780s construction, a long second life as a bookshop, and a stretch as a bed-and-breakfast — is solid; the haunting is local tradition rather than corroborated report.
The 1780s house at 52 Main Street in Old Mystic ran as a bed-and-breakfast until it closed; it is cited in Mystic-area ghost-tour lore as a haunted hospitality site. There is no public-tour program. The building can be seen from Main Street; confirm any current short-term-rental availability through the listing host rather than through a defunct inn site.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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