HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
A 1971 hotel on a corner that has held inns since 1823, scene of an 1862 killing in the old United States Hotel
1 West Street, Pittsfield, MA 01201
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Standard hotel room rates; see the hotel's website for current pricing.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Modern high-rise hotel with elevators and level entry
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1971 · Continuous hotel site since 1823 · Former location of the United States Hotel · Site of an 1862 killing recorded in regional history · Modern high-rise hotel built 1971
The hotel block at the corner of South and West streets in downtown Pittsfield has been an inn site since 1823, a stretch of ground that has carried a succession of hotels through the city's growth from a Berkshire mill town to a regional center.
By the 1860s the United States Hotel occupied the block. According to regional coverage of Pittsfield's history and ghost lore, a killing took place in the hotel's basement kitchen in September 1862, when a man named William Collins fatally stabbed his wife, Jane. The account is repeated in local 'legends and lore' reporting that draws on the city's nineteenth-century record; it is treated here as a single-publisher claim pending independent confirmation, and Jane Collins is named only as the victim of the crime.
The nineteenth-century hotel is long gone. The current building on the site is a high-rise hotel constructed in 1971, most recently operating as a Crowne Plaza. The modern hotel inherits the corner's long lodging history rather than any structure connected to the 1862 events.
Sources
The ghost stories attached to the hotel describe a shadowy female apparition, cold spots, and disembodied voices reported across several floors of the modern building. The accounts appear in regional haunted-travel coverage of the Berkshires that catalogs Pittsfield's lodging hauntings.
Local tradition connects the activity to the killing said to have occurred on the site in 1862, identifying the apparition with Jane Collins, the woman named as the victim in that account. The figure is described in the lore as a presence rather than a re-enactment, and the reports are the usual hotel mix of a seen figure, temperature changes, and voices.
Both the haunting reports and the underlying 1862 story rest on a single regional outlet's coverage, and the modern building has no structural connection to the nineteenth-century hotel. The haunting is recounted here as unconfirmed lore, and the victim is named with dignity and without any detail beyond what the historical account records.
Notable Entities
Book a room in the high-rise hotel that stands on a downtown corner that has held inns since 1823. The reported activity, a shadowy female apparition, cold spots, and disembodied voices, is local lore attached to the long history of the site rather than a programmed event.
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See current room rates and availability at Crowne Plaza Pittsfield-Berkshires (former United States Hotel site).
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