HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
An 1875 Tilton hotel where guests report a girl named Laura, investigated by Syfy's Ghost Hunters in 2014.
255 Main St, Tilton, NH 03276
Research updated August 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Themed guest rooms at competitive nightly rates, plus a full-service restaurant and pub on the first floor; reservations taken by phone.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic downtown building with a restaurant, pub, and guest rooms.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1875 · Downtown Tilton hotel operating continuously since 1875 · Rebuilt after three major fires roughly a century apart · Featured on Syfy's 'Ghost Hunters,' season 6
The building that is now the Tilton Inn opened in 1875 in downtown Tilton, a mill town on the Winnipesaukee River in New Hampshire's Lakes Region. Over its history the inn has counted Thomas Edison and Henry Ford among its guests, per the property's own account, reflecting Tilton's role as a stop for travelers moving between Boston and the White Mountains in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The building has burned and been rebuilt three times, with roughly a century separating each fire. Local reporting on the property's history puts the combined death toll from the fires and from disease outbreaks tied to the inn at as many as eight people, including three children, though a full documented accounting of each incident is not publicly available.
The inn later operated for years under the name The 1875 Inn at Tilton before recent branding reverted to the Tilton Inn. It today combines a small number of individually themed guest rooms with a first-floor restaurant and pub, Onions Pub and Restaurant, in downtown Tilton.
Sources
According to the inn's own account and local press, a girl named Laura died as a child in one of the building's three fires while her family ran the inn in the 1800s; the room now called the Sanborn Room is identified as where her family lived and where she is most associated. Guests and staff describe her presence as gentle rather than threatening — reports center on the feeling of hair being stroked while sleeping, doors closing on their own, and a sense of being watched, concentrated in the Sanborn Room and in the pub and restaurant areas downstairs.
Syfy's 'Ghost Hunters' investigated the inn for the episode 'Uninvited Guests,' which aired December 16, 2014. The TAPS team recorded electronic voice phenomena, including a male voice saying 'help' and a girl's voice saying 'daddy,' and documented what they described as a bed moving on its own in the Sanborn Room during a session; a mysterious shape reported by dozens of onlookers in the dining room went unexplained. The team's own research into the property's history turned up three fires rather than the two commonly cited, with a combined death toll they put at eight people, including three children.
Local coverage, including a November 2025 feature in the Laconia Daily Sun, describes the Laura story as an ongoing part of the inn's identity around Halloween, with staff and repeat guests continuing to report activity in the Sanborn Room and the pub.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Overnight stays in the inn's individually themed rooms, including the Sanborn Room, where a girl named Laura is said to have died in one of the building's historic fires and where guests most often report her presence.
Dine or drink in the first-floor restaurant and pub inside the historic 1875 building without booking an overnight stay.
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