HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
An 1883 Cape May Victorian inn where the original owner was shot and killed in Philadelphia the summer his family moved in; innkeepers and guests report his restless presence ever since.
308 Stockton Avenue, Cape May, NJ 08204
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Overnight room rates vary by season. Rooms and suites available; see bedfordinn.com for current pricing.
Access
Limited Access
Historic Victorian structure with multiple floors and staircases; limited accessibility.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1883 · Cape May National Historic Landmark District · Victorian Resort Architecture · Charles Page Family Vacation Home
Cape May's Victorian architecture dates largely from the 1880s and 1890s, after the 1878 fire that leveled much of the earlier resort district forced a rapid rebuild. The resulting concentration of Victorian structures, largely intact today, earned the town its National Historic Landmark designation.
Charles Page commissioned the home at 308 Stockton Avenue in 1883, part of the same building wave that gave Cape May its distinctive Victorian character. The home was designed as a seasonal getaway for Page and his family during the summer resort season. That first summer, Page sent his family to Cape May while he remained behind in Philadelphia to manage business affairs. He was shot and killed in Philadelphia while his family was in residence at the new house — a violent death that the inn's own history page documents in its account of the property's origins.
The home passed through ownership changes over the following decades and was eventually converted to a bed-and-breakfast. The current operating identity as the Bedford Inn preserves the address as a period-accurate Victorian lodging in Cape May's historic district. The inn's own website maintains a history section that includes the circumstances of Page's death as part of the building's documented record.
The Bedford Inn sits within Cape May's dense ghost-tour ecosystem, which operates multiple competing walking-tour companies and draws visitors specifically for the town's paranormal reputation. Regional travel coverage has identified the inn as one of the addresses most consistently cited by Cape May innkeepers and tour operators.
Sources
The ghost claims at the Bedford Inn center on Charles Page. Because he was killed before completing even one summer in the house he had commissioned, the standard interpretation is that his attachment to the property is unresolved. The inn's history page does not shy away from the story: the death is documented as part of the property's factual record, separate from the paranormal claims that have accumulated around it.
The specific phenomena are mostly auditory and electrical. Innkeepers have described lights switching on in rooms that were off and empty, and televisions turning on without being touched. The upstairs hallway is the most frequently cited location for footsteps — a steady pacing sound described by multiple guests staying in rooms that open onto that hall.
Matador Network's coverage of haunted Cape May includes the Bedford Inn in a roundup of properties with consistent paranormal reputations, noting the footstep and electrical reports as the primary documented phenomena. The Stockton Inns blog, covering haunted hotel options in Cape May, corroborates the inn's place among the town's recognized haunted addresses.
Cape May supports one of the denser ghost-tour ecosystems in New Jersey, and the Bedford Inn's reputation is maintained in part by the walking tours that pass nearby. The consistency of the specific reports — hallway footsteps, lights and electronics activating — across multiple independent accounts strengthens the claim compared to single-source hauntings.
Notable Entities
The inn operates as a classic Cape May B&B in the 1883 Victorian building at 308 Stockton Avenue. Guests are within walking distance of the beach and the Washington Street pedestrian district. The innkeepers have documented the house's paranormal reputation through the property's own history page and in interviews with regional travel and ghost-tour publications.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Cape May, NJ
William Weightman Sr., managing partner of Powers & Weightman and the man who introduced quinine to the American market as an anti-malarial, built a summer cottage at the corner of Franklin and Washington Streets in Cape May around 1850. In 1881 he had it moved to an ocean-view lot, but the farmers he hired discovered the structure was too large to move intact. They cut it in half, moved the sections separately, and found they could not reconnect them. The two buildings were enclosed separately, creating the two adjoining structures that now house the B&B.
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Congress Hall opened in 1816 as a boarding house on the Cape May beachfront, becoming one of the earliest seaside resorts in the United States. The original wooden structure burned in the Great Fire of 1878 and was rebuilt in brick the following year. Four sitting presidents — Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Ulysses S. Grant, and Benjamin Harrison — vacationed here, with Harrison using it as an informal summer White House in 1890 and 1891.
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