HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
Closed Inn on the Site of a 1769 Colonial Tavern in a South Jersey Crossroads Village
24491 W Main Street, Columbus, NJ 08022
Research updated September 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Exterior viewing only. The restaurant is closed.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1769 · Colonial Tavern History · South Jersey Folklore · Mansfield Township Heritage
The village of Columbus sits in Mansfield Township, Burlington County, in central New Jersey. Local histories record that the area was known as Black Horse Village as early as 1769, taking its name from the Black Horse Tavern that stood at the crossroads. The village was officially renamed Columbus, after Christopher Columbus, in 1827 when a post office was established in the community.
Throughout the nineteenth century, Columbus operated as a working agricultural village. It hosted a large canning factory and was a station on the Delaware and Atlantic railroad line, drawing travelers and farm-goods traffic to its main crossroads.
The Olde Columbus Inne occupied a building at 24491 West Main Street. It operated as a restaurant under multiple names — Columbus Inn and Olde Columbus Inne among them — into the early twenty-first century. Yelp listings show the restaurant marked closed, and Burlington County restaurant inspection records show the last documented inspection as January 22, 2010, indicating the operation had ceased shortly thereafter.
The building still stands and remains a visible landmark on West Main Street. Columbus NJ Ghost Tours, a separately operated walking-tour business, includes the village in its programming.
Sources
The Olde Columbus Inne sits within a regional folklore network rather than a single, well-documented haunting. South Jersey paranormal aggregators describe it as one of the more frequently named haunted buildings in Burlington County, but the underlying claims are folkloric rather than archival.
The most repeated account involves a young 19th-century girl, said to have been an orphan who worked at the inn during its tavern era. Sightings reportedly cluster on the upper floor. A second cluster of reports involves a former jail-cell area inside the building, where unexplained noises have been described by past staff.
A more diffuse local legend ties the inn to the origin story of the Jersey Devil. The Jersey Devil's birth legend is most strongly associated with the Pine Barrens in southern New Jersey, not Burlington County's farm crossroads, and the connection here is best understood as a piece of local oral tradition rather than a documented historical claim. Atlantic County's official tourism page treats the Jersey Devil's origin as Pine Barrens folklore.
Because the restaurant is closed and the building is not currently open to the public, no recent first-hand accounts are available. The site is best treated as a heritage drive-by with secondary value for visitors interested in South Jersey colonial-era folklore.
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