Est. 1923 · Tudor Revival architecture modeled on Bell Inn, Finedon, England · Niagara Falls honeymoon hotel history · Continuous operation since 1923 · Featured in The Office television series
The Red Coach Inn opened on August 30, 1923, on Buffalo Avenue 500 yards from the brink of Niagara Falls. The owners, William Schoellkopf and Charles Peabody, modeled the building on the Bell Inn in Finedon, England, commissioning a three-and-a-half story Tudor-style structure that stood in deliberate architectural contrast to the falls' commercial surroundings.
The inn's name derives from a painting above the Grill Room fireplace by Buffalo artist A. Rafael Beck, depicting General Lafayette's red carriage — a reference to Lafayette's visit to the Eagle Tavern that once stood across the street in the early 1800s. The painting has hung in the same location since the inn opened.
Niagara Falls was established as the dominant American honeymoon destination through the nineteenth century, a reputation built on the falls' association with natural sublimity and romantic spectacle. The Red Coach Inn was explicitly designed to serve that market: its suites were appointed for couples, and the Victoria Suite — the largest and most luxurious room — was featured prominently in honeymoon packages.
The inn remained in operation through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first without significant closure. It appeared in the television series The Office in a role as a honeymoon location. The Victoria Suite was featured on the program Celebrity Ghost Stories in an episode titled 'The Haunting of Bernie Kopell,' which brought the inn's paranormal reputation to a national audience.
Sources
- https://www.redcoach.com/our-history/
- https://hauntedhistorytrail.com/explore/red-coach-inn
- https://goniagaratours.com/blog/haunted-and-hilarious-the-red-coach-inn-ghost-stories-and-the-office
- https://www.niagaraaction.com/allegedly-haunted-places-in-niagara-falls-usa
Cold spotsFootstepsCrying soundsMoving objects (jewelry)Unexplained musicCreaking sounds
The ghost accounts at the Red Coach Inn center almost entirely on the Victoria Suite. Guests who have stayed there describe a room that runs noticeably colder than the rest of the hotel — not draft-cold, but a sustained ambient chill that multiple guests in different seasons have noted. Footsteps pace the room when no one is walking. Creaking sounds occur without settling-structure explanation. The sound of a woman crying, softly and without apparent source, has been reported by multiple guests.
Additional accounts describe jewelry moving across dressers without being touched, and music audible at night that stops when searched for.
A specific narrative — that a groom murdered his bride in the Victoria Suite in 1927 by striking her with a heavy object — circulates extensively in paranormal tourism sources and local ghost-tour coverage. No independent historical documentation of this incident has been located in newspaper archives or law enforcement records. The claim should be understood as legend attached to a genuinely reported location rather than a documented crime. The inn's own history materials do not reference the story.
The suite's appearance on Celebrity Ghost Stories in the episode 'The Haunting of Bernie Kopell' brought the inn's reputation to a larger audience. Actor Bernie Kopell described his experience in the suite, and the episode remains one of the primary drivers of the Victoria Suite's paranormal reputation.
Media Appearances
- Celebrity Ghost Stories — The Haunting of Bernie Kopell (Television, 2009)
- The Office (cameo as honeymoon location) (Television, 2006)
Where this legend is told
