Buck Hill Inn (Site)

The Inn at Buck Hill Falls opened in 1901 in Barrett Township, Monroe County, in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, founded by a group of Philadelphia Quakers. What began as a modest wooden lodge of roughly 18-20 rooms expanded over the decades into one of the premier resorts of the Poconos, eventually boasting more than 400 rooms across some 1,000 acres, complete with a golf course, swimming pool, tennis courts, and bridle trails.

Changing vacation tastes, mounting financial trouble, and a series of fires brought the inn's run to an end; it closed in October 1990. The vast empty structure stood abandoned for a quarter century, becoming a magnet for urban explorers and the subject of escalating ghost lore. In July 2003 it suffered a fire ruled arson. By 2016-17, Buck Hill Falls residents raised roughly $2 million to demolish the dangerous ruin, and the great hotel was reduced to a grassy field with a single surviving stone arch left as a memorial.

The inn's afterlife in popular culture was shaped heavily by MTV's reality series 'Fear,' which used the decaying resort in a 2000 episode and promoted lurid claims — including '73 murders,' a maid's suicide, and a room built on ley lines. Subsequent writers have noted there is no evidence for the 73 murders; the documented record points to economic decline, not supernatural scandal, as the reason for the inn's demise.