HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
A Broadway hotel dating to the 1840s, home to the Room 211 'Madeline' legend
24 Broadway, Jim Thorpe, PA 18229
Research updated September 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Room rates vary by night, season, and room type. See the inn's website for current rates.
Access
Limited Access
Four-story 19th-century hotel with stairs; limited elevator access
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1849 · Mauch Chunk / Jim Thorpe Resort Era · 19th-Century Coal-Region Hospitality · 1980s Historic-District Revival
The hotel on Broadway in Jim Thorpe began as the White Swan Hotel, opened in 1833 by Cornelius Connor when the town was the booming anthracite center of Mauch Chunk. A fire in 1849 destroyed the original building, after which it was rebuilt and reopened as the New American Hotel.
In its 19th-century heyday the hotel served a town made wealthy by coal and the railroads. According to the inn's history, its guest registers over the years included Ulysses S. Grant, President William Howard Taft, Buffalo Bill Cody, Thomas Edison, and John D. Rockefeller, drawn to a resort district then known as the 'Switzerland of America.'
The building, like much of Mauch Chunk, slipped into decline through the mid-20th century. Its revival came in 1988, when John Drury bought and restored the property, with his son David serving as general manager. The restoration was part of the broader rebirth of Jim Thorpe as a tourist town during the 1980s.
Today the inn operates as a four-story, 45-room hotel that markets its history openly, including the paranormal reputation that has made it a regular entry on lists of Pennsylvania's most haunted hotels. The inn itself acknowledges guest reports of unexplained activity, while declining to claim any of it as proven.
Sources
The Inn at Jim Thorpe's central ghost story is recounted on the town's ghost walks and was profiled by the local Times News. The figure called Madeline is said to have been a young woman in the 19th century involved in a secret romance; both she and her lover were promised to other people, making the affair a scandal of its day.
In the legend, the two arranged to meet at the hotel but a mistake at the front desk placed Madeline in Room 211 and her lover in a room on a different floor. Believing she had been abandoned, Madeline is said to have taken her own life in the room. The story is folklore rather than a documented case, and accounts of it appear chiefly through the ghost tours and the inn's own retelling.
Guests assigned to Room 211 have reported recurring experiences: an indentation in the bedding as though someone were sitting beside them, wake-up calls placed when none were requested, and bathroom fixtures found disturbed. Some have described a woman in a white gown, and others report childlike laughter or a television switching on and off.
The inn treats Madeline as a benign presence, a prankster rather than a threatening one, and acknowledges the broader pattern of guest reports without endorsing any supernatural explanation. Room 211 is the room visitors most often ask for.
Notable Entities
A 45-room, four-story historic hotel on Broadway in the Jim Thorpe historic district. Guests can request Room 211, the room tied to the inn's best-known ghost legend.
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