HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
An 1830s Jefferson-tradition springs resort turned state nursing home, closed since 1991 and now under preservation
19540 Sweet Springs Valley Rd, Gap Mills, WV 24941
Research updated August 2026
Age
18+
Cost
$
Group paranormal investigation tours are donation-based, roughly $10 per person for groups of 10 or more; all proceeds go to the site's preservation. Reservations by email only.
Access
Limited Access
Unrestored multi-story former resort and nursing-home building; uneven floors, no climate control, limited lighting
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1833 · Federal-style hotel in the architectural tradition associated with Thomas Jefferson · Hosted a Virginia district court, 1795-1807 · Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, 1970 · Operated as the state-run Andrew S. Rowan Memorial Home, 1945-1991
William Lewis, a Revolutionary War veteran, opened the first hotel at Sweet Springs in 1792, built around a mineral spring that emerges from the ground at 73 degrees. The resort hosted a Virginia district court in its early years and drew a roster of prominent guests through the early 19th century, including George and Martha Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, Chief Justice John Marshall, and Robert E. Lee. The large brick hotel that still stands was built in the 1830s in a Federal style long attributed to Thomas Jefferson and now credited to an associate working in his tradition, with a columned portico that became the resort's signature feature.
Sweet Springs flourished from 1820 until the Civil War, after which competition from resorts with direct rail access pulled guests away. The Lewis family ran the property until 1852; a series of owners followed, including a period of TB-sanitarium use in the 1940s, before the site fell into receivership in 1930 and changed hands repeatedly over the following decades.
In 1945, the State of West Virginia purchased Sweet Springs and converted it into the Andrew S. Rowan Memorial Home, a state-run facility for elderly residents. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and underwent a major renovation between 1972 and 1975, but the state closed the home in 1991. After a failed attempt to run it as a private rehabilitation center, the property passed through private ownership until Ashby Berkley bought it at auction in 2015 and founded the nonprofit Sweet Springs Resort Park Foundation to restore it.
Sources
Paranormal investigators who tour Sweet Springs point to the building's decades of continuous medical use, first as a tuberculosis facility and then as a state nursing home housing elderly residents until 1991, as the source of its reputation. Visitors and tour hosts describe recurring footsteps, disembodied voices, and cold spots concentrated in the former patient wings and hallways, consistent with reports gathered across multiple independent investigations of the property.
The site drew wider attention when Travel Channel's Destination Fear crew spent a night in the building for a 2019 episode, one of several television productions to investigate the property. The Sweet Springs Resort Park Foundation, the nonprofit now restoring the building, runs its own overnight investigations for donation, and describes the reported activity as concentrated on the building's upper floors, where sanitarium- and nursing-home-era patient rooms remain largely untouched.
As with most large abandoned institutional buildings, specific claims about individual deaths on the property are difficult to verify against a public record, and the foundation's own materials describe reported phenomena in general terms rather than attributing them to named individuals.
Media Appearances
A roughly three-hour, floor-by-floor investigation of the unrestored resort hotel building, which spent decades as a tuberculosis facility and then a state nursing home before closing in 1991. Reservations are handled by email; groups are capped at 10 and participants must be 18 or older and sign a waiver.
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