HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
A Cody boutique inn whose street-front rooms were once a dentist's office, and whose patients' agony is said to murmur in the wind.
1032 12th St, Cody, WY 82414
Research updated September 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Boutique hotel room rates vary by season and room type. No separate charge to visit as a haunted site.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Restored multi-building historic inn with some interior stairs; paved downtown sidewalks
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1903 · Founded as Agnes Chamberlin's 1903 boarding house in early Cody · Ernest Hemingway stayed here in 1932 while completing Death in the Afternoon · Restored historic boutique inn incorporating the old Cody circuit courthouse
Agnes (Aggie) Chamberlin arrived in Cody around 1900 from Kansas and went to work at the Cody Enterprise, the newspaper founded by Buffalo Bill Cody. In 1903 she opened a boarding house on a lot across from the newspaper office. Over roughly the next fourteen years, several structures were combined and expanded into a hotel, eventually incorporating the original Cody circuit judge's courthouse, one of the oldest buildings in town. Agnes also organized the early Cody Club, which held meetings in the inn's dining room.
Her husband, Mark Chamberlin, built a small brick office on the property and practiced dentistry from the street-facing rooms. According to the inn's own published history and the Cody Enterprise, he had no record of a dental license, and Agnes herself later said his diploma was forged. He died in 1922.
The inn's best-known guest was Ernest Hemingway, who stayed for several days in 1932 after finishing the manuscript for Death in the Afternoon. He mailed the manuscript and several short stories to his publishers from Cody and fished the Clarks Fork River; his guest-register signature is displayed in Room 18.
Agnes operated the property until selling it in 1939, after which it was renamed the Pawnee Hotel. It changed hands again over the decades, including a long ownership beginning in 1974. Ev and Susan Diehl acquired the building in 2005 and restored it, reverting the name to the Chamberlin Inn. New owners again restored and updated the property around 2019, and it operates today as a luxury boutique inn with individually decorated rooms.
Sources
The Chamberlin Inn's haunting tradition is built almost entirely around its early use as a dental office. Mark Chamberlin, Agnes's husband, built a brick office on the lot and pulled teeth from the street-facing rooms in the early 1900s. The inn's own history and the Cody Enterprise note that there is no record of his holding a dental license, and Agnes later maintained that his diploma was forged.
From that history grew the legend repeated in Cody ghost coverage: that the agony of his patients, worked on without the reliable anesthesia of later decades, lingers and can sometimes be heard as screams murmuring in the wind around the building. The framing in local accounts is openly tongue-in-cheek, treating the legend as a wry comment on early frontier dentistry rather than a claim of documented homicide or tragedy.
Cody walking and scavenger-style ghost tours include the Chamberlin among their downtown stops, and the regional haunted-places coverage repeats the dental-office story. Beyond the wind-borne screams, accounts are thin and largely atmospheric; there is no widely documented named apparition tied to a specific death at the inn.
The Chamberlin operates as a working boutique hotel and does not host formal ghost hunts or overnight investigations. The legend functions as folklore layered onto a genuinely historic, well-restored property.
Notable Entities
Where this legend is told
Stay in one of the inn's individually decorated rooms, including spaces that began as Agnes Chamberlin's 1903 boarding house and the street-front rooms that once held her husband's dental office. Room 18 displays Ernest Hemingway's 1932 guest-register signature. The inn does not run formal ghost tours; the lore circulates as local folklore.
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