The Haunted Hartness House Inn | House for Sale in Springfield, Vermont

The Hartness House Inn is definitely haunted.

For years there have been rumors of strange sightings in the tunnel and underground rooms secreted away beneath the front lawn. Even more persistent are the claims that the charming corner room where Charles Lindbergh once stayed is haunted by a young boy named Charlie.

The presence to which I can attest, however, is of a different sort. Though he died in 1933, James Hartness—the inventor, industrial tycoon, and one-time Vermont governor for whom Hartness House was built in 1904—is still imprinted on the property, having imbued it with reminders of his quirky personality and diverse passions.

Perched on a hillside above downtown Springfield, Vermont, Hartness House, which became an inn in 1954, has been shuttered since late 2020. The grounds have grown shaggy, but the stone construction of the building’s first floor gives the property a comfortable gravitas, something that is only amplified as I step into the stately front hall. Like the man for which it is named, however, the house’s dignified exterior overlays a fascinating character. Or so I’m thinking when my hosts, real estate agent Gary Gosselin and the inn’s former daily operations manager, Nina Bisciotti, lead me down into the cellar and through a locked door into the aforementioned tunnel, where I imagine the horror movie that could be filmed here.

Hartness was just 27 when he had this house built. He and his wife, Lena, had two young daughters. Hartness had come to Springfield five years earlier to serve as superintendent of a struggling machine tooling enterprise, the Jones and Lamson Machine Company, where he developed a reputation as a creative problem solver. He would ultimately patent a total of 119 inventions, including the one in 1921 that changed his life, the flat turret lathe. The new machine proved so popular that for 13 years it became Jones and Lamson’s sole product. Having negotiated a commission on every lathe sold, Hartness amassed a fortune.

Thanks in part to Hartness’s enterprise, the corridor of the Connecticut River Valley between Springfield and Hartford, Connecticut, came to be known as Precision Valley, where master toolers created machines that powered American industry. During World War II, when Hitler was working on a plan to cripple American aviation, he listed 21 bombing targets; Springfield was included, along with three other Precision Valley locations.

After James and Lena died, the Hartness family sold the house to three of the town’s machine shops, which used it to house their guests. The ballroom was added in 1954 and a restaurant in 1968. The utilitarian addition of a wing behind the mansion in 1971 brought the number of guest rooms to 40. Today, the ballroom comfortably accommodates 75 people, while the restaurant, twice renovated in recent years, seats 55.

My guides lead me up a beautiful open staircase to the second-floor guest rooms, where our first stop is the Lindbergh Room, bright and well appointed. On July 26, 1927, on a celebratory tour following his historic transatlantic flight, Charles Lindbergh stayed with the Hartnesses. Hartness himself had trained in a Wright biplane and been licensed in 1914, when there were fewer than 100 certified pilots in the nation.

Bisciotti shared a story about some visitors who always stayed in the Lindbergh Room in order to communicate with its ghost, the boy Charlie. So firm was their belief in his presence that once when they were unable to make their scheduled visit, they asked Bisciotti to write a note of apology and leave it in the room, which she did.

A fascination with astronomy led Hartness to build a state-of-the-art telescope in 1910 in a way that sheltered the operator from the elements, allowing for year-round viewing. The telescope still crouches near the edge of the inn’s front lawn. To facilitate access, Hartness connected the telescope’s control room to the house basement with a 240-foot-long, seven-foot-tall cement tunnel.

Hartness had difficulty working amid the distractions of the house, so he built a cabin in the woods behind it. But when the sounds of nature proved every bit as disruptive, he built a series of rooms under the front yard, accessible through his underground tunnel. There he could work in utter silence. His underground apartment consisted of a workshop, library, study, and lounge. Contrary to my somewhat ominous first impression, this underground suite is… pretty nice.

Another story says that the tunnel once ran all the way into town. And sure enough, near the current terminus there is an opening in the floor, revealing another tunnel beneath. But the inn’s former facilities supervisor, Tyler Goodrich, has done the legwork—or in this case hands-and-knees work—to debunk the notion. “I went down and crawled through. It was very wet and pretty claustrophobic,” he says. “It is a utility tunnel for the electrical, plumbing, and sewage. The rumors of anything more are fun, but I think those are just stories.”

Hartness House Inn is listed at $750,000. Contact Gary Gosselin of the Hearthside Group at 802-238-2121 or gbgosselin@gmail.com.