In Episode 430, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger check out the ghosts of the historic Equinox Hotel in Manchester, Vermont. The earliest structure called the Marsh Tavern opened here in 1769. It’s been some kind of inn and hotel ever since. U.S. Presidents have stayed here, as have other notable guests, including First lady Mary Todd Lincoln… some believe her spirit is still here. But she’s not the only one. A former owner met a tragic end on these grounds.
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Produced and hosted by: Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger
Edited by: Ray Auger
Theme Music by: John Judd
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
*A note on the text: Please forgive punctuation, spelling, and grammar mistakes. Like us, the transcripts ain’t perfect.
[RING BELL FOR SERVICE]
[LIGHT CROWD MURMER IN LOBBY]
RAY: Jeff, the Equinox Hotel is gorgeous!
JEFF: It is! This massive hotel has been an icon in Manchester, Vermont, in some form or another since it opened in 1769.
RAY: Today it’s a hotel, resort, there’s golfing and skiing nearby. This place looks swanky.
JEFF: It is swanky, but there’s more that meets the eye here at the old Equinox.
RAY: I can guess where this is going.
JEFF: This building has ties to former U.S. presidents, celebrities, and more than a couple of former guests and staff who… according to reports… may have checked in but never checked out.
RAY: Ooooo… spooky.
JEFF: Ray, we’ve come to the Equinox Hotel in Manchester, Vermont, because they say this place is haunted.
[INTRO]
JEFF: I’m Jeff Belanger. Welcome to Episode 430 of the New England Legends podcast.
RAY: And I’m Ray Auger. Thank you for joining us on our mission to chronicle every legend in New England one story at a time. So many of our story leads come from you, so please reach out to us anytime through our website.
JEFF: Tickets are on sale now for our Freak Formal! This is such a fun annual charity bash that Ray and I host every year. Come dressed as your favorite monster, ghost, goblin, zombie, KPop star, or whatever! All for a great cause. It’s Saturday, February 14, (Valentine’s Day) 2026 at 6:30PM at the DoubleTree Hotel in Milford, Massachusetts. 18-plus, we’ll have DJ dancing, yard games, raffles, prizes, food, and a cash bar. All to benefit Project Just Because, a non-profit organization that provides clothing, food, and even school supplies to people in need. This is the most pro-Halloween and anti-Valentine’s Day event you can find. There’s a link to buy tickets on our website or in our episode description.
RAY: We’ll go looking for the ghosts of the Equinox Hotel right after this word from our sponsor.
SPONSOR
JEFF: This hotel, restaurant, spa, and resort is beautiful today.
RAY: Yeah it is.
JEFF: It’s a massive place that takes in visitors from all over the world.
RAY: But let’s talk about the humble beginnings of the Equinox Hotel. Back in 1769, there was an establishment here called Marsh Tavern.
JEFF: We were still England back then!
RAY: That’s right! Marsh Tavern was a tavern and inn. It was a place for travelers and locals to gather. It was also the kind of place where people talked and schemed about the early American Revolution. People like Ira Allen – one of the Green Mountain Boys and the younger brother of Ethan Allen. In Marsh Tavern they discussed seizing the land of British loyalists to raise money to fund their militia. In fact, after the building’s owner William Marsh declared his allegiance to the King of England, his house was the first to be seized.
JEFF: F.A.F.O., right?
RAY: Something like that. Shortly after the revolution, the inn changed hands and names several times, it was called Widow Black’s Inn, Vanderlip’s Hotel, the Taconic, and then in 1853, the building was greatly expanded to become the 200-room Equinox House.
JEFF: The list of guests over the years reads like a who’s who of American history. Presidents Taft, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Bejamin Harrison all came through these doors. But one of the most notable visits occurred during the summer of 1864. That’s when First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and her two sons came to stay at the Equinox for a few months. She enjoyed her stay so much that she told the hotel she intended to return the following summer with her husband, the President. The Equinox even built a special suite to accommodate President Lincoln and his family, but sadly, Lincoln was assassinated before the summer of 1865 and never arrived. Some suggest Mary Todd’s ghost still haunts the Equinox because it’s a place she enjoyed and never got the chance to return to in life.
RAY: A hotel this grand and fancy has drawn a lot of attention and notable guests over the decades.
JEFF: That it has. And like many grand hotels, almost every room and every square inch of the grounds have a story to tell. Let’s head back to 1917 and visit the Equinox.
[TRANSITION]
RAY: It’s the summer of 1917 here in Manchester, Vermont. President Woodrow Wilson is in the White House. Just a few months ago, the President asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. So America is now involved in a giant world war. But Manchester feels like a million miles from the front lines in Germany.
JEFF: People come to the Equinox to get away from it all. The staff, and owner, George Orvis, tries to see that the hotel is a getaway from whatever their guests need to escape, whether it’s the news, their jobs, or the hum drum routines of their daily lives.
RAY: George Orvis was born here in Manchester in 1871. He and his brothers learned the hotel business from their father, Franklin Orvis who also owned this hotel. 46 year-old George and his wife Annie, spend a lot of time here. The hotel business is literally in his blood. He loves it.
JEFF: There’s something different about this summer compared to previous years. I mean, the Equinox is an elegant resort. There are wealthy people who visit here every summer. But with America entering a huge war in Europe, everyone is one edge.
RAY: In the Manchester community, there’s an agricultural mobilization to help the war effort. Everyone is pitching in wherever they can. It’s a stark contrast to people coming to the Equinox for vacation.
JEFF: Still, hotel owner George Orvis knows his way around this business. He’s gracious, accommodating, a consummate professional at all times. As you can imagine, the job can be exhausting.
RAY: For Orvis, this isn’t just a job, it’s a lifestyle. He lives here, he works here. He’s rarely off duty.
[SUMMER BIRD SOUNDS FADE IN]
JEFF: It’s the morning of Thursday, August 9th. It’s the start of a warm summer’s day. George Orvis has a precious few hours off, and he intends to take advantage of that time and his beautiful hotel.
[DOOR CREAKS OPEN]
[WALKING]
JEFF: George enters the bathhouse of the hotel. He hangs his clothes up, changes into his swimming clothes, then grabs his fishing rod to head out to Equinox pond.
[DOOR CREAKS AGAIN]
RAY: It’s a great day for fishing and a swim too. (BEAT) There he goes.
[SPLASH IN THE DISTANCE]
[LIGHT CROWD NOISE FADES IN]
RAY: Back in the hotel, the staff are busy serving breakfast, turning over the rooms of the guests who are checking out, and handling all of the day to day morning business.
JEFF: There are plants to water, meals to prep, there’s grass to cut. It never ends. But the staff here run like a well-oiled machine. They know what they’re doing.
RAY: It’s been a busy morning.
JEFF: It has…
RAY: What are you looking for, Jeff?
JEFF: Have you seen George Orvis? He’s been gone for hours. He’s usually holding court in the lobby right now to greet guests as they check out.
RAY: Hmmm… no one has seen him.
[LIGHT CROWD NOISE FADES OUT]
RAY: Back at the hotel’s bathhouse, an employee finds Orvis’s clothes hanging inside. (BEAT) The staff member makes his way down to Equinox Pond to check on when the owner may be getting back to the hotel.
JEFF/RAY: Oh no!
JEFF: Is that…
RAY: (INTERRUPTING) George Orvis is floating face down in the pond!
[SPLASH]
[SWIMMING]
RAY: The hotel staff member just jumped in the water to help.
JEFF: Oh man… he’s flipped Orvis over and is dragging him out of the water.
RAY: He’s got blood and bruises on his face. He’s not breathing.
JEFF: There’s no question. He’s dead. I’m no expert, but I think he’s been dead and floating in the water for at least a couple of hours. He’s cold to the touch.
RAY: The police soon arrive to investigate what happened.
JEFF: The coroner is here too. It doesn’t take long for the coroner to determine that Orvis must have dove into a shallow section of the pond, hit his head on a rock, knocked himself unconscious, then drowned.
RAY: The hotel staff, and the Orvis family are heartbroken.
[FUNERAL ORGAN MUSIC]
JEFF: A few days later a funeral is held for George Orvis. His body is laid to rest, but his spirit… well, more than few staff members believe his spirit remained at the Equinox. The place where he died, but also the business and building that he loved. And that brings us back to today.
[TRANSITION]
JEFF: Today, George’s ghost is one of several they believe still haunts the place. We mentioned Mary Todd Lincoln’s ghost earlier. Some claim the ghost of her son Tad also haunts the building with her.
[ECHO OF KID CRYING AND MOTHER SHHHHING IN DISTANCE]
JEFF: They claim to hear the disembodied sounds of a boy crying and his mother consoling him. Tad loved this area so much he built a summer estate nearby when he was an adult. But there are many other shadows, knocks, and cold spots that turn up from time to time.
RAY: We’ve talked about haunts in the past where we assign the most famous name to ever grace the location is assigned to anything that bumps in the night.
JEFF: Yes, that happens. The ghost of Mary Todd Lincoln is a lot more interesting than the ghost of some random woman who slept here with her kid for two nights back in 1931. But still, we can’t help but connect with the notable former guests.
RAY: The Equinox Hotel closed its doors in 1972. The building had fallen into a sorry state, and no one wanted to take on the money pit of a project. Just when it looked like the place would need to be torn down, in the 1980s some investors came in and completely refurbished the hotel into a resort and conference center. Since then it’s gone on to become one of those iconic New England properties.
JEFF: One of those iconic HAUNTED New England properties. From its early humble days as a tavern and inn, to a luxury hotel, to this massive complex we see today, so many souls have passed through these doors and walked these halls. Some never left, some may never leave. Though everything here has been modernized, the ghosts still echo from long ago.
[OUTTRO]
RAY: Ghosts have a way of doing that. And that brings us to After the Legend where we take a deeper dive into this week’s story and sometimes veer off course.
JEFF: After the Legend is brought to you by our patreon patrons! Thank you patrons for all that you do to support us. Our patrons get early ad-free access to new episodes plus bonus episodes and content that no one else gets to hear. It’s just $3 bucks per month, but if there are enough of you, it helps us a lot with our hosting costs, travel, production, marketing, and all of the other little things it takes to bring you two stories each week. Just click over to patreon.com/newenglandlegends to sign up.
To see some historic pictures of the Equinox, click on the link in our episode description, or go to our website and click on episode 430.
Before we let you go, please subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your podcasts because it’s free! If you want to help the cause please post a review for us on Apple Podcasts, and tell your friends about our show. That’s how we grow! Every little bit helps. We’re grateful to spend time with you each week. The bigger our community, the more story leads that come in.
We’d like to thank our sponsors, thank you so much to our patreon patrons, and our theme music is by John Judd.
Until next time remember… stay legendary.