SPONSORED CONTENT | Written by The Coach House
It is among the first questions visitors ask. Sometimes lightly. Sometimes not.
We have never been in a hurry to answer it.
What we will offer is this. The house was completed in 1879, which is to say it was well established long before Salem’s ghost stories began to circulate. A building of that age acquires a character of its own. Doors that prefer to remain closed. A note the staircase sounds near two in the morning that no one has satisfactorily explained. Guests mention these things to our hospitality managers, who listen and have learned not to argue.
We leave the conclusion to you.
The Coach House is a luxury boutique hotel in Salem, Massachusetts, eleven rooms within an 1879 sea captain’s mansion. We do not trade on a haunting. We simply have the house.
It was built on Lafayette Street at a moment worth pausing over. Salem’s great age of sail had ended. The China trade that made this city extraordinarily wealthy had moved south to Boston, and the captains who sailed it were home for good. Ours built at the close of that era, in the tall-windowed style of a man who had earned his fortune at sea and intended to enjoy it ashore. He built exceptionally well. The house still stands, and it is where you will be staying.
The staircase
If the house has a heart, it is the staircase: dark, deep-grained wood of a quality no longer milled, rising through the center of the building. Descend it near midnight in late October, lamps low and the wind coming off the harbor, and you may find the sensation of being watched difficult to dismiss.
Eleven rooms, no two alike
This was less a design decision than an inheritance. A Victorian mansion will not yield eleven identical rooms, so each was designed on its own terms, with Frette linens, considered furnishings, and modern comforts our captain would certainly have regarded as witchcraft. A word we use carefully in this city.
A short walk from everything
We are in The Point, the residential neighborhood just south of downtown, under half a mile from the center of the city. In October that distance matters a great deal. Salem closes entire streets to vehicles for twelve hours at a time; our guests park once in our complimentary on-site lot and rarely think of the car again.
Ten minutes on foot brings you to Essex Street, the Witch Trials Memorial and the Peabody Essex Museum. A little further lie Derby Wharf and the House of the Seven Gables.
What we recommend
Oysters on the water at Pickering Wharf, ideally at golden hour. Chestnut Street after dark, which our team maintains is the most beautiful street in Massachusetts. The walk to Winter Island for the view back toward the city, with Fort Pickering Light at its end. And the harbor at seven in the morning, fog settled on the water and the streets still empty: Salem before it puts on its costume.
That last one belongs only to those who stay the night.
This is Salem’s four hundredth year, and Halloween falls on a Saturday. The house has watched nearly a hundred and fifty Octobers pass. We would be glad to have you here for this one; should you hear the staircase settle near two in the morning, we would simply say the captain is checking his lines.
The Coach House
284 Lafayette Street, Salem, MA 01970
Rooms and availability at coachhousesalem.com
