Owners of an 18th century restaurant believe a ‘ghost’ has been caught on camera, with locals flocking to back up the sighting with their own eerie stories about the establishment.
Library restaurant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire uploaded a video from their CCTV earlier this week that showed a “ghost” eerily walking along the front of their restaurant.
Employees say the ghost triggered the motion detector as it floated by and don’t believe the images could have been just light from a car or a gust of wind.
The restaurant at the Rockingham Hotel has a long history of ghostly occurrences that have been documented in detail over the years. It’s described as “an elegant 1785 mansion that serves as a club-like backdrop for steakhouse fare, wines and a vibrant bar scene.”
The 238-year-old company is known as a hotspot for high-profile politicians, including Presidents George Washington, Franklin Pierce, James K. Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Chester Arthur, William Taft and John F. Kennedy.
Library Restaurant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, uploaded a video from their CCTV earlier this week showing a “ghost” creepily walking past the front of their restaurant
The restaurant at the Rockingham Hotel has a long history of ghostly occurrences that have been documented in detail over the years. It is described as ‘an elegant 1785 mansion that provides a club-like backdrop for steakhouse cuisine, wines and a vibrant bar scene’
The restaurant wrote: “Our building – the Rockingham – is known for its ghosts, especially those in the basement of the library.
‘Last night our motion detectors INSIDE the building were activated for the very first time by this camera movement that was captured on video outside the window in the middle of the night.
‘The motion detectors inside cannot see what the camera outside sees! They are not car lights – because you can see others being picked up and there is no horizontal wind blowing. So what could this be!
‘Make of it what you will, but this has never happened before! Spooky coincidence for the time of year?’
The chilling images have attracted a lot of attention, especially from local customers who shared their own ghost stories about the ‘haunted’ restaurant.
One Facebook user said: ‘The lady in white. Some residents claimed to have seen her in the hallways. One wrote a poem about her experience.’
Several people said the restaurant’s women’s bathroom was haunted.
One comment read: ‘I have been to the library many times and I assure you there is a female ghost in the downstairs bathroom’ and another shared the same claim saying: ‘that is definitely a ghost and I have plenty of them seen. I used to live across the street. The women’s toilet at the library is haunted.’
But there are skeptics, with one saying they are trying to debunk the claims, writing: “So are we going to talk about the jump in the video at the time of the ‘ghost’? Or that the timecode in the top right corner skips from 02:29:30 to 02:31:04? But yeah, totally legitimate, supernatural behavior ‘caught on camera.’
One person – who appeared to be a regular at the historic café – speculated: ‘Fog? (Or Dave smokes!)
Another asked: ‘What should I see?’
The 238-year-old company is known as a hot spot for high-profile politicians, including Presidents George Washington, Franklin Pierce, James K. Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Chester Arthur, William Taft and John F. Kennedy.
Staff say the ghost triggered the motion detector as it floated by and don’t believe the images could have just been light from a car or a gust of wind
It is believed that the Rockingham Hotel is haunted by Sarah Shelborne Langdon’s entity or a drowning victim’s entity.
Many viewers were certain that the ‘ghost’ was actually mist, wind or steam.
According to HauntedHouses.com The Rockingham Hotel is believed to be haunted by Sarah Shelborne Langdon’s entity or a drowning victim’s entity.
Shelborne Langdon was the daughter of a wealthy merchant who married Woodbury Langdon – who built a three-story mansion on the site of the current Rockingham building as living quarters for his bride and their ten children.
Their childhood home burned down in the Great Fire of 1781 and they rebuilt it into “the finest brick house in New England.”
Langdon—who served as New Hampshire senator for a year in 1779—eventually sold his house and it became a Public House—where it sold alcohol, served food, and offered public spaces for events and functions. In 1833 it became a hotel.
Apparently, Shelborne Langdon had an affair with the dashing John Paul Jones – and because of small-town gossip, she was found guilty of adultery by public opinion.
Because ‘entities’ are supposedly restless when they are declared guilty – they want to clear their names in the world before they go to ‘the light and peace of the next world’.
For this reason, Shelborne Langdon is believed to haunt the Rockingham Hotel by wandering the corridors and spending time in Library Restaurant – where women have been heard rustling in the bathroom stalls.
The drowning victim’s ‘ghost’ carries a ‘strong smell of the sea’ as she appears to haunt the hotel – which was the last place she lived before drowning.
According to guests, she is a friendly and hospitable entity known to pop up in residents’ apartments and apartments and appear in hallways before disappearing through the nearest wall.