The village of Lahaska was born when the Buckingham Friends Meeting House was established by English Quakers in 1701. Over time, the town grew to include 15 houses, a store, a hotel, a coach factory, a few shops, and, in March 1844, a post office. Today, 175 years later, Lahaska includes Peddler’s Village, where the town’s history lives on in architecture, tradition, and sometimes in the tales told by those who live and work in the area.
Originally a two-story stone tavern built in the mid-1800s, the Golden Plough Inn served as a prime stop for stagecoach drivers and their passengers traveling between New York and Philadelphia. Though much of the inn was transformed and expanded, rumor has it that some of the old inn’s visitors still linger. It is believed that Thomas Betts, the Lahaska first postmaster, still makes his rounds stopping in the lobby to make his presence known.
One evening at the inn, the night auditor returned to the lobby to find a trail of coffee stirrers arranged on the floor forming a line from the coffee station across the room to the front desk. On other occasions, phone calls from unoccupied rooms have been made to the front desk, and lights have mysteriously turned themselves on. Guests have reported a dark figure of a man appearing at the end of the second-floor hallway, just outside room 202.
Once, the staff was alerted to loud noises coming from unoccupied room 202. They investigated and found the television had turned itself on. As they entered the room, a deep voice inquired, “What do you want?” The staff hurriedly locked the room and left!
Sources: peddlersvillage.com/news/the-haunted-history-of-peddlers-village; goldenploughinn.com/about-the-inn
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