Green Mountain Inn

Green Mountain Inn

18 Main Street
Stowe, Vermont 05672
800-253-7302
802-253-7301
Fax: 802-253-5096

The Legend of Boots Berry

The ghost at the Green Mountain Inn is Boots Berry, a tap dancer and local hero who can still be heard dancing on the third floor of the hotel during severe winter storms. Boots Berry’s connection with the Green Mountain Inn in general, and with Room 302 in particular, was extraordinary. The son of the Inn’s horseman and chambermaid, he was born in Room 302 in 1840. At that time the third floor of the hotel was the servants’ quarters, and the boy grew up in and around the building. When he was in his twenties, he succeeded to his father’s job.

Boots was a respected horseman. One of his duties was to provide fresh horses for the daily stagecoach. So he was on the spot in the main street of Stowe one summer’s morning, when the stagecoach team bolted. Boots bravely stopped the runaway stage, saved the lives of the passengers, and was awarded a hero’s medal. News of his exploit spread, and in the words of a local newspaper report, "Boots’s popularity was such that there wasn’t a place in the county where he could pay for his own drinks."

That was to be his downfall. Boots turned to a life of wine, women and song, neglecting his duties at the Inn. Eventually he was dismissed. He then wandered the country, picking up his nickname when he was jailed in New Orleans. It was there that he learned to tap dance from a fellow prisoner.

Eventually, at the beginning of 1902, Boots drifted back to Stowe, shabby and poverty-stricken. At about the same time, a dreadful storm hit the town and a little girl somehow got stranded in the snow on the roof of the Inn. But Boots, remembering his own childhood days, knew of a secret route to the spot where the child was, climbed on to the roof and lowered her safely to the ground.

Just as the girl reached safety, Boots slipped and fell to his death from the icy roof. His life had come full circle, for the roof he was standing on when he fell was the roof of Room 302.

If the sound of tap dancing on stormy days is anything to go by, he is still around.

Haunted Hotels: A Guide to American and Canadian Inns and Their Ghosts copyright 1995 by Robin Mead and reprinted by permission of Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville, Tennessee.