The Pennsylvania collection
Chester County
27 places. A county full of stories.
Discover local legends, historic places and the stories of sites you can explore virtually.
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Culture & landmarksChester County History Center
The Chester County History Center in West Chester includes Horticultural Hall, built in 1848. Before the historical society moved its collections…
Cossart Road
Cossart Road near the Delaware state line is widely known as Devil’s Road. Its folklore centers on a stone house, trees said to lean away from it, an…
Bridges & railwaysDuffy’s Cut railroad site near Malvern
Duffy’s Cut is a railroad work site near Malvern in Chester County, named for contractor Philip Duffy. In the summer of 1832, his crew of fifty-seven…
SchoolsEmilie K. Asplundh Concert Hall
West Chester University’s Emilie K. Asplundh Concert Hall occupies the Philips Memorial Building, which opened in 1927. Its stage has hosted…
SchoolsFormer Pennhurst campus near Spring City
Pennhurst, near Spring City, operated as a state institution for people with intellectual disabilities from 1908 to 1987. Its treatment of residents…
Inns & businesses · AI illustrationFormer Red Rose Inn
The former Red Rose Inn in Jennersville, Chester County, had several reported ghostly guests. One was a man distinguished by a loud plaid jacket,…
SchoolsGabriele Library
Tyrone Jennings was a new Immaculata campus-safety officer when he encountered what he believed was a ghost in Gabriele Library. Recalling the event…
OutdoorsGallows Hill
Elizabeth Wilson was hanged at Chester’s Gallows Hill on January 3, 1786. Her brother William’s desperate attempt to save her became the basis of a…
Inns & businessesGeneral Warren Inn
General Warren Inn near Malvern is named for Joseph Warren, who died at the Battle of Bunker Hill. In 2014, however, an out-of-state visitor thought…
OutdoorsGovernor Printz Park
Governor Printz Park in Essington recalls the early Swedish settlement on the Delaware River. An old ghost story associated with Printz Hall turns…
Historic homesHistoric Waynesborough
Waynesborough, near Paoli in Chester County, was home to seven generations of the Wayne family, including Revolutionary War general Anthony Wayne.…
Cemeteries · Aerial viewLondon Tract Meeting House and cemetery
The cemetery at London Tract Meeting House, near Landenberg in Chester County, is home to the legend of the Ticking Tomb. The story begins during…
Inns & businessesMansion House
The Mansion House at 37 Bridge Street in Phoenixville later became known as the Pickering Creek Inn. An 1886 map identifies the hotel under its older…
Mount Zion Cemetery
Mount Zion Cemetery near Pottstown in Chester County had office stories involving knocking, moaning and figures seen in rooms. South Jersey Ghost…
BattlefieldsPaoli Battlefield
The Paoli Battlefield in Chester County is associated with a headless rider whose story begins during the September 1777 campaign. Historian Rob…
Culture & landmarks · Aerial viewPhoenixville Public Library
Phoenixville Public Library's Carnegie Room is the setting for a familiar closing-time story. An employee who worked there for seventeen years said…
Sawmill Road
Sawmill Road near Downingtown became associated with rust-red gates that locals called the Gates of Hell. According to the story, they stood outside…
Seven Stars Inn
Seven Stars Inn on Ridge Road near Phoenixville took its name in 1804, when John Baker rented Michael Cyfer's tavern. Its upstairs rooms have…
CemeteriesShenkel Church and Shenkel Free Burial Ground
Shenkel Church and its Free Burial Ground in North Coventry preserve a connection to the Battle-Axes, a nineteenth-century religious movement led by…
Historic homesShenkel farmhouse
Hannah Shingle was killed with her own axe in an upstairs bedroom of her North Coventry farmhouse in 1855. More than twenty years later, her name…
Inns & businessesStottsville Inn
Josephine Stott Chandler married Horace Emery at the Stottsville Inn in December 1890. Her name later became central to a ghost story at the Chester…
Inns & businessesThe Blue Ball Inn
The former Blue Ball Inn near Berwyn was a stopping place for travelers on the Lancaster road. Its notorious keeper, Priscilla “Prissy” Robinson,…
The Inn at Saint Peters Village
The Inn at Saint Peters Village overlooks French Creek in Chester County. A guest named Ron described a stay there in an account posted in October…
OutdoorsThe Lincoln Room
Susan Johnstone sometimes heard unexplained chuckling while running the Lincoln Room, a tea room in the lower level of West Chester’s Lincoln…
Bridges & railways · AI illustrationValley Creek Road south of Boot Road
The Twin Tunnels carry Valley Creek Road beneath the railroad east of Downingtown. The passage bends between its two sections, with an opening…
OutdoorsValley Forge village area
A Revolutionary War romance near Valley Forge becomes a story of an inherited death omen in Charles M. Skinner’s 1896 collection of American legends.…
Virginia Avenue at South Main Street
The former Manor House bed-and-breakfast in Phoenixville was a Tudor-style building at Virginia Avenue and South Main Street. Guests had reported…