History & local legend
Hotel Wayne in Honesdale has accumulated stories of women in Victorian dresses climbing the stairs, babies crying and doors closing by themselves. Some visitors felt the eyes in a portrait of Philip Hone followed them toward the second floor. General manager Jim Petorak heard many of these accounts from employees and guests before a television investigation brought renewed attention to the hotel.
In a 2011 Wayne Independent interview, Petorak described his own unsettling experience shortly after agreeing to host the Ghost Finders crew. The downstairs men’s bathroom filled with steam. He could find no reason for it: the room had no steam heating, and he did not know how so much moisture could have entered it.
He had previously noticed occasional shadows and doors closing, but the steam-filled room was the incident that made him feel seriously uneasy in the building.