The Mount

The story

The Mount stands in Lenox, in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. It was the country house of Edith Wharton, born in New York City in 1862 and later the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Age of Innocence (1920). She designed the house and its grounds herself, with her husband Edward, known as Teddy, a Bostonian she had married in 1885, and she later described it as her first real home.

The National Register nomination notes that its sources disagree on whether the house was built in 1901 or 1902. Wharton applied the ideas of The Decoration of Houses (1897), her first book, written with Ogden Codman Jr., which held that good architecture rests on order, scale and harmony. Codman helped with the early design and the interiors until Wharton parted ways with him over fees she considered "exorbitant". The main block draws on Belton House, a seventeenth-century English country house, with Italian and French classical influences. Wharton's niece, the garden designer Beatrix Farrand, laid out the kitchen garden and the drive.

The house is white stucco with dark green shutters, set on a rough fieldstone base. Because of the slope, the entrance side on the west has three stories while the garden side, with fewer floors, opens onto a broad raised stone terrace. A balustrade and a cupola top the roof, and a Georgian Revival gatehouse and stable complete the group. The original estate was 113 acres of farmland, later extended by 15 more.

Several of Wharton's best books were written during her years here. In later life she wrote that The Mount "was my first home" and that "its blessed influence still lives in me", a passage quoted in the 1971 nomination. The dates of her stay vary: Wikipedia gives 1902 to 1911 for the couple, while the nomination says she spent June to December there until about 1909, came less often afterward, and sold the estate around her divorce in 1913. The marriage was troubled, a point that later found its way into the ghost lore.

The buyer in 1913 is not known for certain; the nomination suggests a family named Shattuck, who sold to Louise D. Vananda in 1938. In 1941 or 1942 the Foxhollow School for Girls took over the estate, which used the main house as a dormitory. The school closed in 1976, and after some years of vacancy the theater troupe Shakespeare & Company moved in, using the house as lodging and a stage. A nonprofit, Edith Wharton Restoration, then acquired it and restored much of the property. The Mount was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971.

There is an irony in all of this: Wharton wrote ghost stories herself, yet as a young woman she was so frightened of them that she would burn a book of ghost tales rather than sleep in the same room with it.

The legend

The ghost stories of The Mount are not a legend from Wharton's time. They begin with the people who lived in the house after her, and they grew much louder after television arrived in 2009.

The earliest known reports come from the Foxhollow School years, between 1942 and 1976, when residents described noises they could not explain and other odd experiences in the living quarters. Members of Shakespeare & Company, who later slept and performed in the house, told of the same kinds of sounds and of seeing figures dressed in clothing from an earlier era. None of the sources identifies these figures.

Later visitors added more personal details, reported in a 2012 article in The Lakeville Journal. One woman said she had talked with someone she could not see in the kitchen; she was convinced it was Wharton's housekeeper. Others described a light flick on the cheek, a brush against the collar and sudden shivers. A tour participant's photograph showing orbs and what was taken to be a ghost was at one time displayed in the drawing room. The museum's own ghost tour mentions creaking floors and slamming doors.

None of the sources presents Wharton herself as a ghost. Instead, guides have suggested a so-called residual haunting linked to the bitter arguments between Edith and Teddy in her bedroom, one of which Henry James is said to have witnessed. Guides also repeat two rumors: that a later owner died in the house, and that a servant girl took her own life there. Neither person is named, and both stories are described as unconfirmed.

The house became famous among paranormal fans through Ghost Hunters, the Syfy series following Jason Hawes, Grant Wilson and their TAPS team. Filming took place over several days and nights in December 2008, and the episode "Edith Wharton Estate" (season 5, episode 3) aired on March 25, 2009. The investigators claimed to have captured footsteps where nobody was standing and voices with no visible source. TAPS returned for the season 10 finale, "1st Edition Apparition", broadcast on November 18, 2015 with guest investigator Shari Ventura, after reports that activity had increased since the first visit. The Mount also planned paranormal conferences with TAPS in 2009.

There is a skeptical reading too. A 2009 article in Rural Intelligence raised the possibility that the reports owe more to the imaginations of teenage boarders and actors than to anything supernatural. Nothing beyond personal testimony and television footage supports the haunting, and the museum's ghost tours, which began in 2009 in the wake of the filming, give the stories an obvious commercial setting.

What remains today

The Mount has survived remarkably intact. When the National Park Service surveyed it in 1971, it found the house in good condition with a high degree of historical integrity, despite school-era changes: an added staircase between the upper floors, two fire escapes on the east side, dormers converted into emergency exits and a garden pool that had been filled in.

The 1971 survey also described the interiors: a drawing room with an elaborate molded ceiling and tapestries said to date from Wharton's time, a dining room with two original paintings set into the paneling, and Wharton's writing room connected to the paneled library by a disused hidden door. The northeast bedroom upstairs is said to have been hers.

Restoration has since brought much of the estate back to its Wharton-era appearance. The property now covers about 49.5 acres, with an Italian walled garden, a formal flower garden, an alpine rock garden, a lime walk, grass terraces and a restored Lord and Burnham greenhouse. The house is a cultural center and museum drawing more than 50,000 visitors a year, with exhibits on Wharton's writing, her humanitarian work and the lives of her servants, as well as lectures, readings, theater, music and author events.

Visiting

The Mount is open to the public as a historic house museum. Tours cover the house and gardens, and visitors are invited to sit in and use the rooms rather than view them from behind ropes.

The museum runs its own evening Ghost Tours from July through October 31. They last about two hours, require reservations and are not recommended for children under 12. On selected evenings in September and October there are Ghost Tours for Kids aged 6 to 12, and a special program explores Wharton's own ghost stories. Check the official website for current dates and prices.

Sources

1. National Register nomination #71000900 (texte intégral) — U.S. National Park Service · Public record
2. National Register of Historic Places file (NRHP #71000900) — U.S. National Park Service · Public domain (U.S. government)
3. Memories of Mount Forest and surrounding townships ... in honor of the Diamond Jubilee of the Confederation of the Dominion of Canada and of the founding of the Mount Forest Confederate, 1867-1927 — Internet Archive, 1928-01-01 · Public domain (pre-1929)
4. PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF A COMPARATIVE TEST OF THE 60-INCH AND 100-INCH TELESCOPES OF THE MOUNT WILSON OBSERVATORY — Internet Archive · Hale, George E., 1919-10-01 · Public domain (pre-1929)
5. The Mount Regale Fishing Company of Philadelphia — Internet Archive, 1903-01-01 · Public domain (pre-1929)
6. The poetical works of Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, Lyon King of Arms. 1 — Internet Archive · Lindsay, David, 1871-01-01 · Public domain (pre-1929)
7. Wikimedia Commons category : The Mount, Lenox, Massachusetts — Wikimedia Commons
8. USGS 1:24000-scale Quadrangle for Stockbridge, MA 1959 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1959 · Public domain (USGS)
9. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Pittsfield, MA 1888 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1888 · Public domain (USGS)
10. "Ghost Tours" — The Mount, Edith Wharton's Home (official) — The Mount, Edith Wharton's Home (official
11. "Is The Mount Haunted?" — Rural Intelligence (25 Mar 2009) — Rural Intelligence (25 Mar 2009
12. "List of Ghost Hunters episodes" — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
13. "Spirits roam Wharton's The Mount - don't they?" — The Lakeville Journal (22 Feb 2012) — The Lakeville Journal (22 Feb 2012
14. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.