Over its 96-year-history, the Bethel Inn has seen many guests come and go.

But some who departed the inn, and this earth, may have returned.

Housekeeping Manager Laura Taylor believes they have, and that she's seen them.

"My first experience was over in The Oaks," she said. "Our crew was over there, and out of the corner of my eye I saw someone. I thought it was one of the girls, and I looked toward the door.

"I saw a woman with a white shirt with ruffles under the chin, and on the sleeves, and a long black dress. She turned and looked me right in the face, and then she walked away. We all saw it. We just kind of stood there and looked at each other, wondering what had happened. It was one of the scariest experiences of my life."

On another occasion, Taylor and her crew were cleaning rooms in The Oaks, and they heard a shower come on.

"We ran to the bathroom door, and saw the handle shut off, and the water stopped," she said.

And one morning during the inn's off-season, Taylor arrived at work to be greeted with relief by the front desk clerk.

"'I'm glad you're here,'" Taylor recalls her saying.

The clerk said she had heard children running up and down the hallway all night.

"Then it hit her," Taylor said. "No one was in the inn."

Taylor also reports a regular occurrence that she says takes place several times a week.

When she's in the laundry area in the inn's basement, she's heard the sound of high heels coming down a twisting staircase, and then clicking along on the concrete floor of the hallway.

She hasn't seen anyone, but one time, as she stood in an adjacent room, she felt a sense that someone walked by her.

This past summer a guest watching TV in her room saw the torso of a woman behind the television. She reported it to Brad Jerome, the inn's director of sales and marketing.

"She said, 'No one's going to believe me, but I had a conversation with a ghost,'" Jerome said.

The ghost said, "'Don't tell.'"

Was the guest frightened?

Hardly. "She spent some time at the Bethel Historical Society looking for information," Jerome said.

He later mentioned the otherworldly encounter to Taylor.

Taylor described her own experience with a mysterious woman.

Her detailing of the woman's appearance matched the guest's description "to a T," Jerome said.

Taylor said she has come to accept the ghostly woman as part of the inn's family.

"I think she just wants to know who's here," Taylor said.

Randy Bennett, curator of collections at the Bethel Historical Society, recalls the inn guest who visited the society after the ghost woman visited her: "The woman was from Hartford, Conn., and came to the society's research library in mid-July looking for information about people who might have stayed at the Bethel Inn years ago.

"The 'researcher' said that she had had a 15-minute conversation with an apparition in the form of a woman whose first name was Julia, and who appeared to her in her guest room.

"This 'Julia' said something about being ill and needing a nurse while at the inn, and also that she had been in the attic of the building.

"Since it didn't appear that the lady from Hartford was familiar with the early history of the inn, her remark about the woman being ill and having a nurse surprised me, since a number of Dr. John G. Gehring's patients stayed at the inn (where there were rooms set aside for nurses) while undergoing treatment for nervous disorders.

"Our summer student intern, Edie Doyle, worked with the Hartford woman to come up with something here to further identify 'Julia,' but we found nothing.

"As she left that day, the inn's guest said she would try to ask the ghost for her last name if she appeared again. We heard nothing further."