Haunted Places in Newport, RI

The history

Newport is a seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay, and its Wikipedia article gives it the two pasts its haunted reputation feeds on. Founded in 1639, it grew into a major 18th-century port — the largest of the four original settlements that became the Colony of Rhode Island — with the Old Colony House at the head of Washington Square serving as the seat of Rhode Island's government from 1741 until the state house in Providence was completed in 1904. The colonial port survives in brick and clapboard all over downtown: the White Horse Tavern has served since 1673, and the town jail built in 1772 stood on Marlborough Street until it became an inn. Then, a century later, Newport reinvented itself as the Gilded Age's summer capital — famous, in the article's words, for its historic mansions and its sailing history, home to every America's Cup challenge between 1930 and 1983 — and built Bellevue Avenue's palaces, Belcourt among them. The 2020 census counted 25,163 residents in a city whose building stock runs, street by street, from the 1600s to the 1890s.

That layering is why Newport's haunted map has two distinct halves. Downtown, the haunts are colonial and maritime: a tavern that housed the General Assembly and a pirate innkeeper, a jail that held prisoners for two centuries, execution grounds and ghost ships in the tour operators' tellings. Uphill on Bellevue Avenue, the haunt is a single Gilded Age mansion whose ghost stories began not with servants' tales from the 1890s but with the family that rescued the house in 1956 and lived in it, guided its tours, and reported its ghosts in the first person.

The legend

This section is folklore — reported by tour operators, the city's tourism board and the venues' own accounts, and never asserted as fact here.

Discover Newport, the city's tourism authority, keeps the roster in its haunted-spots account. At the White Horse Tavern — "the oldest, and supposedly most haunted tavern in America," in its words — employees report being tapped on the shoulder and hearing footsteps from nearby empty rooms, and other accounts describe an elderly man in colonial dress said to haunt the building. At Belcourt, the same account tells the Tinney family's central story: one night Harle Tinney awoke to find a man standing beside the bed wearing a long brown robe and a hat that covered his face; moments later, the figure walked through the wall and disappeared. Belcourt's owners have leaned into the reputation — the house runs a candlelit Walk with Ghosts, billed by the tourism board as Newport's only after-dark mansion ghost tour.

The Jailhouse Inn's lore is quieter and, in the haunted-hotel accounts that collect it, more atmospheric than named: guests are said to feel cool gusts of wind on hot days with no windows open and to hear whispering voices that cannot be explained, especially on the third floor. No named ghost attaches to the jail in the sources for this guide — a former prison's reputation, told without a protagonist. The walking tours fill the streets between these addresses with the rest of the repertoire: the Palatine Light, the phantom ship US Ghost Adventures' route describes as still signalling the coast without ever arriving, pirate executions at Gravelly Point, and the spirits of Washington Square. Ships, pirates and executions are the operators' maritime folklore, and they are labelled as such wherever they appear below.

Haunted today

Hountix lists 5 places in Newport, RI. Seasonal attractions keep their own open dates, so check each business's own site before you go.

• Fort Adams State Park — haunted place, 90 Fort Adams Dr, Newport, RI 02840
• Jailhouse Inn — haunted place, 13 Marlborough Street, Newport, RI 02840
• Old Colony House — haunted place, Washington Square, Newport, RI 02840
• The Astors' Beechwood Mansion — haunted place, 580 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, RI 02840
• The Hotel Viking — haunted place, 1 Bellevue Ave, Newport, RI 02840

Attraction stories

Jailhouse Inn

The Jailhouse Inn is anchored the other way: no Wikipedia article exists for it, so this story rests on the gate's first-party branch — the inn's own published history, provided to it by the Newport Historical Society, in the inn's own words. That history records that the Newport jailhouse was built in 1772 by George Lawton and Oliver Ring Warner, replacing an earlier jail built in 1680 on the same location — a site where, the history notes, the first mention of a Newport jail dates to 1658, when it was decided the prison then building in Newport "was to be the prison for the whole colony." The building was enlarged in 1800 and renovated in 1888 by architect Dudley Newton; the Newport Mercury judged it "never considered a particularly strong place," and the history delights in its escapes, including the mason who in the winter of 1859–60 removed bricks from around his window and fled, only to be tracked through new snow to the Ocean House Hotel. The building remained Newport Police Department headquarters until 1986, when it was converted into the Jailhouse Inn; renovated again in 2005, it now offers 23 rooms at 13 Marlborough Street, their names — Solitary Confinement, Gang Lock-Up Suite — keeping the building's first career in view.

Haunted-hotel accounts collecting the Jailhouse describe stories that "abound" of ghosts visiting the inn, with guests feeling cool gusts of wind on hot days with no windows open and hearing whispering voices, especially on the third floor. The walking tours make it a named stop for the same reason: a colonial jail is a ready-made haunted address. What this guide can document is the jail — 1772, two centuries of prisoners, escapes the town newspaper recorded. What it reports, attributed and labelled, is that people who sleep in its cells today say the building has not entirely emptied. Both halves are in this story, and neither is dressed as the other.

*Website: http://www.jailhouse.com/*

Sources

• Wikipedia, Newport, Rhode Island (city anchor — founded 1639, major 18th-century port, Old Colony House as seat of government 1741–1904, Gilded Age mansions and America's Cup 1930–1983, 2020 population 25,163) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newport,_Rhode_Island
• Wikipedia, Belcourt of Newport (anchor — 50,000-square-foot, 60-room villa designed by Richard Morris Hunt for Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont on the Louis XIII hunting lodge at Versailles, built in the early 1890s for $3.2 million, first floor as carriage space and stables, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont's alterations from 1896, decline and sale to the Tinney family in November 1956 for $25,000, first public tours 1957, Harle Tinney's sale in 2012) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belcourt_of_Newport
• Wikipedia, White Horse Tavern (Newport, Rhode Island) (anchor — built before 1673, believed the oldest tavern building in the United States, Francis Brinley's 1652 building sold to William Mayes in 1673, named in 1730 by Jonathan Nichols, National Historic Landmark) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Horse_Tavern_ (Newport,_Rhode_Island)
• Belcourt of Newport (the house's own site and history page — constructed for Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont to Richard Morris Hunt's design in the style of the Louis XIII hunting lodge at Versailles, Alva Belmont's 1896 wedding gift and alterations, the Tinney family and Belcourt Castle, restoration since 2012, guided tours Friday–Sunday at about 60 minutes; collected 2026-10-30) — http://www.belcourt.com/
• Jailhouse Inn (the inn's own history page, historic detail provided by the Newport Historical Society — built 1772 by George Lawton and Oliver Ring Warner replacing the 1680 jail, a jail on the site since 1658, enlarged 1800, renovated 1888 by Dudley Newton, the 1859–60 mason's escape, police headquarters until 1986, converted to the inn, 23 rooms at 13 Marlborough Street; the inn publishes no ghost lore) — https://www.jailhouse.com/about-us/history/
• White Horse Tavern (the tavern's own history page — the full timeline used above: 1652 Brinley residence, 1673 Mayes tavern, General Assembly meeting place, William Mayes Jr. the pirate innkeeper licensed 1702, named 1730, Hessian billeting, Preservation Society restoration, National Historic Landmark 1972, "oldest operating restaurant in the U.S."; collected 2026-10-30) — https://whitehorsenewport.com/history/
• US Ghost Adventures, Newport Ghost Tour (operator's own site — "Seaside Hauntings and Hags Tour," daily year-round, 8 PM, 1 hour, 1 mile, meets at the Oliver Perry Monument in Washington Square, six-plus locations, White Horse Tavern exterior, Palatine Light and Gravelly Point pirate executions as operator tellings; collected 2026-10-30 — the collector's lore-subpage fetches were redirected to other cities' tours, noted in the story) — https://usghostadventures.com/newport-ghost-tour/
• Discover Newport, Haunted Spots in Newport (the city's tourism authority — White Horse Tavern as the oldest and supposedly most haunted tavern in America with employee shoulder-tap and footstep reports, Belcourt's robed-figure account from Harle Tinney and its candlelit ghost tours, the Artillery Company of Newport's reported hauntings) — https://www.discovernewport.org/blog/post/haunted-spots/
• Discover Newport, Spooky Season in Newport (Ghosts & Candlelight Tours at Belcourt on select October dates; the Olde Town Ghost Walk as a 90-minute lantern-led stroll) — https://www.discovernewport.org/blog/post/spooky-season/
• Visit Newport (Newport After Dark — Belcourt's Candlelight Walk with Ghosts as Newport's only after-dark mansion ghost tour, roughly 50–60 minutes on select October dates; the Olde Town Ghost Walk's route past the Jailhouse Inn, White Horse Tavern and Trinity Church yard) — https://www.visitnewportri.org/newport-after-dark-the-best-ghost-tours-haunted-investigations-spooky-nights-fall-2025/
• Oyster, Spooky Scary: Haunted Hotels of the Northeast (Jailhouse Inn — originally built 1772 as the old Newport County Jail; guests' cool gusts with no windows open and unexplained whispering voices, especially on the third floor, reported as the inn's ghost lore) — https://www.oyster.com/articles/spooky-scary-haunted-hotels-of-the-northeast/