The Stone Lion Inn at 1016 West Warner Avenue in Guthrie, Oklahoma is a Victorian mansion built in 1907 for the Houghton family, one of the children of whom — seven-year-old Irene — died of whooping cough in the house that same year. The building subsequently served as a funeral home in the 1920s before being converted into a bed and breakfast by Becky Luker, who bought it in the 1980s without knowing its history and has spent thirty-some years trying to find logical explanations for things that resist them. Doors open and close in the same sequence, reliably enough that Smith — the business partner who has lived in the house nearly as long as Luker — can identify which door is moving from anywhere in the building just by the sound. A five-year-old girl went upstairs to play with the little girl who lived there. A woman woke the entire house at 2 a.m. because something had tried to wake her first. Luker is still a skeptic. She just can’t always find the explanation.
Guthrie is worth the visit for reasons beyond the Stone Lion. It has one of the largest intact districts of Victorian commercial architecture in the country — a consequence of losing the state capital to Oklahoma City in 1910 and never having the economic pressure to tear the old buildings down. The town is preserved partly by accident and partly by the work of people like Luker who saw the architecture and stayed.
The murder mystery dinners at the Stone Lion are sold out every Friday and Saturday. Forty people come in; twenty stay the night. If you’re one of them and something wakes you up in the small hours, Luker will have a logical explanation ready in the morning. She usually does. But the glasses you left on your nightstand, the ones you can’t get up without — those might be in the bathroom.
Story Source: ktul.com
Address: 1016 W Warner Ave, Guthrie, Oklahoma 73044
Accessibility Rating: Booking Required — Open to visitors but requires advance reservation, ticket purchase, or tour booking.
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What Others Have Experienced
A woman named Michelle Smith, the inn’s longtime business partner, said her young daughter Ebony once told her she had been upstairs playing with “the girl that plays upstairs,” and when pressed for a description, Ebony also mentioned a relative’s deceased grandmother by name and appearance that the child had never been told about.
— from The O’Colly (Michelle Smith, 2014)
Owner Becky Luker said that when her son Grant was 14, the front door kept slamming shut on its own even after he propped it open with a heavy iron, and he still cannot explain how the iron ended up pushed out of the way each time.
— from KTUL News (Grant Luker, 2018)
Owner Becky Luker said a guest once came downstairs and told her she had listened to a music box playing all night long in her room, but Luker had to tell her she didn’t own a music box anywhere in the house.
— from KTUL News (Becky Luker, 2018)
A cameraman named Andrejs Dabars, filming an investigation at the inn with paranormal researcher Christy Clark of OKPRI, said he suddenly felt someone rushing up close behind him in an empty hallway, leaving him covered in goosebumps and certain the temperature had dropped, even though no one else was there.
— from KTUL News (Andrejs Dabars, 2018)
A guest named Robyn, visiting from Wichita, Kansas for a family birthday party, said that while lying comfortably in bed she heard what sounded like a small adult’s or large child’s footsteps pacing back and forth outside her door throughout the entire night.
— from TripAdvisor (robynrising, 2017)
