General Wayne Inn Ghosts: A 1704 Tavern Turned Synagogue

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 9, 2026 · How we verify

Stories about the General Wayne Inn ghosts have outlived the tavern itself. The building at 625 Montgomery Avenue in Merion Station, Pennsylvania, opened as a tavern in 1704, spent close to three centuries under a series of different names, became the site of a killing that ended in a life sentence, and has been an Orthodox Jewish synagogue since 2005. Anyone hoping to walk in for a pint and a ghost tour is about twenty years too late.

Four Names Before It Was the General Wayne

The tavern was established in 1704. Before it took its current name it traded as the William Penn Inn, the Wayside Inn, Tunis Ordinary and Streepers Tavern. The renaming came in 1793, in honour of the American Revolutionary War hero General “Mad” Anthony Wayne, who had stayed there. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

Its guest list is the sort of thing local histories collect and repeat: Benjamin Franklin, William Penn, the Marquis de Lafayette, George Washington, Edgar Allan Poe, Anthony Wayne himself, and in more recent decades Julius Erving and Dylan Gelula. A roll call of visitors is not evidence of anything supernatural, but it does explain why the place accumulated so much folklore. A building that has been open to the public since the reign of Queen Anne collects stories the way it collects paint layers.

The Killing of Jim Webb in 1996

This part of the record is not legend. Executive chef James Edwin “Jim” Webb and his business partner Guy Angelo Sileo Jr. bought the General Wayne in 1995. On 27 December 1996, Webb was found murdered in his office at the inn.

Felicia Moyse, a 20 year old assistant chef at the inn and Sileo’s girlfriend, was his alibi witness. On the night of the murder the two left the General Wayne at the same time and drove to dinner in separate vehicles. Sileo doubled back, shot Webb with a.25 Beretta Model 20 pistol later linked to him by forensic evidence, then hurried to reach the restaurant before Moyse did. Moyse took her own life on 22 February 1997. Police believe she had worked out that her boyfriend had used her as his alibi and could not live with it.

Prosecutors established a motive of money: Sileo stood to collect $650,000 in life insurance from the partnership policies, and he acted before Webb could dissolve the partnership and close the General Wayne. Sileo was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to life in prison. The case was later covered by Forensic Files in an episode called “Murder on the Menu”, first broadcast in February 2006.

Hessians, Rumour and an Unsolved Mysteries Segment

The haunting talk predates the murder by a long way. The inn, in the words of the historical record, “gained fame for rumors of being ‘haunted’”, and those rumours were prominent enough that Unsolved Mysteries devoted a segment to them, “The Unexplained: The General Wayne Inn”, broadcast on 26 October 1988. That is eight years before Webb was killed, which is worth noting: the ghost stories were not manufactured by the crime, though the crime certainly gave them a second life.

The specific claim most often attached to the building involves Hessian mercenaries, the German troops hired by the British during the Revolution. Matt Lake collected the story under the heading “Hessian Mercenaries Haunt General Wayne Inn” in Weird Pennsylvania in 2005. Beyond that framing, the documented sources here do not describe named witnesses, dated encounters or investigation results. What survives is a reputation rather than a catalogue of sightings, and it should be read that way. No account in the available record establishes that anything supernatural has happened at 625 Montgomery Avenue.

What Stands There Now: Chabad of the Main Line

In 2005 the building was bought and renovated as Chabad of the Main Line, an Orthodox Jewish congregation practising in the Chabad-Lubavitch rite. Sitting on the Philadelphia Main Line, the congregation converted the old tavern into a synagogue and community centre.

That change matters for anyone planning a visit. This is an active house of worship and a community building, not a historic site with a ticket desk, and the tavern that generated the ghost stories no longer exists in any commercial sense. The exterior can be seen from Montgomery Avenue, and the building’s National Register listing means its historic fabric is documented. Anything beyond looking from the street is a matter for the congregation, not for ghost hunters, and it would be poor form to treat a working synagogue as a paranormal attraction.

Address: 625 Montgomery Avenue, Merion Station, Pennsylvania

See General Wayne Inn for Yourself

Sources

• Haunted history and the rebirth of the General Wayne Inn
• National Register of Historic Places Registration: Pennsylvania SP General Wayne Inn (Archives (official))
• General Wayne Inn
• General Wayne Inn killer chef sees latest appeal denied
• General Wayne Inn
• Wikipedia: General Wayne Inn

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