Room 208 and the Lady in White: General Lewis Inn

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated October 13, 2026 · How we verify

The General Lewis Inn sits on Washington Street East in Lewisburg, West Virginia, a few blocks from the spring where the town’s namesake pitched a surveyor’s camp in 1751. The oldest part of the building began as a private house, not a hotel, and it only started taking paying guests in the twentieth century. What draws paranormal visitors are three figures said to keep to three specific places inside it: a second-floor guest room, another room down the same hall, and the dining room. None of those stories is documented in any record. All of them are guest lore, repeated often enough to become part of the inn’s identity.

The General Lewis Inn at a Glance

• Where: Lewisburg, Greenbrier County, West Virginia
• Origins: built in the early 1800s by John H. Withrow as a private residence
• Became an inn: 1929, under the ownership of the Hock family
• Still operating: yes, as a working guesthouse with restored rooms and a dining room
• Reported ghosts: three, associated with room 208, room 202 and the second floor, and the dining room
• Setting: inside Lewisburg’s historic core, a 236-acre area designated a National Register Historic District in 1978

Andrew Lewis, the Spring, and the Town That Took His Name

Lewisburg is named for Andrew Lewis, who in 1751, then a young surveyor, established a camp near the spring behind the present courthouse. That water has been called the Lewis Spring ever since. By 1770 a fortified encampment known as Fort Savannah stood at the spring, and in 1774 Governor Dunmore of Virginia instructed Lewis, by then a colonel, to raise “willing and able men” and march against Native American forces attacking the Greenbrier Valley. More than 1,490 men were gathered, some at Fort Pitt and others at Fort Union, on the site of present-day Lewisburg. They marched down the New and Kanawha Rivers and fought an inconclusive engagement at the mouth of the Kanawha that became known as the Battle of Point Pleasant.

The town itself was laid out in 1780, with Matthew Arbuckle, Sr. as its first settler, and was formally established in 1782 by an act of the Virginia General Assembly. Several Virginia courts sat here to accommodate Virginians west of the mountains, and Patrick Henry once successfully defended a client accused of murder in Lewisburg. This is the settled, documented ground the inn was later built on. It is worth separating from the ghost stories, because the history needs no embellishment.

A Withrow House That Became a Hock Family Inn

The building went up in the early 1800s as a private residence for John H. Withrow. It stood through the Civil War, when a number of engagements were fought in and around the town, including the Battle of Lewisburg in 1862. Several buildings still standing in Lewisburg served as hospitals and barracks for both sides, and bullet marks remain visible on some of them today. The old Virginia Supreme Court library, which served as the Greenbrier County Library until 2008, was used as a hospital and has preserved a section of wall carrying soldiers’ graffiti.

The Withrow house did not open as an inn until 1929, when the Hock family took it on and began receiving guests. Successive renovations have kept the period character of the rooms while bringing the plumbing, heating and furnishings up to the standard a modern traveler expects. The result is a building that reads as genuinely old rather than themed.

Room 208, Room 202, and the Figure at the Dining Table

Everything in this section is reported experience. There is no documentary evidence for any of these three figures, and the accounts come from guests and staff rather than from records.

The best known is the Lady in White, associated with room 208. Guests describe a nameless figure that appears to float rather than walk, and the inn has leaned into the story to the point that images of her hang on the walls of the room she is said to frequent. Nobody has attached a verifiable name or date to her.

The second is Reuben, described in the inn’s lore as an enslaved man who met a violent end, and said to linger in what is now the dining room. Guests have reported seeing him seated quietly at the dining table. The story functions as a reminder of the building’s antebellum period, though the historical record does not confirm the man or the death.

The third is a small girl, reported on the second floor and most often around room 202. What visitors describe hearing is laughter, and sometimes crying, carrying along the hallway with no child in the building.

Notice the pattern: three figures, three fixed locations, and a clean division of the building between them. That is a common shape for inn folklore, and it is reason enough to hold the stories loosely. It does not make the reports dishonest, but it does suggest a tradition that has been tidied and retold rather than collected from raw experience.

Staying at the General Lewis Inn

This is a working guesthouse, so the way to see the interior is to book a room or eat in the dining room. Rooms 208 and 202 are ordinary bookable rooms rather than exhibits, and travelers who want the stories should expect an unremarkable night as the likeliest outcome. The inn’s appeal does not depend on the ghosts: the furnishings, the age of the structure, and the position inside Lewisburg’s historic district carry the stay on their own.

The surrounding town rewards a longer visit. Carnegie Hall, built in 1902 by Andrew Carnegie as a classroom building for the Lewisburg Female Institute, is one of only four Carnegie Halls still in continuous use anywhere in the world and now runs performances, classes and exhibitions. The Greenbrier Historical Society operates the North House Museum in an 1820 building that was a lawyer’s home, then James Frazier’s Star Tavern and Inn, and later the president’s house for Greenbrier Women’s College. Its collection includes Civil War artifacts and the training saddle of Robert E. Lee’s horse Traveller. The Lost World Caverns and Organ Cave are both nearby, and the State Fair of West Virginia runs in neighboring Fairlea every August.

Address: 1236 Washington St E

See General Lewis Inn for Yourself

Sources

• City Council
• 2019 U.S. Gazetteer Files (Census (official))
• City and Town Population Totals: 2020 to 2021 (US Census Bureau)
• Find a County
• Elizabeth Harden Gilmore House
• Wikipedia: Lewisburg, West Virginia

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