Reynolds Mansion

Built in 1847 for Colonel Daniel Reynolds and his family, this is one of only three brick buildings in North Carolina that survived the Civil War. Reynolds was a mortician who reportedly embalmed bodies in the house. The mansion became a bed and breakfast in 1972.

Colonel Daniel Reynolds built this imposing brick home in 1847 on Reynolds Mountain in what is now the town of Woodfin, just north of Asheville. The house was constructed by a team of fifteen enslaved workers for Reynolds and his wife, Susan Adelia Baird, on 1,500 acres originally gifted by Susan's father, Israel Baird. The couple raised ten children within its walls. The mansion is one of fewer than ten surviving pre-Civil War brick structures in western North Carolina, and its history stretches through generations of the Reynolds family, whose legacy includes a connection to one of the most famous gemstones in the world -- Daniel's grandson, U.S. Senator Robert Rice Reynolds, married Evelyn Washington McLean, the last private owner of the Hope Diamond, now housed at the Smithsonian.

Daniel's younger son, Natt Augustus Reynolds, purchased the property in 1890 and commissioned an extensive renovation in the early 1900s, adding a third story and Colonial Revival architectural details that transformed the house into the grand structure visible today. Around 1920, a woman named Elizabeth Smith ran the house as an osteopathic sanitarium for approximately five years, treating patients within its rooms. After the sanitarium closed, the mansion passed to Annie Lee Reynolds, who operated it briefly as a rooming house before the property fell into disrepair. Fred and Helen Faber purchased the deteriorating mansion in 1970, spent two years restoring it, and opened it as a bed and breakfast in 1972. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 13, 1984.

Two female ghosts are believed to haunt the Reynolds Mansion. The most frequently encountered is Annie Lee Reynolds herself, described as a spinster who suffered from either depression or tuberculosis and who died in the house. The guest room known as Maggie was her personal bedroom, and according to the current owners, it is probably the most haunted room in the house. Guests staying in Maggie report an unsettling feeling of being watched, doors that open and close on their own, and cold spots that appear without explanation. The second ghost is believed to be another Reynolds daughter who died of typhoid fever at the age of six. Her presence is described as lighter and less defined than Annie Lee's -- more of a fleeting impression than a full apparition.

Beyond the two identified spirits, guests and visitors have reported a range of phenomena throughout the mansion. Footsteps echo through empty hallways, particularly on the upper floors. Belongings left in specific locations are found moved by morning. Guests have sent the current owners countless photographs showing orbs and what they believe to be ghostly apparitions captured on film inside the house. The mansion has been the subject of several paranormal investigations by local ghost hunting teams, though the owners have maintained a measured approach, acknowledging the reports without sensationalizing them. Colonel Reynolds himself is sometimes invoked as a possible presence, given his long association with the property, though the two female spirits remain the most consistently reported.

Today the Reynolds Mansion operates as a bed and breakfast with ten guest rooms, each named for a member of the Reynolds family. Guests come for the mountain views, the antique furnishings, and the sense of stepping back into a house that has sheltered nearly two centuries of human life. Whether Annie Lee is among those who greet them remains, according to most who have stayed in Room Maggie, a matter of when rather than if.