Sweet Dreams Inn

An 1890 Victorian mansion built by William H. Wallace, founder of the Wallace Stone Quarry. The building served as a bed-and-breakfast inn and is considered one of the most paranormally active houses in Michigan.

The Sweet Dreams Inn is a Victorian mansion built in 1890 by William H. Wallace, one of the most prominent citizens in Michigan's Thumb region. Wallace was the founder of the Wallace Stone Quarry in Bay Port, president of the Michigan Sugar Company and Bay Port State Bank, and a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1908, 1916, and 1924. His family occupied the first two floors of the grand house, while the third floor served as a lavish ballroom for entertaining.

The haunting of the Sweet Dreams Inn appears rooted in the Wallace family tragedies that unfolded within its walls. William's first wife, Elizabeth, died inside the home in 1893, just three years after the mansion was completed. Wallace remarried to Margaret, who became a devoted mother figure in the household. William himself died in an automobile accident in 1933, though locals have long puzzled over the fact that he was buried in Bad Axe rather than Bay Port, the town he had built so much of his life around. Margaret followed him in death in 1935.

After the Wallace family passed, the paranormal activity began in earnest. The manifestations reported at Sweet Dreams Inn are remarkably specific and tied to individual family members. William Wallace's ghost is identified by his heavy, clomping footsteps heard moving through the hallways and up and down the staircases. When guests displease him, he has been known to whisper "get out" directly into their ears. Elizabeth's spirit reportedly wanders the second floor, rattling the doorknobs of each bedroom in a maternal gesture, checking that the children are safe. Margaret's presence is also felt on the second floor, described as a warm, watchful energy. The youngest Wallace daughter, Ora, has been spotted peering out of a third-floor window, a spectral little girl visible to passersby on the street below. Guests have reported furniture moving on its own in the third-floor ballroom area, attributed to Ora's restless spirit.

During its years as a bed and breakfast, the Sweet Dreams Inn attracted paranormal enthusiasts from across the country. Guests documented voices, weeping, giggling, music playing from nowhere, doors slamming, lights switching on and off, and the unsettling sensation of an invisible presence sitting on the edge of their bed in the middle of the night. Orbs were captured on cell phone video. Some guests fled the inn between three and four in the morning, unable to endure another moment. The property was featured in two Haunted Michigan travel books, multiple paranormal documentaries, and Pure Michigan's official tourism website. Though the Sweet Dreams Inn is no longer operational as a B&B, the Wallace family appears to remain firmly in residence, still entertaining guests whether the living wish to receive them or not.