King’s Tavern

Natchez, on its bluff above the Mississippi, is one of the oldest European settlements on the river, and King’s Tavern is often called its oldest building. Tradition dates it to 1769, under British rule, and says it was built partly as a blockhouse for nearby Fort Panmure using timbers salvaged from ships and flatboats. In 1789 Richard King, a New Yorker, opened it as a tavern and inn at the southern end of the Natchez Trace, the overland route that boatmen walked home after selling their flatboats in Natchez. The tavern also served as the town’s mail drop. King sold it in 1817, and from 1823 the same family lived there for about 150 years.

The Trace was dangerous, and tavern lore is full of its outlaws. Sam Mason and the notorious Harpe brothers raided travellers in the region around 1800, and local storytellers think it “very possible” that bandits spent their takings at King’s – though there is no record placing them there. A red-haired man in a top hat seen in the building is sometimes said to be one of them.

The tavern’s central ghost story is about Madeline, described as a young woman employed by Richard King who became his mistress; his jealous wife, the legend says, had her killed and hidden in the walls. According to Natchez tradition, workers in the 1930s found three skeletons – two men and a woman – sealed behind the fireplace, along with a jeweled dagger, and the woman was assumed to be Madeline. No contemporary records of the discovery, or of Madeline herself, have been published, and the identities of the two men were never known. The legend is best treated as just that.

In the 1970s the building was restored – by the Natchez Pilgrimage Garden Club, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation – and later became a restaurant and tavern. In 2013 chef Regina Charboneau and her husband Doug bought it and reopened it with a wood-fired menu and craft cocktails, and its ghost stories became part of the dining experience. By 2022 it was reported closed and for sale, so visitors should check its current status.

Staff and guests have reported a young woman in old-fashioned clothes, faces and strange images in mirrors and windows, a baby crying in an empty room, footsteps upstairs, warm spots on an upstairs bed, being pushed or having their hair pulled, and a red-haired man in a top hat.

The fireplace wall where the skeletons were reportedly found, the upstairs rooms and bed associated with Madeline, and the bar and stairs.

King’s Tavern features in Mississippi ghost-lore collections, the Hinds Community College “Paranormal Mississippi” guide and Natchez ghost tours. The Natchez Trace’s outlaw history inspired Eudora Welty’s novella The Robber Bridegroom.