Schaumboch's Tavern, Hawk Mountain

OVERVIEW

A small stone house on Hawk Mountain Road beside the entrance to Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Berks County, the world's first refuge for birds of prey, founded in 1934. Before the sanctuary the house was a tavern kept in the mid-nineteenth century by Matthias Schambacher, and the sanctuary's history records the tradition that travellers who stopped there were robbed and killed and that Schambacher confessed on his deathbed. The house is used by sanctuary staff.

HISTORY

The mountain was a hawk-shooting ground until Rosalie Edge bought it and stopped the guns; the tavern's story predates that and is preserved in the sanctuary's own account of its land.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Staff who have lived in the house and the sanctuary's writers describe voices, lights and unexplained noise, and the tradition attaches the murdered travellers to the ground around it. The sanctuary tells the story itself, on its site and in its publications.

VISITING

The sanctuary is open daily (trail fee); the tavern is a private staff residence beside the entrance and is not open.