A tunnel once connected the Martha Washington Inn with the Barter Theatre. The entrance on the inn's side has been closed off for several years, but the section below the theater is still used to run electrical cables. Actors who used the tunnel to walk between the inn and the theater in the 1930s and 1940s reported encountering a malevolent spirit. The specter was never seen but sensed as a strong evil presence. The spirit is believed to be either a man who was killed when the tunnel collapsed in 1890 or a Confederate soldier who used the tunnel to smuggle ammunition out of the inn's basement during the Civil War.