phelps

The Phelps Mansion was originally owned by a wealthy clipper ship captain from 1826 to 1849, named George R. Dowell. After this the Reverend
Phelps bought the mansion. He had moved from Philadelphia, which was a switch from a major city, and the house was quiet until March 10,
1850.

Dr. Eliakim Phelps, a Presbyterian minister who was believed to dabble in spiritualism, held a number of séances and experimented with other
ways of contacting the dead. Whatever it was he conjured up terrorized his family for nearly six months. When he returned from church on March
10th, they found their house in disarray. The front door of their home wide open and draped with black cloth. The furniture was thrown about the
home, some were into pieces, and cutlery was scattered across the floor. In the parlor, they saw the apparition of a shrouded corpse laid out on
the table and within a few moments, the ghostly vision vanished. They later discovered the apparition was Goody Bassett, a woman hanged as a
witch in 1661.

That afternoon they discovered their clothes arranged on the beds like the bodies of dead persons, with the arms folded across the chest. A week
later they found eleven lifelike, life-size effigies meticulously made of stuffed clothing. In the next few weeks, they found nineteen more. Objects
seemed to move by themselves and voices and knocking resonated through the house, strange writing mysteriously appeared on the walls, and
objects were seen flying through the home. Dr. Phelps invited another clergyman to stay with them and witness the phenomena. The man stayed
for three weeks and saw chairs and tables levitate, objects materialize in midair and a heavy candlestick holder move from the mantel and beat
against the floor until it broke.

The events seem to center on two of the Phelps children: twelve-year-old Harry and four-year-old Anna. The spirit rarely bothered the three-year-
old boy and the sixteen-year-old girl. As news spread of the "Stratford Knockings," reporters, scientists, and psychics from around the country
came to witness the phenomena. There were dozens fo reputable witnesses that heard the knocking sounds and saw objects fly through rooms.
Some objects actually "danced" across the floor and "jumped" through windows. The activity finally stopped when Harry and his sister went away
to boarding schools.

In 1971, police investigating reports of vandalism in the abandoned house, chased a little girl up the stairs into a third-floor bedroom. When they
entered the room she was gone.

Decades passed, and the owners of the house changed. In 1947, Carl Caserta and his wife bought the home on Elm Street to convert it into a
convalescence home, about 100 years after the hauntings. This is when the hauntings began again. One evening when Mrs. Caserta was
downstairs in the basement, she heard the buzzer sound. They installed buzzers so if the residents needed assistance could call for her
throughout the house. She went up the third floor, and she smelt smoke. She headed into her infant sons room, whom she had just put to bed,
and his blanket covering his bed was ablaze. She quickly extinguished the flames. She them realized, who had rung the buzzer? The elderly
residents were all sleeping and her child could not have reached the buzzer. A few years later, a similar incident occurred when her son, who was
sleepwalking, attempted to jump from the third floor landing, and would have succeeded, it once again, the buzzer had not sounded. They never
found out why the buzzer sounded both times, saving their sons life.

The house was unfortunately demolished in 1972, and the lot is now a parking lot.

Bibliography: Hauck, Dennis. (1994). Haunted Places: Ghost abodes, sacred sites, UFO landings, and other supernatural location. New York:
Penguin Book.