Here at the Proprietary House, we put history before hauntings, but sometimes the two go hand in hand. As usual, we have more paranormal activity happen around us when we are doing our normal routine work and maintenance than when we have a ghost tour or ghost hunt.
There is a common misconception that ghosts only come out when it is dark. That is just for dramatic purposes for these horrendous “ghost hunting” shows, if you can call them that, which are littering our television screens, so they can scare unstable viewers and show off their night-vision cameras. Today at the Proprietary House was just one of those unsuspecting times where, in the middle of working, something caught us off-guard and really unnerved us for a few minutes. I was with one of our Junior Trustees on the first floor as we were turning Franklin’s Drawing Room over into a “theater” to get ready for our big arrest reenactment next month. We then went into the dining room to see if we had enough space to move something there. As we were standing by the fireplace we heard a thud from above us, and then several footsteps, which would have been on the second floor (no one was up there today, as the company that rents the space out is closed on weekends and there were no other cars in the parking lot). We quietly walked to the doorway across from the maid’s bedroom and stood there silently. The footsteps continued for a few more seconds, and as soon as they stopped, we heard the voice of a little boy say, “Wanna play?” It was coming from the breakfast room, which was about twenty feet to our left. My helper and I just looked at each other with stupefied glances and asked, “Did we really just hear that?”











