Morris-Jumel Mansion

British officer Roger Morris built a Palladian country house on the heights of northern Manhattan in 1765, with views over the Harlem River. Loyalists, the Morrises fled at the start of the Revolution, and in September and October 1776 George Washington used the house as his headquarters during the fight for New York. After the war it served as a tavern and a farmhouse, until in 1810 the French-born merchant Stephen Jumel bought it for his wife, Eliza.

Eliza Jumel’s life was one of the great social climbs of her century. Born into poverty in Providence in 1775, she spent part of her childhood in a workhouse and worked as an actress before her marriage. Stephen died in 1832, and in 1833 she married the former vice president Aaron Burr in the mansion’s parlor; she soon sued for divorce over his spending of her money, and he died in 1836 as the divorce was being concluded. Wealthy, litigious and the subject of endless gossip – including baseless rumors that she let her first husband die – Eliza lived in the house until her death in 1865, at about 90. The city acquired the house in 1903, and it opened as a museum in the following years; it became a National Historic Landmark in 1961.

The ghost stories gathered around Eliza. The most famous, told by the museum for decades, says that a group of schoolchildren waiting outside on a field trip were told to be quiet by a woman in an old-fashioned dress on the balcony – while the house was locked and empty. Their description is said to have matched her portrait. Visitors and staff also report a Hessian soldier said to have died on the stairs, the pacing of George Washington, the presence of Aaron Burr, voices, doors opening by themselves, lights switching on, and the sounds of women laughing in a closed kitchen. One earlier occupant, Mary Bowen, is recorded as refusing to stay alone in the house because she believed soldiers’ ghosts haunted it.

The museum treats its ghosts with a historian’s eye: its paranormal programs present the stories alongside evidence that many of the darker rumors about Eliza grew from prejudice against a self-made, unconventional woman. The house has appeared on the Today show, Haunted USA and Ghost Adventures.

A woman in period dress on the balcony or upstairs, a Hessian soldier on the stairs, footsteps and voices in the empty house, doors opening, lights switching on and off, laughter and moving furniture in the kitchen – reported by schoolchildren, staff and visitors.

The front balcony over the portico, Eliza’s bedroom and the upper hall, the main staircase and the basement kitchen; staff logs record events when the house is closed.

The mansion appears in classic ghost books, on Ghost Adventures and Haunted USA, and in nearly every guide to haunted New York City. The museum holds regular paranormal-history programs.