The Haunting of the Phelps Mansion in Fairfield County

Little is known about the mansion, other than it was inhabited by Dr. Eliakim Phelps. Phelps was a Presbyterian minister and lived in the house with his wife and children during the early nineteenth century.

It is thought that maybe Reverend Phelps is responsible for the paranormal happenings in the house. Apparently, in life, Mr. Phelps liked to dabble with spiritualism and the occult.

It is said that Reverend Phelps held many séances and during one of them he apparently summoned the spirit of Goody Bassett, a witch that was hanged for practicing witchcraft in the year of 1661.

The paranormal activity began while the Phelps family lived in the house and it is said to still occur there today.

One bright Sunday, upon returning from church, the Phelps family reported coming home and finding the phantom corpse of Goody Bassett, on their dining room table. Then it vanished.

During that same afternoon, the family claimed that when they entered their bedrooms, their clothing had been laid out on the beds and posed to look like the position a person would be lying in if they were in a coffin.

There were other times when they found their clothing stuffed and arranged to look like life-sized bodies.

Strange puppet dolls (or maybe poppet dolls) were also found in various parts of the home. These strange little dolls did not belong to the family, but rather, just appeared throughout the home.

Eventually, the family began to report poltergeist activity; unexplainable knocking, objects that moved around on its own, furniture being raised off of the floor and objects being beat against the wall until broken. And then the inevitable; the children were attacked at night and beaten by this unseen entity. Furniture would move across the floors or be thrown out of the windows.

The Phelps family was not the only ones to witness these occurrences; many visitors were witnesses too.

Mr. Phelps and his wife finally sent the children off to boarding school to spare them the nightly beatings that tormented them. Afterward, the hauntings stopped.