Curtis House Inn (1754 House)

Connecticut's oldest continually operating inn (since 1754) in Woodbury has at least five ghosts, including Lucius Foot, a former owner found murdered in a cemetery after a poker game whose ghost still stomps into Room 1 to pull off his boots, and Joe, a dishwasher who died in 1985 and never left the kitchen.

Lucius Foot won big at poker one winter night in the 1850s. He owned the Curtis House Inn in Woodbury at the time, and after pocketing his winnings, he took a shortcut home through the cemetery behind St. Paul's Episcopal Church. They found him the next morning in the church's work barn. Dead. Frozen. His poker money gone.

The murder was never solved. But Lucius apparently wasn't done with Room 1.

Guests in that room have watched a man in nineteenth-century clothing stomp through the door, sit on the bed, pull off his boots, and fade into the wall. Same routine every time. He shows up, goes through his nightly ritual, and vanishes. He's done it often enough that staff stopped being surprised by it decades ago.

The building predates Lucius by more than a century. Anthony Stoddard built the house in 1735 for his son Elikim. It opened as an inn in 1754, making it the oldest continually operating inn in Connecticut. Nearly three centuries of guests, owners, workers, and deaths under one roof. That's a lot of residue.

Lucius gets the dramatic entrance, but he shares the house with at least four other ghosts.

Sally stays on the second floor and in Room 16. She's quieter than Lucius. More of a feeling than a sighting, though some guests have caught glimpses. A male figure in nineteenth-century clothes appears in the Pub Room and dining area, never identified, but described consistently across years of reports. Anthony Stoddard himself walks the first-floor hallways. He built the place. If anyone's earned squatter's rights in the afterlife, it's the guy who laid the foundation.

Then there's Joe. Joe was a dishwasher. He worked at the inn and died in 1985. Employees who knew him when he was alive say his presence in the kitchen feels familiar, like a coworker who just never clocked out. Joe is the most recent ghost and the most relatable. Not an 18th-century captain, not a murder victim. Just a dishwasher who liked his job enough to keep doing it.

Ed and Lorraine Warren, the Connecticut paranormal investigators behind The Conjuring franchise, confirmed the hauntings. That carries weight in certain circles, regardless of your opinion on the Warrens' methods. Gordon Ramsay showed up too, in September 2014, featuring the inn on Season 2 of Hotel Hell. He brought a paranormal investigator along for the episode.

The property has had a bumpy few years. It closed in April 2019, briefly reopened as the Evergreen Inn and Tavern, and now operates as 1754 House under owner Michael Bates-Walsh. The name changed. The staff turned over. The guests in Room 1 kept seeing the same man pulling off the same boots.

Most haunted hotels have one ghost. Maybe two. Curtis House has five, minimum. Each with their own floor, their own century, their own personality. Lucius stomps and strips boots. Sally drifts. Joe does dishes. Stoddard patrols. The unnamed man in the Pub Room sits and watches.

It's less a haunted inn than a boarding house where the tenants happen to be dead. Nobody's causing problems. They're all just doing what they did when they were alive, in the same building where they did it. The murder victim replays his last normal night. The dishwasher washes dishes. The builder walks the halls. Three centuries of people, all refusing to leave.