The Griswold Inn

The Griswold Inn in Essex, CT has been open since 1776 and is haunted by a ghost named Clarence who knocks glasses off tables so often the staff named a cocktail after him. The inn survived a British invasion in 1814 that burned 27 ships but left behind a Sunday brunch tradition that continues today.

They named a cocktail after the ghost. Clarence, whoever he was, knocked so many glasses off tables at the Griswold Inn that the staff eventually gave up being annoyed and put him on the drink menu instead. Kate Savage of the Essex Historical Society confirmed the tradition: "Every once in a while, glasses would fall off the table, and I do know that we would attribute that sometimes to the ghost of Clarence."

Nobody knows Clarence's full name or when he died. The inn has been open since 1776, which gives you about 250 years of potential candidates. Staff say he was a young man. That's all anyone can agree on. But the glasses kept falling, decade after decade, and at some point it became easier to give the problem a name than to keep replacing the glassware.

The Griswold opened the same year as the Declaration of Independence, built to serve the shipwrights constructing Connecticut's first warship, the Oliver Cromwell, which launched on June 13, 1776. Sala Griswold ran the tavern for sailors, politicians, and revolutionaries who needed somewhere to eat, drink, and argue about the war. The bar they argued in, the Tap Room, wasn't even part of the original building. It started life as a one-room schoolhouse in 1735. In 1801, a team of oxen dragged it down Main Street on logs and bolted it onto the inn. The original ceiling of crushed clamshell and horsehair plaster is still up there.

The inn's wildest chapter happened on April 7, 1814. Around 136 British Royal Marines rowed up the Connecticut River after dark and captured the village of Essex (then called the Potapoug Quarter of Saybrook). Lieutenant Lloyd seized the Griswold as headquarters. Captain Coote read a proclamation, and the troops burned 27 American ships in the harbor, the largest loss of American shipping until Pearl Harbor. While occupying the inn, the British drank the town's entire rum supply and threw lavish Sunday breakfasts. The enemy left. Their brunch survived. The Griswold still serves a Hunt Breakfast every Sunday, a tradition born from hostile occupation.

Clarence isn't the only presence guests have noticed. A figure in what looks like a sea captain's uniform has been spotted near the main fireplace, staring out as if watching for a ship. Visitors in the hallways have described people in colonial-era clothing who weren't there a second later. In March 2024, a paranormal team from Ghosts Be Gone investigated the inn and reported contact with two spirits. Michelle, one of the investigators, described a female presence in a fine dress who kept saying "Look at me!" The team also detected a quieter male spirit who seemed content just being there. Anne, another team member, flagged a painting in one of the upstairs rooms whose eyes, she said, follow you around the room.

The owners don't push the ghost angle. With a quarter-millennium of continuous operation, they figure strange things are bound to accumulate. Nothing's been formally investigated by the big TV crews, and the inn doesn't seem to mind. The Gris (as locals call it) has survived a revolution, a British invasion, Prohibition, and Clarence. A schoolhouse dragged by oxen, a ceiling made of clamshells, an enemy brunch that became a beloved tradition. The ghost story is fun, but the real history is weirder than anything Clarence could cook up.