Kaminski House Museum

The Kaminski House Museum in Georgetown, built in 1769 by merchant Paul Trapier, is haunted by the ghost of an unnamed enslaved woman connected to an antique sideboard and by invisible footsteps with a peg-leg rhythm that cross the art gallery floor. Author Elizabeth Huntsinger Wolf documented the hauntings in her 1998 book "More Ghosts of Georgetown."

There is an antique sideboard inside the Kaminski House Museum that staff believe is connected to the ghost of an enslaved woman. Nobody knows her name. The piece of furniture came with the house, and at some point the story attached itself to the wood and stayed. Author Elizabeth Huntsinger Wolf documented the connection in her 1998 book "More Ghosts of Georgetown."

The house at 1003 Front Street overlooks the Sampit River in Georgetown, South Carolina. Paul Trapier built it in 1769. Trapier was a wealthy merchant whose French Huguenot family had been in the Carolinas since the 1690s. Locals called him the "King of Georgetown." He was elected to the Second Continental Congress in 1776 but died before he could serve. The house passed through several prominent owners: John Keith, Georgetown's first mayor; Sheriff Edward Martin; business owners Thomas Daggett and George Congdon. Harold and Julia Kaminski bought it in 1931.

Harold was the son of Heiman Kaminski, one of Georgetown's biggest merchants in the late 1800s, dealing in rice, timber, dry goods, hardware, and shipping. Harold served as mayor in the late 1940s and pushed for the Coast Highway, improvements to the Intracoastal Waterway, and affordable electricity. When Julia died in 1972, she left the house and its contents to the city of Georgetown for use as a museum.

The building is Georgian colonial, a Lowcountry "single house" from the mid-18th century. The rooms hold American and English antiques, art from China and the Middle East, and pieces collected across two centuries of wealthy ownership. It is a beautiful, quiet place, and something walks through it after hours.

The footsteps are the most common report. Museum docents hear them in the art gallery: a deliberate, heavy tread with an uneven rhythm that sounds like someone walking with a peg leg. The steps cross the room and stop. There is nobody there.

Georgetown is one of the most haunted towns on the South Carolina coast, and the Kaminski House is a regular stop on local ghost tours. The museum sits on the Georgetown Harborwalk boardwalk, and it is listed in the National Register as part of the Georgetown Historic District. The town is the third oldest in South Carolina. The Kaminski House has seen 250 years of births, deaths, commerce, slavery, wars, and the slow churn of families coming and going. The sideboard still sits where it has always sat. The footsteps still cross the gallery floor.