Old State House

Connecticut's Old State House (1796) is haunted by Joseph Steward, who ran a Museum of Curiosities with two-headed animals on the third floor until his death in 1822. Staff once found all forty-pound desks shoved to the center of the chamber overnight, and Ghost Hunters captured a doorknob turning and a woman sighing in empty rooms.

Staff arrived one morning at Connecticut's Old State House and found every desk and chair in the house chamber shoved into the center of the room, blocking the aisle. The desks weigh about forty pounds each. It took two staff members two hours to put everything back. Nobody had been in the building overnight.

The Old State House at 800 Main Street in Hartford was designed by Charles Bulfinch, one of America's first professional architects, and completed in 1796. It served as the state capitol until 1878 and is now a museum. The building is a Federal-style landmark, clean lines and restrained elegance, exactly the kind of building that shouldn't have a two-headed calf on the third floor.

But it does. In 1797, a portrait painter and minister named Joseph Steward talked his way into opening a Museum of Natural and Other Curiosities on the upper floor. He announced it in the Connecticut Courant on June 5 of that year. His collection included two-headed animals (a calf and a pig), natural history specimens, and at election time, wax figures of famous politicians. Steward ran the museum until his death in 1822. The collection is still up there, recreated on the third floor, which is where people keep seeing him.

Staff and visitors have reported a shadowy figure in the windows of the old museum space. The figure matches descriptions of Steward, or at least of a man from his era. He seems to still be tending his collection.

The Ghost Hunters investigation in 2009 (Season 5, Episode 24) turned up specific evidence. In the Senate Room, the team recorded audio of what sounded like a doorknob turning when no one was in the room. In the Steward Museum space on the third floor, they captured audio of a woman sighing. No female team members were in the building at the time.

The elevator moves on its own. Staff hear footsteps in empty rooms. The noises are concentrated in the older sections of the building, particularly the third floor where Steward's museum has been for over two centuries.

Steward was an interesting character. Born in 1753 in Massachusetts, he trained as a minister before becoming a portrait painter. He moved to Hartford in his early forties and convinced the state to let him operate a museum inside the brand new State House. This was a government building that also housed a collection of taxidermied oddities and two-headed livestock. Steward charged admission. The arrangement lasted for 25 years, which means Steward spent the last quarter of his life in that building every day.

The building has 230 years of history layered into it. It hosted state government, trials, legislative sessions, and one man's cabinet of curiosities. The Amistad trial took place here in 1839. Washington, Lafayette, and Andrew Jackson all visited. But the ghost belongs to a painter who stuffed animals and charged people to look at them.

The desk incident remains the strangest report. Moving forty-pound desks requires physical effort and time. If it was a prank, someone spent considerable energy on it without leaving any trace of entry. If it wasn't a prank, then something in the house chamber has strong opinions about furniture arrangement.

Joseph Steward spent 25 years in this building, maintaining his collection, greeting visitors, positioning his exhibits. The fact that a shadowy figure still appears in his museum windows suggests he never really closed up shop. The two-headed calf is still on display. Steward, by most accounts, is still somewhere nearby, checking on it.