Price-Gause House (Wilmington Ghost Walk HQ)

A historic home in downtown Wilmington that serves as the meeting point for the famous Ghost Walk of Old Wilmington, which has conducted over 51,000 tours since 1999. The house itself is part of the city's haunted landscape.

Before the Price-Gause House stood at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Market Street, the land served a far grimmer purpose. Known as Gallows Hill, this site was Wilmington's public execution ground throughout the early 1800s. According to historical accounts, more than 200 hangings took place here, drawing crowds who treated the spectacles as social events. Many of the condemned were unnamed sailors and drifters from distant ports, tried on land where they had no one to claim their remains. Their bodies were buried in shallow trenches around the gallows, and historians estimate that dozens -- possibly over a hundred -- still lie beneath the property's lawn and foundation.

Dr. William Jones Price, a physician and Confederate lieutenant colonel, built the Italianate-style house atop those restless grounds around 1843. According to multiple accounts, the Price family reported disturbances within days of moving in. Tapping echoed from inside the walls, footsteps climbed the stairs when no one was there, and doors swung open without cause. The persistent smell of pipe tobacco filled rooms with no smoker present. Price's son, Captain Joseph Price, later inherited the house. A decorated Confederate naval officer who commanded the ironclad CSS Neuse and served as Wilmington's harbor master from 1878 until his death in 1895, Captain Price and his family continued to experience the same unexplained phenomena throughout their years in the home.

The most unsettling phenomenon reported at the Price-Gause House involves the upstairs windows. On warm summer nights, the glass frosts over despite the humidity -- and the word "HELP" appears written in the condensation on the upper-left window. No rational explanation has been offered for how frost forms on glass in subtropical heat, let alone how letters materialize within it. According to local paranormal researcher Lew Musser, visitors also hear what sounds like footsteps ascending stairs, which he interprets as echoes of the condemned walking to the gallows.

During renovations decades later, workers unearthed human remains and brick tombs beneath the property, confirming the legends of mass burials just below the surface. The discovered remains were reportedly reburied on the grounds. Paranormal investigation team J and J Ghost Seekers recorded elevated electromagnetic field readings throughout the house, captured photographs showing colored orbs and shadow figures at the windows, and documented electronic voice phenomena with whispered voices urging visitors to "go" or "leave." Pedestrians and taxi drivers passing at night have reported seeing figures watching from the upper windows or feeling as though someone trailed them along the sidewalk.

Today the house serves as offices for BMH Architects, whose employees have taken a matter-of-fact approach to their spectral coworker. They have named the resident ghost "George" and attribute moving furniture, misplaced papers, and mysterious metallic clanking to his presence. The Ghost Walk of Old Wilmington, which has been researching the hauntings of downtown Wilmington since 1978, considers the Price-Gause House among the city's most actively haunted locations. Visitors waiting for tours to begin on the grounds still report cold spots, a pressing sensation in the side yard near the unmarked graves, and sudden waves of dread -- reminders that the condemned of Gallows Hill may never have truly left.