The Barracks

A Hessian soldier who died at the fireplace of The Barracks in 1776 returns every Christmas Eve at midnight. An exorcism in 1939 did not stick.

Every Christmas Eve at midnight, a young Hessian soldier appears at the fireplace in a stone house on Edgehill Street, smiles at whoever is in the room, and rises up the chimney. He's been doing it since 1776.

The Barracks is Princeton's oldest surviving structure, with portions dating to around 1684 when Daniel Brinson built the original dwelling. The Stockton family picked it up in 1696, and it eventually became part of Richard Stockton's estate. Stockton, who went on to sign the Declaration of Independence, built his grander home Morven nearby and used this stone house to quarter troops during the French and Indian War, which is where the name came from. When the Continental Congress relocated to Princeton in 1783, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison both slept within these walls.

The ghost belongs to a specific night. On December 25, 1776, Washington crossed the Delaware. Hessian mercenaries fighting for the British were routed the next day at Trenton and fled north toward Princeton. One of them, described by witnesses as "a slight figure in a huge burlap coat" who looked more like a boy than a soldier, made it to the stone house on Edgehill Street with a chest wound. He collapsed at the fireplace trying to warm himself and died there.

Residents describe the ghost as peaceful. He carries no menace and seems to be replaying his last minutes, seeking warmth before the cold caught up with him. The military uniform, the youthful face, everything frozen in 1776.

In 1939, the Reverend Arthur Kinsolving tried to exorcise the spirit with an old Church of England prayer book. It didn't take. The soldier kept showing up on schedule. The homeowners at the time, Princeton trustee Lewis B. Cuyler and his wife Margery, stopped trying to get rid of him and started calling him "an amiable ghost." Their children grew up with the story. Margery Cuyler later wrote a children's book called The Battlefield Ghost based on living with him.

The Barracks is still a private residence. It shows up on almost every Princeton ghost tour, and tour operators say the soldier's presence seems to have strengthened over the centuries rather than faded. For a ghost that spends 364 days of the year invisible, he keeps excellent time.