Glebe House Museum

Built around 1740 to 1750 as a farmhouse for Woodbury merchant John Marshall, the property was purchased in 1771 by the local Anglican parish to serve as a glebe — a farm set aside to support the parish minister. The Reverend John Rutgers Marshall moved into the home with his family during a tumultuous period of American history. As an Anglican minister loyal to the British Crown, Reverend Marshall faced severe political hostility, intimidation, and physical threats from Revolutionary patriots in Litchfield County during the Revolutionary War.

Despite the dangerous political climate, the Glebe House became the focal point of a historic secret convention in March 1783. Immediately following the announcement of peace, ten Connecticut Anglican clergymen met secretly inside the house's ground-floor parlor. They elected Samuel Seabury as the first bishop of the American church. Seabury subsequently traveled to Scotland, where he was consecrated as the first Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, cementing the Glebe House's standing in American ecclesiastical history.

In 1923, the Seabury Society restored the property and opened it as a public museum. In 1926, world-renowned English landscape designer Gertrude Jekyll designed a classic cottage garden for the museum grounds, which remains the only surviving Gertrude Jekyll garden in the United States today.

The rich ghost lore of the Glebe House Museum centers on several distinct apparitions tied to its 275-year colonial history. The most frequently discussed spirit is that of a woman wearing a traditional 18th-century colonial dress and white bonnet. Museum docents and neighborhood residents have reported seeing her figure standing silhouetted through second-story window panes late in the evening when the museum is locked and dark. Local lore suggests she may be the spirit of Sarah Marshall, the devoted wife of Reverend John Rutgers Marshall, who spent long, anxious years keeping watch over the property while her husband faced constant peril from local Patriot militias during the American Revolution.

Another enduring legend involves the ghost of a young boy seen playing on the lawn near the Gertrude Jekyll garden borders. Visitors on garden tours have reported seeing a child dressed in period colonial clothing playing near the antique stone walls, only for the child to vanish completely into thin air when approached. Staff and local historians speculate that the spirit belonged to a neighborhood child who succumbed to illness during the late 18th century. Additionally, lingering local folklore mentions hidden passageways and secret cellar concealments used by Loyalists escaping patriotic mobs, where faint disembodied whispers, soft groans, and cold drafts are still experienced by museum guests during late-night ghost walks conducted throughout October.

Investigation reports by Connecticut Ghost Investigations and testimony from museum docents detail various paranormal phenomena inside the Glebe House. Night watchmen and evening tour guides have frequently heard clear, audible footsteps pacing across the original wide-plank chestnut floorboards on the second floor when no one else is inside the building. The sound is often accompanied by soft rustling fabric, reminiscent of a heavy colonial petticoat.

Visitors inside the parlor where the secret 1783 clergy election took place routinely report feeling sudden intense cold spots and experiencing an overwhelming feeling of being watched by invisible eyes. Staff members preparing the museum for morning tours have found display cases unlatched, candle holders shifted across antique tables, and the heavy front entrance door unlocked from the inside despite strict security procedures. EMF meter spikes and electronic voice phenomena (EVP) recordings captured during special evening tours have yielded faint male whispers speaking in archaic English phrasing.

The Glebe House is an outstanding example of mid-18th-century New England gambrel-roofed colonial architecture. Built with a heavy timber frame, clapboard exterior siding, double-hung sash windows, and twin brick chimneys, the structure retains a remarkable percentage of its original architectural fabric, including hand-forged iron hardware and plaster walls.

The interior layout features a central hall flanked by formal parlors, a keeping room with a wide brick fireplace, a kitchen, and multiple second-floor bedrooms furnished with authentic 18th-century American furniture and regional decorative arts. Outside, the property encompasses sprawling lawns, historic outbuildings, and the renowned Gertrude Jekyll cottage garden featuring formal flower beds, stone pathways, and period plantings.

The Glebe House Museum & Gertrude Jekyll Garden is located at 49 Hollow Road in Woodbury, Connecticut. The museum is open for guided historic tours from May through October, Wednesday through Sunday from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM. Admission tickets are purchased on site, and all admission proceeds directly support ongoing museum preservation efforts and historical educational programming.

The museum hosts popular seasonal events, including the annual 'All Hallows Eve' cemetery tours and haunted museum walks in October, where guides lead lantern-lit tours through the surrounding historic cemetery and museum rooms. Visitors are advised to check the museum's official schedule online before visiting to confirm special tour times.

The Glebe House Museum earned its long-standing haunted reputation through its nearly three centuries of continuous New England history, its high-stakes Revolutionary War drama involving Loyalist ministers, its sacred architectural setting, and consistent, well-documented eyewitness reports from museum staff, professional ghost investigators, local residents, and overnight visitors who encounter mysterious colonial apparitions, phantom footsteps, and sudden unexplainable cold spots inside its historic parlors.