Hill-Physick House

The Hill-Physick House, in Philadelphia's Society Hill, is said to be haunted by the restless spirits of the patients of Dr. Philip Syng Physick, the "father of American surgery," and by his estranged wife, Elizabeth. Reported activity includes full-bodied apparitions, shadow figures, objects moving on their own, and people seen walking up to the front door and vanishing. A former caretaker, a Physick descendant who moved into the house in 2004, told Cape May Magazine that Elizabeth appears on the front steps, knocks on the door and runs off, and Philadelphia Magazine says her weeping has been heard on the property.

Ghost Hunters investigated in Season 11, Episode 10, "Stone Cold Colonists" (October 2016), called in by a descendant of Physick whose wife was reportedly too afraid to sleep there. Syfy's recap says voices were caught on recordings, and a medical cart was said to be hurled toward a cameraman. The episode raised the question of whether the spirits are the cadavers Physick reportedly dissected in secret in the basement, or his ex-wife.

Henry Hill, a Madeira wine importer and Revolutionary War colonel, began building the house in 1786. Physick lived here until his death in 1837. He was a noted teacher and inventor of surgical tools, and one of the few doctors who stayed in Philadelphia during the yellow fever epidemic. Elizabeth Emlen married him in 1800, but after about fifteen years of public quarrels he legally separated from her and barred her from the property. The house is the only free-standing Federal townhouse left in Society Hill and was named a National Historic Landmark in 1976. It is now a house museum run by the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks, with Physick's surgical instruments on display and a garden.