Longwood

Natchez lore says Haller Nutt's presence is still felt on the upper floors of Longwood he never saw completed, along with the faint laughter of the Nutt children, said to play with their toys after dark, and Julia Nutt on the grand staircase; paranormal investigators have visited. Visit Natchez describes a lantern-lit autumn tour, Echoes of Longwood: Ghosts in the Octagon, that tells of loss and Nutt's presence. Longwood is the largest octagonal house in the United States, designed by Samuel Sloan for the cotton planter Haller Nutt. Work began in 1859, but when the Civil War began in 1861 the craftsmen from Pennsylvania who were building it left to join the Union army. Only the nine basement rooms of its 32 planned rooms were ever finished, and Nutt moved his family into them before dying of pneumonia in 1864. The house has been kept unfinished ever since; when it was donated in 1968, the gift required that it never be completed.