Phelps Mansion

In March 1850, Congregational minister Rev. Eliakim Phelps and his family returned home from Sunday service on Elm Street to find the house in chaos — furniture and china strewn everywhere, and one of his wife's nightgowns laid out on a bed with its arms folded as if for a funeral. What followed became known nationally as the "Stratford Knockings": objects thrown, people pricked with pins, and rapping sounds that seemed to communicate answers to questions, drawing crowds of spiritualists and skeptics alike during the same period the Fox sisters were making national headlines with similar claims. The activity stopped after the family spent a year away and returned in 1851. Local legend separately ties the property to Goody Bassett, a real Stratford woman hanged for witchcraft in 1651 — two centuries before the Phelps house was built — with a story that seeing her face instead of your own in a mirror inside the house means she'll prick your arm for staring.