Description of Place: Built in 1760, the two and a half story Greek Revival-style six bedroom mansion is largely restored with four front Dorian columns, a grand entrance way, a glass crystal chandelier and a roof cupola. The white and black shuttered museum is also a tourist spot on the town’s historical tour

Ghostly Manifestations: Legends and rumors of the formerly dilapidated Danbury Mansion go back almost two hundred years to the Revolutionary War. Curiosity-seekers, would-be ghost hunters and potential vandals have all fled the grounds with tales of shadows moving through its once hollow shell. Phantom gunfire has been heard as well as the sound of a man’s giggling laughter. Workmen who restored the house in the fall of 1946 often reported footsteps from closed off rooms, the sensation of being watched, tools that vanished to be ever seen again and inexplicable electrical and equipment failures.

Sheldon Gage and his fiancée at the time, June Prescott, stayed in the house the first weekend after the restoration was finished. Accompanying him was his psychiatrist and best friend, Dr. Ralph Greenway, and June’s Aunt Millicent Prescott. Interested in seeing if the ghosts were real for himself, he didn’t bother to tell anyone about the stories of haunting activity from over the years.

In one of his last interviews before his death in 1986, Gage described harpsichord music coming from the downstairs parlor. He described the tune as a very old-fashioned minuet type of music, and that the light was on in the parlor when he went to investigate who was playing it so late at night. The light had been one of the first he had switched off before turning in for the night, and the housekeeper, Emily Sondergaard later denied having switched it on. Nevertheless, as Gage attempted to investigate the music, it continued playing right up until he entered the room. He stepped one foot inside and the parlor was empty.

The one locked door to the library was also left open and the room itself was in a tragic mess. All the books on the shelves, the papers in the desk and the contents of the drawers had been strewn around as if  “someone was in a mad rush to find something.” The mess must have made a lot of noise, but no one had heard anything. Gage later learned the same thing had occurred to the interior decorators when they worked in the house restoring the mansion to Eighteenth Century specifications.

Sondergaard, a reluctant psychic with some second sight, admits that she has sensed the presence of at least two spirits at all times. Although she is unsure if they are the same two spirits at all times, she has heard their footsteps wandering the house when it was empty. She has also heard someone call her by name; it’s a female voice and a very benevolent spirit. In fact, none of the occurrences have been malicious. At least till then………..

While he was a guest of Sheldon, Dr. Greenway always felt as if he was constantly getting attacked by something. A vowed non-believer of ghosts at the time, today he is not quite as sure. During that weekend, he felt someone slap him in the face when he was alone. He also found himself tripping and stumbling over something he could never see. That first night, June even recalled that he had stumbled into the parlor claiming that he wanted a drink, but the ghosts wouldn’t let him. Further mumbling that someone had “tooted” in his stethoscope while he was checking his frantic heartbeat, Ralph later took a week-long vacation to get over his weekend vacation.

Possibly the most skeptical and rational person so far was Millicent Prescott up until her bad scare. Heading upstairs with the brandy glass at one point, she later rushed back to the parlor a few seconds after leaving, “scared to the point of panic.” Incoherent at the time, she later confessed to paranormal researchers a year later that she had met a lady coming down the stairs that she didn’t recognize. Doing a double take, she looked back again and realized that she did not have a head.

There were also numerous electrical problems the first few weeks after the restoration. Next to the lights in the parlor coming on by themselves, most of the lights all over the house were always flickering and threatening to go out and leave them in the dark. The first time it happened, June thought she heard panicked shrieking as if “one of the spooks had gotten stuck in the fuse box in the cellar.

Not all of the phenomenon has been in the house. There is an old abandoned well on the property where historical legend claims two traitors to the colonial armies in the Revolutionary War were dumped and denied burial. This is substantiated by an 1865 record that the partial remains of two bodies were fished out by water surveyors and buried elsewhere on the property. The plaque on the well marking and describing this incident has never stayed in place. The brass plate has been bolted to the stone base of the well repeatedly, but it always pops back off. Reattached for Independence Day in 1945, witnesses testified that it popped off in mid-ceremony, flew several feet and nearly hit the town mayor in attendance at the mansion yearly festival.

To this day, guests who visit Danbury Manor and look up at the portrait of Melody Allen over the fireplace swear that a rosy cheek rushes to her face as she is being noticed. Some people have even heard her lightly giggling somewhere in the house.

History: Danbury Manor was designed and built by Johnathan Pulpin in 1760 for his good friend, Lord James Nathaniel Danbury from Manchester County, England. His son, Thomas Danbury, however, was one of the supporters of Benedict Arnold, John Andre and Major William Damon. In 1780 as Danbury’s name was found on papers in Andre’s possession, American troops attacked and burned the mansion to the ground after upset townsfolk looted and carried off the furniture and furnishings. That same evening was when the two traitors were shot and killed while trying to escape on horseback. Danbury himself escaped to Canada and from there headed to England where he lived out the rest of his years..

Standing empty for almost two hundred years, the estate was restored by the combined efforts of Sheldon Gage and Dr. Ralph Greenway. Friends while in the military, both men discovered they had relatives connected to the old house. Gage had an ancestor connected by marriage to the Danburys, and Greenway’s ancestor had been a servant there. They tracked down most of the old Danbury furniture or had them recreated by Gage’s Furniture Company. The house was soon expertly updated and modernized without removing the historical worth of the old house. Today, the house is the property of Sheldon’s grand-daughter, Melody Gage and her husband, Louis Greenway, Ralph’s nephew, and on the local historical homes tour.

Identity of Ghosts: For years it has always been assumed that the ghosts were just the two traitors, but now it seems as if that must not be alone after all or possibly just a case of mistaken identity confounded by years of history and rumor. An impromptu séance one night in 1946 revealed the identity of the female spirit to be Melody Allen, Thomas Danbury’s fiancé who vanished the night of the fire. The oft-seen male spirit seen and heard is believed to be a tinker named Horatio Prim who also vanished that same night. Greenway has always believed he was being victimized by Prim since rumors passed through his family say his ancestor Cuthbert Greenway once locked a tinker in a trunk and stole his horse. Presumably, Prim was that tinker. The identities of the two men killed as traitors in 1780 have never been revealed, but a copy of a letter of recommendation signed by General George Washington to Prim now hangs in the Danbury Manor Library. Some effort has long been made to link the supposed traitors to Allen and Prim, but insight into Major Efrem Putnam’s account of the incident insisting it was two men is believed to in error.

"For the Fourth of July picnic in 2003, we had a series of re-enactors recreate the night of the fire." Melody Gage reveals. "And we noticed that if Allen and Prim had used the side road to leave the estate that it would have taken them by the well. Judging the proximity to the well and the level of anxiety that night, it is very logical that Putnam thought he was firing on two men - especially if Melody Allen was wearing her horse-riding attire." 

Comments: The Time Of Their Lives (1946) Phenomenon based on the movie and on Highfield Hall in Cape Cod, Massachusetts and the Haw Branch Plantation in Amelia, Virginia.