Reviewed by Josh N · Updated September 20, 2026 · How we verify
Reported Phenomena
- Slamming doors
- Disembodied footsteps
- Sudden cold spots
- Whispering voices
- Apparitions of the family
- Figure
Reported by visitors & local legend. Stories, not verified claims.
The Houghton Mansion stands on Church Street in North Adams, Massachusetts, a Neoclassical Revival pile built by a print works president who wanted his third house in town to be the one people remembered. It is remembered, though mostly for what happened to the family in a single twelve day stretch in August 1914, and for the reports that have accumulated in the decades since. The building is empty now and closed to the public, which makes the distinction between the documented history and the ghost stories unusually easy to draw: one is on the record, the other is what people who got inside before 2017 say they experienced.
Quick Orientation
- Where: North Adams, Massachusetts
- Built: the 1890s, by Albert Charles Houghton, president of the Arnold Print Works and the first mayor of North Adams
- Style: Neoclassical Revival with strong Greek features and an eclectic mix of other influences
- Later use: a Masonic temple from 1926
- Now: sold in 2017 and closed to the public
The House Built to Look Taller Than It Was
Albert Charles Houghton put the mansion up in the 1890s, shortly before his term as mayor expired. It was his third home in North Adams and by some distance the most extravagant, a deliberate statement of wealth and standing. The roof was laid in Spanish tile. The clapboards were cut thinner toward the bottom of the walls, a trick of proportion meant to make the house read as taller than it actually stood. Behind it was a formal garden, and that garden was regularly given over to parties raising money for the North Adams Hospital, the same hospital that would later matter a great deal to this story.
The Houghtons moved in around 1900. The household at that point was Houghton, his wife Cordelia, and their youngest surviving daughter Mary, then twenty three. An infant daughter, Laura, had died years earlier. Three other daughters grew up, married, and had children of their own.
In 1905, when Houghton was sixty one, his health began to fail. Mary responded by resolving never to marry and devoting herself to caring for her father. Houghton himself, described as a manic workaholic, did not retire so much as scale back, splitting his time between the Arnold Print Works sales offices in New York City and North Adams, and leaving the larger decisions to his son-in-law, William A. Gallup.
August 1, 1914: The Drive Toward Bennington
In the spring of 1914 the family bought their first automobile, a seven-passenger Pierce-Arrow touring car, and sent their long-serving chauffeur John Widders, also known as John Winters, to learn to drive it.
On August 1, 1914, Houghton and Mary decided on a pleasure drive to Bennington, Vermont. Cordelia stayed home. Joining them were Dr. and Mrs. Robert Hutton of New York; Mrs. Hutton, born Sybil Cady, was a childhood friend of Mary’s and a daughter of the North Adams shoe manufacturer WG Cady. With Widders at the wheel, the car left the mansion at 9:00 am.
By 9:30 they were in Pownal, Vermont, climbing what is now Oak Hill Road. The road was under repair and a team of horses stood on the right hand side. Widders pulled around them on the left at roughly twelve miles an hour. The left shoulder gave way. The car tilted, went down a steep embankment, rolled three times, and came to rest upright in a farmer’s field.
Everyone except Mary Houghton was thrown clear. The men walked away with cuts, scrapes, bruises and minor fractures. Sybil Hutton was killed almost instantly when the car rolled over her. Mary was injured just as severely and died at the North Adams Hospital at 3:00 pm that afternoon. Her father was expected to recover and was taken home. He died ten days later, on August 11, 1914. It was said at the time that he died of a broken heart.
John Widders and the Cellar of the Barn
The State of Vermont’s investigator cleared Widders of any wrongdoing and placed the blame on the soft shoulder of the road. The verdict did not reach him. At 5:00 am on August 12, 1914, the morning after Houghton’s death, Widders shot himself in the cellar of the Houghton barn with a horse pistol.
That is four deaths connected to one thirty minute drive, three of them inside twelve days. It is also the entire engine of the mansion’s later reputation.
The Masons on Church Street
After the crash, Florence, one of the two surviving Houghton daughters, moved into the house with her husband William A. Gallup and looked after Cordelia Houghton until her death in 1916. The Gallups stayed until William retired in 1926. That year Florence and her sister, Susan Houghton McKeon, sold the property to the Masons.
The Masons removed the formal garden and built their lodge building on the site. Later economies stripped the Spanish tile roof in favor of asphalt and covered the clapboards with siding. Beyond those changes the exterior looks much as it did when Houghton built it.
What People Report Inside the Houghton Mansion
None of the following is verified, and the mansion has never been the subject of any finding beyond personal testimony. What investigators and guests have described over the years includes:
- Doors slamming with nobody near them
- Footsteps crossing empty rooms
- Abrupt cold spots
- Whispers and indistinct voices
- Apparitions, most often associated with the Houghton family and with Widders
- The figure of a young girl, said by some accounts to predate the house itself
The basement is the area visitors talk about most. It is worth noting the record here: Widders died in the cellar of the barn, not in the cellar of the main house, a detail that often blurs in retellings. Some accounts also credit the building’s decades as a Masonic temple with adding to the atmosphere, which says more about how ghost stories accrete around lodge rooms and ritual spaces than about anything documented on Church Street.
What the mansion does have, and what most reputedly haunted houses do not, is a precisely dated chain of deaths with names, times and places attached. Read the 1914 sequence first and the reported phenomena start to look like a community’s response to it.
Visiting the Houghton Mansion: Closed Since 2017
You cannot go in. Unable to afford bringing the building up to code, the Lafayette-Greylock Freemasons sold the house in 2017 to hotel developer Benjamin Svenon for a reported $160,000, and it has been closed to the public since. The investigations and overnight events that generated most of the accounts above belong to an earlier chapter.
What remains is the exterior, viewable from the street, and it is genuinely worth the look: the Greek detailing, the proportions engineered to gain a story it never had, and a lodge building standing where the fundraising garden used to be. Treat it as a private property and stay on the sidewalk.
See The Houghton Mansion for Yourself
Sources
- The History of the Houghton Mansion
- History of the Haunted Houghton Mansion in North Adams
- NPGallery Asset Detail (National Park Service)
- GeoHack – Houghton Mansion
- Wikipedia: Houghton Mansion
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Houghton Mansion located?
Houghton Mansion is located at 172 Church St, North Adams, MA 01247.
Can you visit Houghton Mansion?
Houghton Mansion is on private property and best viewed from a distance. Always follow posted rules and respect private property.
Reader sightings
Nobody has reported anything here yet. If you have been, you would be the first.
Report your own visit to Three Deaths in Twelve Days: The Houghton Mansion, North Adams
How haunted is this place?
Be the first to rate
Leave a Reply