HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
A 1771 Mystic mansion moved to dodge I-95, where Dr. Woodbridge's daughter Lucy is the resident ghost
42 Whitehall Avenue, Mystic, CT 06355
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Bed-and-breakfast room rates vary by season; check the inn's site for current pricing. Five guest rooms.
Access
Limited Access
Two-story late-Georgian house with period staircases; no elevator.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1771 · Late-Georgian Architecture · National Register of Historic Places · Building relocated to survive Interstate 95
Dr. Dudley Woodbridge purchased the land in 1771 from Lieutenant John Gallup and built the house on a site where a tavern and stagecoach stop had stood. Woodbridge practiced medicine in the Mystic area and served Groton in the Connecticut legislature. He and his wife, Sarah Sheldon, raised a large family in the house. Woodbridge died in 1790 and Sarah in 1796, after which the property passed to the related Rodman family and then, in 1852, to Joseph and Mary Wheeler. The Wheeler family held the mansion until 1962.
That year, with Interstate 95 construction threatening its original location, the house was donated to the Stonington Historical Society and carefully moved to a new site just across the street. The Society relocated it again, forward on the lot, after a 1994 approval intended to improve visibility for a buyer. The mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 12, 1979, as a documented example of late-Georgian domestic architecture in southeastern Connecticut.
The house was later purchased, renovated, and reopened as an inn. Today it operates as a five-room bed-and-breakfast under the Whitehall Mansion name, a short drive from downtown Mystic, Mystic Seaport Museum, and the area's other historic properties. Its survival is largely a matter of two deliberate relocations rather than the original siting, which is unusual for a house of its age and a frequent talking point on Mystic-area history tours.
Sources
The inn's central account is Lucy, identified in local tradition as a daughter of Dr. Dudley Woodbridge and described as the house's 'main' ghost. Connecticut's state tourism office, in its haunted-history coverage of Mystic Country, names Lucy directly and notes reports of strange sounds and sightings throughout the rooms. Mystic ghost-tour operators carry the same story, and the mansion turns up in regional roundups of haunted Connecticut lodging.
The accounts are modest by the standards of better-known haunted inns: footsteps and noises with no obvious source, a sense of being watched, and the occasional reported sighting attributed to Lucy. None of the surviving material attaches the lore to a documented tragedy in the Woodbridge family, and the identity of 'Lucy' is a matter of tradition rather than record. What the house does have is a long, well-documented history and two unusual relocations, which give the place an off-balance quality that visitors sometimes read as something more.
The inn does not market itself primarily as a haunted destination, but the Lucy story travels with the building and appears whenever Mystic's hauntings are catalogued.
Notable Entities
Five guest rooms in a 1771 late-Georgian house that the Stonington Historical Society moved across the street in 1962 to save it from Interstate 95 construction. The inn sits a short drive from downtown Mystic and Mystic Seaport. Guests and staff associate the property with Lucy, identified in local tradition as Dr. Dudley Woodbridge's daughter.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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