HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
A 1749 Plymouth house museum and the long-told story of a girl named Abigail
27 North Street, Plymouth, MA 02360
Research updated September 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Historic house museum operated by the Plymouth Antiquarian Society; tour admission applies during the open season. Check the Society website for current hours and pricing.
Access
Limited Access
1749 colonial house with period stairs and narrow rooms; ground floor and upper floors
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1749 · Built 1749; occupied by the Spooner family for over 200 years · Plymouth Antiquarian Society house museum since 1920
The house at 27 North Street was built in 1749 for Hannah Jackson, a widow. Not long after, she sold it to Deacon Ephraim Spooner, a Plymouth merchant who served in the American Revolution. The Spooner family went on to occupy the house for more than two centuries, an unusually long single-family tenure that left it furnished with generations of the family's own belongings.
In 1920 the Plymouth Antiquarian Society acquired the property, and it operates today as a historic house museum. Because the Spooners held the house so long, the museum preserves the everyday material of a Plymouth merchant family across more than 200 years rather than a single restored period — furniture, household goods, and personal items accumulated by one family in one place.
The house stands on North Street near Plymouth's waterfront, a short walk from Cole's Hill, the 1749 Court House, and Plymouth Rock, placing it within the dense cluster of colonial-era sites at the center of town. Its 1749 construction date and long continuous occupancy make it one of the older intact houses in a town defined by its early history.
The museum is open seasonally, and the Spooner House is a regular stop on Plymouth's walking, lantern, and ghost tours, where its long family history and the legend of a child named Abigail are recounted.
Sources
The legend attached to the Spooner House is the story of Abigail, told as a child the Spooner family took into their home in the 18th century. By the accounts that circulate on Plymouth tours, she fell ill from an abscessed tooth and the infection took her life, in an era before antibiotics. The story is treated tenderly on the lantern tours that visit the house.
The reported sightings are consistent in form. The best-known account dates to August 2005, when workmen sent to make repairs said a small girl in colonial-period clothing let them into the house; when the curator arrived and asked, the room the girl had supposedly entered, and the rest of the house, were found empty. On a Colonial Lantern Tour, a visitor standing outside the house reported feeling a touch on her shoulder and turning to see a young girl who said she had to go before vanishing.
Other accounts describe a child's face appearing at the windows of the empty house. The reports are anecdotal and tied to the Abigail story rather than to documented record, and the museum presents the house first as the long-lived home of the Spooner family. The girl-at-the-window image is what keeps the Spooner House on Plymouth's ghost-tour routes.
Notable Entities
A guided tour of the 1749 Spooner House at 27 North Street, occupied by the Spooner family for more than 200 years and now a museum of the Plymouth Antiquarian Society. The house is furnished with the family's belongings and is a recurring stop on Plymouth's lantern and ghost tours, where the story of Abigail is told.
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