Sparrow House

The oldest surviving house in Plymouth, built around 1640. The timber-frame structure has been preserved as a museum showcasing early colonial life and features a pottery shop in the historic building.

The Richard Sparrow House stands as Plymouth's oldest surviving home and one of the oldest structures in all of New England, a timber-framed dwelling built around 1640 that has witnessed nearly four centuries of American history. In a town founded by Pilgrims who endured starvation, disease, and death in those brutal first winters, the Sparrow House embodies the suffering and resilience that has made Plymouth a magnet for paranormal activity.

Richard Sparrow arrived in Plymouth in 1636, an English surveyor who received a 16-acre land grant on which he built this modest home. The house represents early colonial construction techniques—heavy timbers, small windows, a central chimney—designed to shelter families through harsh New England winters. Sparrow lived here until 1653, when he moved to Eastham, but the house endured, passing through generations of owners before being added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

Today, the Sparrow House operates as a museum and art gallery, its ground floor open to visitors who can experience how life was lived in 1640s Plymouth. The second floor remains closed for safety reasons, but staff report that activity upstairs continues whether or not anyone is there to witness it.

Museum staff have reported strange occurrences that defy easy explanation. Footsteps echo through empty galleries. Objects seem to shift position between closing and opening. A general sense of an unseen presence pervades the building, particularly strong near the oldest artifacts—as if the original inhabitants never fully departed their home.

The broader context of Plymouth amplifies these experiences. The first years of Plymouth Colony were brutal beyond modern comprehension. Half the Mayflower passengers died during that first winter of 1620-1621. Disease, starvation, and conflict with Native Americans claimed lives year after year. Such a profound concentration of human suffering, compressed into a small geographic area over many decades, has left what paranormal researchers call a spiritual residue—an imprint of trauma that sensitive visitors can still detect.

Plymouth has embraced its identity as "America's Haunted Hometown." The Sparrow House sits among numerous sites where unexplained phenomena have been reported, from colonial-era homes to burial grounds to the waterfront where the Pilgrims first stepped ashore. Ghost tours wind through the historic district, and October brings thousands of visitors seeking encounters with the town's earliest—and perhaps most permanent—residents.

For those who enter the Sparrow House, the experience goes beyond historical education. Standing in rooms where colonists struggled to survive nearly 400 years ago, visitors often report feeling the weight of that history pressing upon them. Some describe cold spots, whispered voices, or the unmistakable sense that they are not alone.

The Sparrow House reminds us that Plymouth's story did not end when the Pilgrims passed into history—and perhaps neither did the Pilgrims themselves.