Zebulon Latimer House

This stunning 10,000-square-foot Italianate mansion was built in 1852 for merchant Zebulon Latimer and his wife Elizabeth. The perfectly symmetrical four-story house witnessed great tragedy: five of their nine children died before age four.

The Zebulon Latimer House stands at 126 South Third Street in Wilmington's historic district, a four-story Italianate mansion built in 1852 by merchant Zebulon Latimer and his wife Elizabeth Savage. Designed with meticulous symmetry -- a central hallway with identical layouts on every floor -- the house served three generations of the Latimer family for over a century before being donated to the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society in 1963. Today it operates as the Latimer House Museum and Gardens, preserving the architecture and artifacts of upper-class life in the nineteenth-century Cape Fear region.

The paranormal reputation of the Latimer House centers on phenomena that museum staff and visitors have reported over decades. Objects go missing from displays and storage areas, only to reappear in unexpected locations. Most strikingly, an Emily Dickinson poetry book kept in the house has reportedly been seen levitating -- lifting off its surface and hovering in midair before settling back down. Staff members who have witnessed the phenomenon describe it with a mixture of disbelief and matter-of-fact acceptance, as it has occurred multiple times.

The third floor draws the most frequent reports of paranormal activity. This area, associated with the children's quarters during the Latimer era, is where visitors most often describe feeling unusual chills and the unmistakable sensation of being watched. Some have reported seeing shadowy figures in the upper windows from the street below, and photographs taken of the house's exterior have captured what appear to be dark forms standing at windows where no person was present. The basement carries its own reputation -- visitors have described a putrid smell that appears without explanation and dissipates just as mysteriously, with no identifiable source despite repeated investigations.

Physical encounters have also been reported on the grounds. One visitor described having their necklace pulled at the front gate by unseen hands, hard enough to feel the tug but without enough force to break the chain. Inside the house, doors have been found open that staff are certain they closed, and cold drafts move through rooms with sealed windows. The ghost or ghosts of the Latimer House have never been definitively identified, but the range of phenomena -- from levitating objects to physical contact -- suggests a presence or presences with a strong attachment to a house that has stood on this corner of Wilmington for more than 170 years.

The Latimer House Museum offers regular tours and special programming, and its location in the heart of Wilmington's historic district places it alongside some of the most haunted addresses in a city widely considered one of the most haunted in the American South.