Haunted places guide · Jefferson, Texas

The Grove, Jefferson: The Most Haunted House in Texas?

A white cottage on a quiet street in an old river port, The Grove looks like the least frightening house in East Texas. Yet for more than a century the people who have lived in it have talked about a lady in white, figures in the garden and footsteps in an empty hall.

By The Haunted Rooms Team · Updated November 2026 · How we rate places

3.8/5Haunted Rooms Score

1861Built

2002Current owners bought it

Our nearest ghost hunt: Hotel MetropolitanMeet the ghosts

The Grove, also called the Stilley-Young House, is a one-story house built in 1861 in Jefferson, the little East Texas town that was once one of the busiest river ports in the state. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark. It is also, by long reputation, one of the most haunted houses in Texas: This Old House put it among the most haunted houses in America, and Texas Monthly named it one of the eight scariest places in the state.

Unlike most famous haunted houses, The Grove is a home. Writer Mitchel Whitington and his wife Tami have lived there since 2002, and they open it for guided tours where they tell its history and the stories of the people who lived there before them, along with what they say they have experienced themselves. This guide covers the house’s real history, the ghost stories as owners and visitors tell them, and how to arrange a visit.

History of The Grove

Jefferson grew up in the 1840s on Big Cypress Bayou, and for a few decades steamboats carried cotton from its wharves down to Shreveport and New Orleans. The lot where The Grove stands passed through several hands before the house was built. Wikipedia’s account, drawn from the National Register nomination, says it was part of land held by Jefferson’s founders Daniel and Lucy Alley; the owners describe the area as the old Stephen Smith Land Grant section of town. Amos Morrill bought the lot in 1847 and built a log cabin, and Caleb and Sarah Ragin bought it in 1855.

In November 1861, a few months into the Civil War, Frank Stilley, a cotton factor from Louisiana, and his wife Minerva Fox Stilley bought the property and built the house. Her father is said to have paid for it as a wedding gift. It is a one-story Greek Revival house with a French Creole feel, framed in cypress under wood lap siding, with a deep front porch on square columns. An addition around 1870 enclosed what had been the back porch, a detail that matters for the ghost stories.

Jefferson’s boom did not last. In the 1870s the Great Raft, a huge logjam on the Red River that had kept the water high enough for steamboats, was cleared, and river traffic to Jefferson dried up. A flood damaged the Stilleys’ cotton business, and after Minerva died in 1879 her estate sold the house in 1880 to Daniel and Amanda Rock. T.C. Burks bought it in 1882, but it was back with the Rocks within six months, and the Rocks moved to Paris, Texas, in 1885.

That year Charles and Daphne Young bought The Grove, and the Young family kept it for almost a century. Their son James took his own life at the house in 1908. Their daughter Louise lived there until her death in 1983 at the age of 96, and it was Louise who first spoke openly about the house’s “haints.” Col. Daniel and Lucile Grove, who gave the house its name, bought it in November 1983 and began restoring it, but the colonel’s illness led them to sell. Chef Patrick Hopkins bought it in 1990 and ran it as a restaurant for several years, with dinner theater nights. The Whitingtons bought it in 2002 and turned it back into a home.

The house also touches one of the darkest episodes of Reconstruction Texas. In October 1868 a masked mob stormed the army-guarded jail in Jefferson and killed George W. Smith, a Republican and Union veteran, along with Black prisoners held there. The military trials that followed became known as the Stockade Case, and Wikipedia notes that the military court records list The Grove as one of the sites involved. Several of the house’s ghost stories, including a man seen in the street outside, are linked to that time by the people who tell them.

The ghosts of The Grove

The lady in white

The best-known ghost at The Grove is a woman in a white dress. She is reported walking along the side of the house and passing through a wall into the house, at a spot that was once an open doorway onto the back porch before the 1870s addition closed it in. Many people who tell the story believe she is Minerva Stilley, the first mistress of the house, who died in 1879.

She has been reported inside as well. The story told from Patrick Hopkins’s years is that, as he was getting ready to open his restaurant, a woman in white walked down the hall into the powder room and never came out; when it was checked, the room was empty. A light technician and an actress rehearsing for one of the dinner theater nights described a similar woman who vanished, and the owners say a photograph from one of their candlelight tours shows a woman in white in the background.

Louise Young and the figures in the garden

Louise Young lived in The Grove for most of the 20th century and told friends there were “haints” in the house with her. In later years the stories became frightening to her. She installed a security light in the garden because she saw people walking outside, and said the figures vanished the moment the light came on. She called the police more than once about intruders who were never found, and eventually lived in just a few rooms. Neighbors have also described a glowing white figure on the porch, and a renter is said to have seen a little girl among the garden flowers who then disappeared.

The dark mass in the bedroom

One of the most retold stories comes from the Grove family’s time. Mrs. Grove is said to have taken a Bible to bed so that she and her husband could pray, fallen asleep, and woken to a black mass filling the room, along with voices and footsteps. Accounts differ on how long the Groves lived in the house before the colonel’s illness, so the story is best taken as family tradition.

Wet footprints, falling mirrors and sudden smells

Several owners describe the same small, strange things. Wet footprints appear in the hallway when it has not rained, and drops of water turn up on the staircase and on one mirror when the air is dry. Heavy mirrors that were securely hung have fallen, sometimes without breaking what was below them. People report the sudden smell of a woman’s perfume in one room, and in others the smell of someone who has not bathed in a long time. Hopkins also spoke of loud wails from upstairs and a constant feeling of being watched.

The man in the yard and the barber

Other figures turn up in the stories too. Local TV reported a man seen rushing across the yard, and a presence that people feel in the den. Hopkins’s niece and her friends described a man in the street who vanished as they approached, a figure some link to the Stockade Case or to a rumored hanging on the back porch, a rumor no record supports. Mitchel Whitington has told visitors about a ghostly barber who seems to drop in regularly. A Jefferson ghost walk guide told KLTV that she felt a touch on her shoulder at The Grove with nobody there.

There is also the phantom dog. During the restaurant years, the story goes, a waitress walking out of the kitchen was suddenly attacked by a black and white dog in the hallway, but when she came back with help there was no dog anywhere in the house.

What the owners say

The Whitingtons are matter of fact about all this. Mitchel Whitington told Texas Co-op Power that living in The Grove is not scary but “a peek into the other side,” and has written a book about the house. Skeptics have visited too: the house has appeared on HGTV’s If Walls Could Talk, William Shatner’s Weird or What? and Penn and Teller: Bullshit!. Nobody has proved what is going on, and the stories should be read as the experiences of owners and visitors, not documented fact.

Where to look

• The central hallway: where wet footprints appear and the lady in white was seen heading for the powder room.
• The walled-in back doorway: the side wall that was once the back porch door, where the lady in white is said to walk through.
• The den: where visitors often say they feel a presence.
• The garden and side yard: where Louise Young saw figures vanish in the light, and where a man is seen hurrying across.
• The front porch: where neighbors have reported a glowing white figure at night.

Visiting The Grove

The Grove is a private home, not a museum, so you can only go inside on a guided tour. The owners give tours of about an hour, telling the story of each room, the families who lived there and the experiences that have been reported. Tour times are arranged in advance: check the official website or call (903) 665-8018 before you travel, and do not turn up expecting to walk in.

Please do not wander onto the grounds or peer through windows outside a tour. The house is on a residential street, and the people who live there are the reason it can be visited at all. You can see the front of the house from Moseley Street, a few minutes’ drive from downtown Jefferson.

Jefferson makes a good overnight trip for anyone interested in ghost stories. Historic downtown has several haunted inns, including the Excelsior House and the Historic Jefferson Hotel, and the town runs a ghost walk and a twice-yearly paranormal conference, History, Haunts and Legends, every spring and fall. Haunted Rooms does not run events at The Grove; see our nearest ghost hunts below if you want to investigate a historic building after dark.

• Visiting Private residence; visits by guided tour only
• Tours Hour-long guided tours of the house with the owners, covering its history and ghost stories; book ahead
• Hours and season By arrangement; confirm tour times on the official site or by phone at (903) 665-8018
• Ghost hunting Not offered as a public ghost hunt venue; the tours are the way in

Tips for your visit

• Book your tour before you set off; Jefferson is a long drive from anywhere, and tours are arranged ahead.
• Ask about the walled-in back doorway and the hallway mirror on the tour; they are the heart of the best stories.
• Make a weekend of it: stay downtown at the Excelsior House or the Jefferson Hotel and take an evening ghost walk.
• Plan around History, Haunts and Legends in spring or fall if you want Jefferson at its most ghostly, but book rooms early.
• Be a good guest: it is someone’s home, so follow the owners’ rules on photos and where you can go.

More haunted places nearby

• The Excelsior House: Jefferson’s historic hotel, open since the 1850s, with a lady in black
• The Historic Jefferson Hotel: an 1851 cotton warehouse turned hotel, said to be full of mischief
• Haunted hotels in Texas: places to stay with ghost stories across the state
• Haunted places in Texas

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• The Grove (official site)
• Wikipedia: The Grove (Jefferson, Texas)
• Texas Co-op Power: The Grove's Groove (2021)
• KLTV: Jefferson, Texas: Beautiful, historic, and …haunted? (2014)
• Houston Press: 5 more haunted places in Texas for ghost hunters to explore (2015)
• Lonely Planet: The Grove, Jefferson
• Marion County Herald: Jefferson hosts spring History, Haunts and Legends (2023)
• Fayette County Record: Two dozen stand trial in Stockade Case