The Old Stone House, Georgetown: DC's Oldest House and Its Ghosts

Georgetown’s busiest shopping street runs past a building older than the United States. The Old Stone House was built in 1765, when Georgetown was part of the British colony of Maryland, and it was already 59 years old when the British marched into Washington in 1814. Today it is a free National Park Service museum with a walled garden behind it.

It is also, by local reputation, the most haunted house in Georgetown. Ghost walks stop at its door to tell of a woman by the fireplace, children on the stairs and a menacing presence on the third floor known only as George. None of it is documented, and much of the lore is hearsay, but the house’s real history is strange enough: it survived because people believed a story that turned out to be false.

History of the Old Stone House

Christopher and Rachel Layman bought Lot Three in the new town of George Town in 1764 and built a one-room house of local fieldstone the following year. Christopher died in 1765. When Rachel remarried, she sold the house to a wealthy widow, Cassandra Chew, who added a kitchen at the back in 1767, a second floor between 1767 and 1775 and a third floor by about 1790. Chew died in 1807 and left the house to her daughter, Mary Smith Brumley.

For the next century and a half the house was a place of work as much as a home. Hatters, tailors, locksmiths, painters and clockmakers rented it, among them John Suter Jr., who ran a clock shop here in the early 1800s on what was then Bridge Street. One of his clocks is back in the house today.

The Suter name is why the house survived. In 1791 George Washington and city planner Pierre L’Enfant met at the Fountain Inn, also called Suter’s Tavern, run by John Suter senior near 31st and K Streets. Over time Georgetown confused the two Suter buildings, and a sign reading ‘George Washington’s Headquarters’ hung over the Old Stone House door. National Park Service research later found the story was untrue.

By 1953 the house was the office of a used-car dealer, with cars parked in the backyard. The federal government bought it that year for $90,000, partly because of the Washington legend, and the National Park Service restored it and opened it to the public in 1960. It is the oldest structure on its original foundation in Washington, and a rare survivor of pre-Revolutionary building in the city.

The ghosts of the Old Stone House

George

The Old Stone House’s most notorious ghost is known simply as George, and he is not the president. The story says he haunts the third floor, where visitors have claimed to be pushed, choked or held down, and that he dislikes women in particular. Some retellings call him a former murderer, and most say he is felt rather than seen.

There is no record of anyone named George dying in the house, and the stories come from guides and visitors rather than any written history. WTOP has called him one of the few truly malevolent spirits said to haunt the District.

The woman by the fireplace and the other spirits

Lists of the house’s spirits run to about eleven. The best known is a woman in a brown dress seen standing by the fireplace. Others include a woman in an antebellum gown, a German carpenter and a boy called Joey, said to run along the third floor hallway.

The Georgetowner noted that parts of the house stay chilly even in summer. As with George, these are reports passed down by staff, guides and visitors, not documented events.

A reporter's recording

In October 2018 a WTOP reporter and his wife visited twice to test the stories. On the second visit his recorder picked up a faint sound, a voice or a grunt, that he could not explain; a colleague’s reaction to hearing it is in the article. He was careful to call most of the lore hearsay, but it is the closest thing to a modern first-hand account the house has.

Where to look

• The third floor: George’s territory, and where the boy is said to run along the hallway.
• The fireplace rooms: where the woman in brown is said to stand.
• The staircase: narrow and steep, where footsteps are reported.
• The kitchen: Cassandra Chew’s 1767 addition at the back.
• The garden: open dawn to dusk, a quiet place to sit away from M Street.

Visiting the Old Stone House

The Old Stone House is part of Rock Creek Park and is free to visit. Recent National Park Service hours are 11 AM to 6 PM Monday to Thursday and 11 AM to 7 PM Friday to Sunday, with the garden open daily from dawn to dusk; check the NPS page before you go. Rangers can tell you about the house and its families. The NPS lists the house as wheelchair accessible; ask a ranger about the upper floors.

The house does not host ghost hunts, but several Georgetown ghost walks start or stop outside in the evening and go on to Halcyon House and the Exorcist Steps on Prospect Street. Georgetown has no Metro station; Foggy Bottom is the nearest, a walk of about 20 minutes.

• Visiting Free National Park Service house museum; garden open dawn to dusk
• Tours Free visits with park rangers; Georgetown ghost walks stop outside
• Hours and season Recently Monday to Thursday 11 AM to 6 PM, Friday to Sunday 11 AM to 7 PM; check NPS before visiting
• Tickets Free
• Ghost hunting No organized ghost hunts; a National Park Service site

Tips for your visit

• Go late in the afternoon on a weekday, when M Street is busy and the house is at its quietest.
• Climb to the third floor if you want to test the George story, but take the stairs slowly; they are steep and narrow.
• Look for the John Suter Jr. clock, the object that ties the house to the Washington legend.
• Walk on to the Exorcist Steps and Halcyon House, ten minutes west.

More haunted places nearby

• Halcyon House and the Exorcist Steps: Georgetown’s other famous haunted corner, on Prospect Street
• The Omni Shoreham Hotel: the city’s most famous haunted hotel room
• Haunted hotels in Washington, D.C.: for a haunted place to stay
• Haunted places in Washington, D.C.

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.

• Wikipedia: Old Stone House (Washington, D.C.)
• National Park Service: Old Stone House
• WTOP: Haunted DC, Georgetown's phantoms (2018)
• The Georgetowner: Spirits in our midst, Georgetown haunted by history (2017)
• Washingtonian: 5 of the most haunted places in DC (2023)
• GW Today: The true(-ish) stories behind D.C.'s famous ghosts (2022)
• Wikipedia: Reportedly haunted locations in Washington, D.C.