Lockwood-Mathews Mansion

Built between 1864 and 1868 for Civil War-era financier LeGrand Lockwood, this 44,000-square-foot Second Empire mansion was one of the first great Gilded Age estates in the country — and it was troubled almost from the start. A worker died during its construction, and Lockwood himself, financially ruined and forced to sell the house, died in 1872, barely a year after it was finished. The Mathews family, who bought the foreclosed estate in 1876, lived there until 1938; the City of Norwalk has owned it since 1941, and it narrowly escaped demolition for a city hall project in the 1960s before being saved and named a National Historic Landmark in 1971. The museum itself doesn't formally brand the house as haunted, but its own annual Halloween tours draw directly on the building's real, documented deaths — inviting visitors to decide for themselves what they make of the reported sightings on its first and second floors.