Laura Wright 
Haunted Houses of Yesteryear
For decades, an abandoned house stood on South Fourth Street in Williamsburg, its doors locked and its shutters tightly closed.
Inside, everything remained almost exactly as its owners had left it.
Kitchenware sat untouched. Photographs remained on the walls. Carpets and rugs covered the floors. A kettle waited on the stove as though someone might return at any moment to fill it with water. In the library, a book remained open on a table.
But nobody came home.
Years passed. Neighbors reported strange lights moving through the empty rooms and screams coming from the cellar.
Then, one morning, the impossible house caught fire.
There was only one problem.
Nobody could figure out how anyone had gotten inside to start it.
The Thursby Homestead
Williamsburg was once a city located beside Brooklyn, New York. Among its residents was Rodney Thursby, a successful politician who served as Kings County Clerk.
Thursby lived with his family in a house on South Fourth Street.
In 1886, after suffering for several months from a throat ailment, Rodney Thursby died.
Then something strange happened.
The family disappeared.
The Family Vanishes
Neighbors were stunned. Friends were shocked.
One morning, they discovered the Thursby home completely deserted.
The family’s departure had apparently occurred overnight, and it did not look as though they had simply moved away in the ordinary fashion.
The shutters were tightly closed. The windows were bolted. The doors were locked.
There was no sign of life anywhere.
For reasons that were never established, the family had fled. To most people, their whereabouts would remain a mystery for decades.
Stranger still was what they had left behind.
A House Frozen in Time
The Thursby home sat vacant and abandoned, but it was hardly empty.
Neighbors, friends, and countless curious spectators could peer through the slats in the shutters and see portions of the house’s interior.
Everything seemed to remain where it had been before the family disappeared.
Kitchenware had been left behind. Photographs still hung on the walls. Carpets and rugs remained on the floors.
A kettle sat on the stove as though someone had merely stepped away before preparing tea.
In the library, a book remained open on the table.
Days became months.
Months became years.
Still, nobody returned.
The Silent Visitor
Ten years passed without anyone apparently visiting the abandoned house.
Then an elderly man began to appear.
He came only once every three months.
Neighbors watched his regular visits with fascination, but the mysterious man apparently offered no explanation for his presence. He entered the house, remained inside for exactly 30 minutes, and then departed.
He never carried anything into or out of the building.
Three months later, he would return.
Again, he remained for precisely half an hour.
Then he disappeared until his next visit.
Screams From the Cellar
The strange visitor was not the only thing that attracted attention to the abandoned homestead.
Witnesses began reporting screams coming from the cellar at night.
Others saw strange lights drifting through the rooms of the supposedly empty house.
Yet the building appeared almost impervious to human intrusion.
The area was regularly patrolled, and the doors and windows remained secured. No one seemed able to enter the house without breaking through them.
Whatever produced the screams and wandering lights apparently required no obvious way inside.
For years, the Thursby house remained sealed.
Then came the fire.
Smoke From an Impossible House
One morning, a policeman was patrolling South Fourth Street when he smelled something burning.
The odor resembled burning wood and rags.
Then he noticed smoke.
It was drifting from the Thursby house.
Nearly twenty years had passed since the home was deserted, but the policeman still could not gain entrance without breaking into the building.
He smashed through the door and rushed inside.
The source of the smoke was downstairs.
A fire was burning in the old laundry room in the cellar.
Who Started the Fire?
Arson was an obvious possibility.
There was just one problem.
How had the arsonist gotten inside?
The fire department arrived and managed to extinguish the flames before they spread to the upper floors.
Once the fire was under control, the building was examined.
The doors were checked.
So were the windows.
They remained locked.
There was no obvious explanation for how someone could have entered the sealed house, started a fire in the cellar, and then escaped while leaving the building secured behind them.
Nor was anyone able to determine what had caused the blaze.
The mysterious fire joined the screams, wandering lights, silent visitor, and unexplained disappearance of the Thursby family as another unanswered question surrounding the abandoned house.
An Abandoned House in Old Williamsburg
The Thursby mystery unfolded in a Williamsburg very different from the neighborhood known today.
During the nineteenth century, Williamsburg developed rapidly alongside Brooklyn. Streets filled with homes, businesses, workshops, factories, churches, and the lives of generations of New Yorkers.
Against that changing urban landscape, an abandoned house would have been conspicuous.
The Thursby home was not merely vacant for a few months while an estate was settled. According to the story, it remained closed for approximately two decades.
Even more peculiar was its apparently preserved interior.
An empty house deteriorates. Dust accumulates. Dampness creeps through walls. Vandals and thieves discover forgotten buildings. Furniture disappears. Windows break.
Yet the Thursby house acquired a reputation as something different: a place seemingly sealed away from the neighborhood developing around it.
For the people living nearby, it must have appeared almost like a fragment of another time.
What Happened to the Thursby Family?
Perhaps the greatest mystery is also the simplest.
Why did the family leave?
Rodney Thursby’s death provides an obvious dividing line in the story. He died in 1886 after months of illness, and sometime afterward his family abandoned the house.
But their departure seems to have created more questions than it answered.
Why did they leave so suddenly?
Why did they abandon so many ordinary household possessions?
Why was the house secured rather than emptied or sold?
And who was the elderly man who supposedly appeared every three months, spent exactly 30 minutes inside, and left without carrying anything?
If he had legitimate access to the property, his presence may have had an entirely mundane explanation.
His silence and peculiar routine nevertheless became another ingredient in the mystery.
A Haunted House or an Unexplained Fire?
The fire itself may have had an ordinary cause.
Old houses contain countless potential hazards. Aging materials, forgotten chemicals, decaying fabrics, rodents, faulty equipment, and other circumstances can occasionally produce fires without the presence of an intruder.
But that is not how the Thursby fire entered local memory.
The story was compelling because the house was supposedly still locked.
For years, people had watched an abandoned home where strange lights appeared and screams reportedly came from the cellar.
Then smoke began rising from that same inaccessible building.
When police finally forced their way inside, the fire was burning in the cellar.
The same place from which the screams had supposedly originated.
The Mystery of the Thursby Homestead
The Thursby House has long since been demolished.
Whatever physical evidence might once have explained its mysteries disappeared with it.
Perhaps the family’s sudden departure had a perfectly reasonable explanation. Perhaps the elderly visitor was simply looking after the property. Strange lights may have been reflections, while screams from the cellar could have originated somewhere else entirely.
Even the mysterious fire may have resulted from an ordinary cause that investigators simply failed to identify.
But taken together, the events created one of those wonderfully strange stories that seem almost designed to become folklore.
A family vanished.
Their possessions remained behind.
A silent old man visited every three months.
Lights moved through empty rooms.
Screams came from the cellar.
And after nearly twenty years of abandonment, smoke began rising from inside a house that was still locked.
The Thursby Homestead is gone.
Its mystery remains.
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