The author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as well as the neighbor of Mark Twain, built her house after moving out of her dream house down the street, which was much bigger and too difficult to maintain. The corner property in the new upscale neighborhood development had two additional houses built upon it: Mark Twain’s Victorian house and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s cottage home.
Although Harriet Beecher Stowe was not a transcendentalist per se, she was a staunch advocate for equal rights. It was Harriet’s loss of her first son at such an early age that led her to write the famous book depicting slave families being separated from one another for the rest of their lives. Uncle Tom's Cabin was said to be the book written by the little lady who started the Great War. Later, two other sons would fall to tragedy; one just vanishing after moving to San Francisco and suffering from shrapnel in the jaw received in the Civil War, and the other having drowned at 19 years of age.
Even though Harriet came from a very religious family (her father and all of her brothers were preachers), she later sought to contact her lost sons by a mediums when the Spiritualist Movement and Transcendentalism became prominent. Certainly, her husband’s description of seeing people come out of the walls most likely further inspired her to seek contact with the dead. Her husband told her that he would talk with them often when they would come into his room, and that he could no longer tell the difference between the spirits and people still in bodies. To Harriet’s husband, ghosts were as real as people in the flesh. Do the walls of Harriet Beecher Stowe's cottage still contain ghosts and spirits?
When considering the Harriet Beecher Stowe cottage house, we think about its past. The question remains, "Is it haunted?" One has to wonder after the spirits spoken of by her husband and Harriet's attempts at contacting the dead, due to the tragedies befallen her sons. Her twin daughters remained with her at the residence, even as adults, and travelled with the world-famous woman, who opened the eyes of thousands to the evils of slavery.